On Food Costs (Meat)

(Sorry for the long break. I've been working very long hours, and eating very boring food. I've got some back entries I want to write, but for now, I'd rather try to get back to once or twice a week posting.)

You would have to be living under a rock or independently wealthy to have not noticed the jump in food prices. Corn has shot up again, to $7.35 a bushel, from $6.00 (Jones, Chicago Tribune. Given the numerous reasons for this (increased global demand, natural disasters, biofuels etc...), we can probably assume that prices will continue to rise. I've already been priced out of several organic categories, and with a reasonable income, low cost of living, and no children, we are certainly the target market for organics. In fact, many producers have been forced to stop organic production due to rising operating costs. And the problem is not limited to organics. Conventional food costs more and more, particularly vegetables, and the rising costs are certainly not ensuring the safety of our food supply. One only needs to look at the recent salmonella outbreak to figure that out. Honestly, how do tomatoes get exposed to anything like salmonella, particularly in the amounts required to make us so sick? We have the same problem with E. coli in spinach on occasion, which is why our pre-washed salads are washing in chlorine. Fantastic. Our choices are chlorinated, or possibly irradiated, food, or the risk that foods that should be relatively low risk with proper handling will make us sick. And we're paying through the nose for that risk.

While the time has come for wholesale change in our food industry, our more immediate and pressing concern is how to pay both to get to the grocery store (gas is at 3.89 where I live, and we can't afford to replace our 10 year old small SUV), and pay to feed our families healthy foods. I've got three ways I'm trying to do so, and the three coincide with other goals I have for my life as well. These may not be helpful for those of you who have children, or very little time to cook, but they're options. I'll be making an individual post about each.

1) Cut back on meat.
Two of the most expensive things to purchase in the grocery store are meat and produce. It is most unwise to cut back on produce, but not all that bad of an idea to cut back on meat. In the grocery store today, I noticed that a pound of organic chicken thighs was $6. The whole organic roasting chickens were tiny, and expensive. The two it would have taken to have fed my husband and me for a week would have cost about $25. The convential chicken from Tyson was about $5 a pound for breasts, and they had no options for thighs, whole chickens (although they usually do), or bone-in, skin-on breasts. Nothing cheaper at all. The conventional chicken from a local company that I usually avoid because I've smelled the processing plant was cheapest. Thigh fillets, 1 pound, $3.50. Now, if every dinner I were to make this week were to include meat, even this cheap meat, that would come to about $24.50, which isn't awful for 7 meals, but if I were to choose a healthier, or more humanely produced option, my costs would skyrocket quickly. If I stretch that pound of meat into two meals, or maybe even three, and go meatless the rest of the week (assuming there are no pieces of fish in the freezer), then my costs have been reduced by 6/7.

It is possible for me to stretch the small amount of meat because I only have two people to feed, and we're both healthy eaters with a good understanding that meat is not all that makes a meal. A recommended serving of animal protein is about the size of your palm, or a deck of cards if you have big bear hands. This means that one and a half of those chicken thighs is a full serving for me and my husband. Rather than 2. Rather than a giant chicken breast. Huge portions of meat are a relatively recent introduction to our diet, coming about post WWII when industry made it possible to buy meat rather than have to grow it yourself. Meat can be a great source of nutrition, but it's certainly not the best source of nutrition available for the cost (not to mention the cost of production, but that's another cost). A grocery store near me recently put all of its meat on sale, pork, chicken, beef, you name it. While the presumed reasons for this were frightening (from 5 feet away from the coolers I could smell the chicken), the prices were incredibly low. As a result what I saw was probably very predictable. A huge woman, of deeply unhealthy proportions, with a grocery cart filled to the brim with various cuts of pork, ribs, ground beef, etc... While she was examining the meat in her hand, a young girl, who I presume was her daughter, watched her. This woman may have had a huge family to feed. Most of that meat was certainly going in a freezer for future use, but the sight was difficult to shake. Meat should not be the center of a diet, especially a someone who looked to be in poor health anyway.

