Cheap food: Is saving money the best reason to eat at home?

Oct 23, 2009 by

“It’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor,” the saying goes.

But according to marketers at Campbell Soup, our benchmark for an “affordable dinner at home” for a family of four is just $10.

The average four-person household, bringing in $49,000 per year, spends $5,700 a year, or $110 a week, or just $5 per meal, for groceries, according to Heinz’s research.

Could cheap food be a reason we’re paying the doctor so much? And why we can expect our kids to pay even more in their future?

How do we profit if we save money today, but lose our health and our children’s health tomorrow?

Double Food Standard

Now I understand the problems of a genuinely tight budget, but where we’re not willing to pay the grocer, we are willing to pay the restaurant. While we choke on paying more than $5 or $10 for the whole family to eat a fresh, tasty,…

read more

Top 8 things to cut expenses on so you can spend more on quality groceries

Oct 23, 2009 by

  1. