A recent CNN/Money story says that American households waste an average of 14% of the food they buy and that they also tend to buy more pricey, packaged, ready-to-eat foods.
According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian household spends $6,910 (or 11% of total expenses) every year on food. If we assume that we waste a similar percentage of groceries as our American friends, we throw a lot of money into our trashcans.
I have to admit that we are pretty bad with groceries in our household. We don’t plan our weekly meals, we buy a lot of packaged food and we throw away food that we let expire or fruit that is starting to go bad. It is true what they say about our parents’ generation. My parents are visiting us and it is amazing to see them operate the kitchen. They shop from a list, roughly plan the meals for every day of the week and use up every last bit leftover in the fridge. I am aspiring for that level of efficiency.
Speaking of groceries, I noticed in The Globe and Mail yesterday a story about thirty families around the world buying a week’s worth of groceries. A family in Darfur, Sudan had the most meagre: $1.23 (US) worth of limes, onions, salts and dried tomatoes. On the other end of the scale, breads, fresh produce, meat, beer, milk and pizza by a German family cost them $494.19.
Saving on groceries seems to be a popular topic. You can check out some more comments at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity and Consumerism Commentary.
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Ray // Dec 23, 2005 at 6:26 am
My wife and I do a rough plan of the week’s meals before we go grocery shopping every week. This really does help us to almost eliminate food that spoils in the fridge. In 2004 our food expenses (which includes eating out) totaled around 6.7% of our expenses (excluding retirement savings).
2 Taellia & Avani // Feb 24, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Thank you so much, you helped us with our math project! We are only twelve years old! It’s a good thing we can call this math, cuz if not, I would be talking on MSN and playing with PC games.. so yeah… thanks again, bye!
Taellia & Avani
3 Canadian Capitalist » Avoid Wasting Groceries // Nov 29, 2006 at 12:47 am
[...] A post on Sitting Pretty reminded me of an old post on saving on groceries by avoiding wastage. To recap, many studies have shown the American households waste an average of 14% of their food purchases, worth about $590 every year. I am guessing that Canadians waste a similar amount of food and our household was no exception. [...]
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