Food Is Taking a Bite Out of Your Income. These Consumers Are Getting Creative.

[dalton99a]

https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/food-is-taking-a-bite-out-of-your-income-these-consumers-are-getting-creative-e51a3d46

https://archive.ph/Pztgb

Food Is Taking a Bite Out of Your Income. These Consumers Are Getting Creative.
Shoppers share strategies for coping with food inflation, including potluck dinners, gardening and even hunting
By Heather Haddon and Jesse Newman
Updated Feb. 27, 2024 1:38 pm ET

Eating rice and beans instead of meat. Planning out meals a month in advance. Trying to raise more food in backyard gardens. Americans are changing the way they eat, shop and live to cope with a stretch of record food inflation.

Hundreds of readers responded to a Wall Street Journal article last week that illustrated how food has come to consume the biggest portion of Americans’ income since 1991, sharing strategies they have adopted in their kitchens.

Some are imposing new limits on eating out, and coupons are table stakes for many at both grocery stores and restaurants. Readers are buying more in bulk, while purchasing less packaged food, meat and organic vegetables.

Not all coping strategies are widely embraced. Some social media users have blasted WK Kellogg Chief Executive Gary Pilnick, who told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that the company has been marketing cereal to pressured consumers — including an ad campaign that suggests eating cereal for dinner.

....



https://archive.ph/65jOR

[MiHale]

1. On average Americans eat too much...

Look at the size of people today, compare to pictures of people in the past…we’re huge! Portion control has been forgotten about…we love to over indulge. Cut back, you won’t have to buy as much.

[redqueen]

4. Great messaging ...

for Republicans.

Groceries are becoming more unaffordable for skinny fat people who never exercise too, as well as overweight people who eat healthy food but remain overweight due to health issues, and everyone else in between.

[limbicnuminousity]

6. Love the advice.

My family eats a single meal a day at dinner time. Some days we skip. I have GI issues and my kid has an eating disorder, so it works out. Rice or noodles + beans and/or whatever cheap protein is in the meat aisle. Fluids? Tea. Snacks? PB&J, cereal, the occasional chocolate. Grapes. Bananas.

On average, Americans are wasteful with food and do eat too much. But that isn't the entire story and it ignores the reality some face.

[MiHale]

13. Never meant it as the only solution...

But there is never one answer to any problem, cutting down on the amount is only one small action people can take to save money for themselves it really doesn’t help everyone. But food waste is a huge problem. We don’t value our food, we waste a lot.

https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/

[limbicnuminousity]

18. You're right.

Apologize if that came off as snark. There are definitely steps that can be taken to eliminate food waste (and over-consumption) and with the current rate of global population growth we're all going to have to be creative.

The solution(s), whatever they may be, can't rely too heavily on the people at the bottom of the financial ladder pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. The bootstraps have already been used to make soup in some instances. Maybe it's time for the corporations to stop price-gouging and pay their gd taxes.

[MiHale]

19. Didn't take your response as snarky...

I didn’t really establish my position very well.

This has been one of my biggest bugaboos for a very long time. My grandmother taught me at a young age not to waste much of anything…Depression lessons. Being on a fixed income budgeting for everything is a main activity. Some food hacks are so simple people just don’t know them, for example, take kitchen veggie scraps.

We don’t regularly peel our veggies but when we do I save the carrot, potato, celery and whatever else scraps and make veggie broth. Freeze scraps if not needed immediately. Broth stays good in refrigerator for a couple weeks. Loads of vitamins and minerals in the skins of vegetables now in a more usable state.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

9. Well, that's a gross take.

Do you blame the "huge" people for the increase in grocery prices that the OP points out, too?

[MiHale]

15. The problem was that food prices were taking a bite out of income...

I took that as a personal task…saving my family’s income on food …not solving the high price problem for everyone. Americans waste too much food either by overindulging or tossing out perfectly good food for various reasons.

[Always Blue]

17. Really

Then let's get rid of SNAP? That would cut out a lot of the over eating. (Sarcasm) Or let's not blame the corporations for putting corn in almost everything we eat, causes diabetes. Or the real issue Americans don't like seeing starving people so let's make them fat on corn while in fact they are starving. Being overweight despite what is thought is not always from overeating. Healthier foods choices cost more and takes time to prepare. Media and culture wants us all to be bone thin, it's fake.

[MiHale]

20. This OP is about saving our personal income on food...

And what we can do to save personal income on food. High prices on food and why they are that way is a whole different conversation.

[Always Blue]

21. Funny

Seems that your post was off topic then. Fat shaming Americans. Inflation causing high food costs is corporate greed. The CEO of Kroger in an interview said they liked republicans because they cause inflation which gives them maximum profits. Which has nothing to do with Americans being overweight.

[CousinIT]

2. HOW ABOUT... the FTC slapping a huge windfall profits tax on their historic profits

Nobody ever discusses forcing the greedy big food producers to stop price gouging. LITERALLY EVERYTHING went up after the New Year and has gone up minimum 40% since the pandemic.

Talking about expensive food, inflation and the like without also discussing massive historically high usually untaxed corporate profits and price gouging is only addressing half the problem, if that.

A windfall profits tax should have really been implemented at the beginning of the pandemic ON EVERYTHING. And for food at least, there should be one now.

[redqueen]

14. You are correct. I don't think it's possible without Dem supermajorities

Republicans will not go against their corporate masters

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Creative thinking helps.

Make soups and stews.

Plan meals around what's on sale. I plunge into 99-cent/pound chicken legs. I roast them, remove the meat (and add to rice-and-beans), and then make chicken stock out of the bones.

And you don't go food shopping hungry and on whimsy.

[brewens]

7. I'm a whole foods homemade fanatic. I was going that way hard in the months leading up to COVID.

I had bought a small chest freezer, started making my own soups and chili and was stocked up on a lot of the basic ingredients. That saved my ass. It was still pretty easy for me to find something I could make do with when the stores were wiped out.

I kept going and now bake my own bread, make English muffins, tortillas and all my bread products. It's really saved me again with inflation.

I'm retired on disability, so I have the time, enjoy doing it and it keeps me busy. That's another way people are screwed by having to work too many hours. There was no way I could do that for myself when I was working. Very few couples with kids could do it these days.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Try this book. I love it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451605870?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

[brewens]

12. That's part of it too. Knowing what not to waste time and money on. One of my big successes last year

was Boston baked beans and I didn't get it quite right even. I cooked the beans a little too long, so they broke down too much. I made notes so should get it closer at least next try. They tasted better than anything I ever got out of a can.

[raging moderate]

16. Beans and corn together provide a complete protein.

When I majored in social anthropology, we learned that beans and corn are both deficient in the components of protein, but together they provide a complete protein. Apparently, beans have all but two enzymes of a complete protein, and corn has only those two enzymes that are missing from beans.

[underpants]

5. My wife did a two month "pantry challenge " this time last year

Aside from order produce and perishables (not big milk drinkers us) everything came from our pantry or one of our freezers. Yeah, we have a lot of food. She’s a food prepper.

[brewens]

10. I'm a bulk meals food prepper. I buy two turkeys every year at Thanksgiving time just for myself.

I do one for the holidays and one around June so I have turkey dinners, sandwiches and soup year around. That is a lot of meals for the $35 bucks or so I spent on the turkeys last year.

[Blues Heron]

8. you can really see that whole top chef, eating out craze on the chart from 2010 until Covid shut it down

Eating out was a major fad for a while there. Bourdain got that ball rolling, then all the kitchen shows, top chef, kitchen nightmare etc.

[MissB]

22. I do so many things to save money on food

The biggest one is to not waste food, of course. The most expensive food you buy is the food you throw out.

I'm fortunate to have time, money and a kitchen. I know not everyone has time, or money, or decent cooking facilities. I also had a grandmother than grew a garden, cooked from scratch and canned a lot. That knowledge didn't get passed along to my mom, but I've embraced a lot of those skills in adulthood, long after my grandma died.

An example: I buy whole chickens when they're on sale for .99/lb. That usually means $3.50-$4 per chicken. Generally, I roast the chicken, and we'll have that for dinner the first night. The leftover chicken will give us two more meals - usually something like chicken quesadillas and chicken salad. The carcass gets thrown in the fridge the first night, then plopped in my instant pot with a few bits of veggies and some spices (bay leaf and thyme for the most part, both grown in my yard) for an hour. Once that cools down, I'll strain the broth and heat it back up, putting it into pint or quart jars and pressure canning it on my stove. I usually get about 4 quarts of chicken broth from the carcass (I find that I prefer having pints, so 8 pints). Of course I could raise meat birds too, but I have egg layers and they live out their lives after their egg laying years are done.

Scraps of veggies get thrown into a container in the freezer until I feel like I have enough to make some veggie stock. Once I strain the stock, the remains get thrown either to the hens or to the compost heap.

I find that if I choose one or two new food items each year to learn about, then I am not overwhelmed with developing new skills. For example, we eat some sort of food in tortillas once or twice a week. I used to buy flour or corn tortillas in those bags. They're fairly cheap - maybe $2-$4 a bag? But I can also buy the masa reasonably cheap, and make my own. Not hard at all, as it turns out. I use a cast iron tortilla press and make enough for the meal. That way I don't find a bag of old tortillas at the back of the fridge. Yes, it adds about 15-20 minutes to my lunch or dinner plans, but it is not hard at all once you get it all down. I also make a pumpkin tortilla from puree and flour.

Of course I grow as much food as I am able to in my backyard. This time of year, one of our spare bedrooms has a couple of NSF/metro stainless multi-shelf racks with simple LED shop lights set up, and plant starts everywhere. I grow pretty much everything from seed, and have a couple of heat mats for plants that I rotate seeds on to start. It is fancier than starting on the top of a fridge or radiator, but the concept is the same. A bit of soil, light, heat and you have plant starts. I give away a lot of plant starts to family, friends and neighbors and then if I have any left that I absolutely cannot cram in somewhere, I'll toss them up for free on the local buy nothing group.

Again, I have space in my home and my yard. I can afford a dehydrator, a pressure cooker, a pressure canner, etc. I have oodles of canning jars (which I see for cheap all the time at yard sales, goodwill and Facebook marketplace). Growing and preserving food for home use is a bit of a lost art, but it isn't that hard to pick up the skills. It's taken me a fair number of years to get to where I am, but I'm confident that if the grocery chain is broken, we won't starve.