I buy meat approximately once or twice a month, and it lasts a while. I've come to discover that meat is a pleasure, something to be carefully thought over, and used for maximum impact, not for plate filler. This is a big break from the dominant culture, of which we might presume the woman in the grocery store presents an extremely exaggerated example. We do eat a lot of fish, but I try to look for frozen fish, or canned fish (more later). Trying alternative proteins frees up a lot of our grocery budget for fresh foods, with maximum nutritional and taste impact. Think about it. If you need a pound of meat for your family each night, and that meat costs $3.50/lb (a low estimate), you can save ten dollars by cutting out meat, or stretching it to cover, 3 nights a week. A 6 ounce densely packed package of pink salmon (name brand, sustainable, easy, healthy) costs $2.50. Serve that instead, mixed with pasta perhaps, and you've saved a dollar. Over the course of your grocery shopping life, a dollar saved 3 nights a week, or more, goes a long way. A 26 ounce can of black beans (name brand, no additives, healthy) costs $1.65. Served as a topping for rice, or as black bean burgers, the beans are not only filling and tasty, but also save you almost 2 bucks a meal. That's nothing to scoff at. That two bucks can buy you some organic yogurt, or some organic bananas, or many other conventional things. Or it can just go in the jar toward your next tank of gas.

It's very easy to reduce your meat consumption, and you will probably not miss it. It does not require any familiarity with things like tofu or tempeh. And it can save you money. A good trial recipe is this one for Black Bean Burgers at A Mighty Appetite. These are excellent, and filling, and you do not miss the meat. Also, all I ever have to buy to make these are the scallions and the beans if we're out. I have everything else on hand. Other filling meat alternatives: lentils (over rice, as a sauce, in spaghetti sauce, soup, stew, red, green or brown), beans of any kind in a variety of difference ways, cheese (it's getting expensive too, and all the organic cheese available in the regular store is bland), spinach (lasagne, mac and cheese), and meatless, or meat-limited (I made that up, forgive it's dumbness) casseroles (chicken and rice, vegetables like squash).

Canned fish is also an alternative. Due to rising mercury levels, tuna is a limited option. You should be careful with it. For more specific information, see the Consumer Reports report on canned tuna. However, it is delicious, and works well in casseroles, or tuna salad. Another reason to avoid tuna is the serious problem over overfishing. There are very few sustainable fisheries in the world, and the pleasures of seafood may disappear soon, according to some studies (Boston Globe, "World Seafood Supply"). Yellowfin tuna is one of the most overfished. If you're eating tuna, both for lower mercury levels and higher sustainability, go for tuna labeled light over tuna labeled white. (And try tuna packed in oil. Delicious).

Canned or packaged salmon is a good alternative to canned tuna. If you're not into skin and bones, look for packages labeled boneless and skinless. I got a big shock the first time I didn't check this, and was grossed out by the processed fish starring me in the face in the can. Also, you must must must only buy pink salmon that is wild caught, preferably in Alaska. Alaska's wild salmon populations and it's fisheries are very sustainable, thanks to a very effective quota system based on how many fish return to the rivers to reproduce. The salmon season was canceled along the West Coast this year, due to very low populations, which will mean two very important things: cheap salmon will be more than likely farmed, which is bad in many different ways; and wild salmon, which is healthier and more sustainable, will be very expensive. However, cancelling the season goes a long way toward guaranteeing there will be a salmon season in the future.

Farmed salmon, like most farmed ocean fish, cause huge amounts of pollution, consume huge amounts of energy, are penned too close together and so develop diseases and parasites for which they must be fed antibiotics, and often escape, spreading the diseases and parasites to which they are immune to the wild salmon, especially young salmon,which are particularly vulnerable. The food they eat is not their natural diet (much like cows and corn, salmon aren't corn eaters) and includes synthetic dyes to make their flesh the coral color we identify with the fish (all info from Eating Well). When you know all of this, it makes it hard to swallow that bite of farmed salmon. I hope.

Reducing our meat consumption, and doing so in ways that are conscious of our health and the health of our world, not only eases some of the strain on our wallets, but also the strain on our belts, and on our environment. Small good things done in our own self interest can have amazing repurcussions for the world around us.

I'll probably freeze all but two of those chicken thighs I bought today. Those two, I'll chop and brown with onions and garlic from the farmer's market, and maybe add some tomatoes from my mother's garden. Toss in some herbs, maybe chopped carrots, zuchinni, red lentils, or chickpeas, and I'll have a great sauce to serve over brown rice. That'll be two dinners, and it'll be filling, and pretty damn cheap. It'll be tasty, and if I want, I can splurge on date-night dinner instead.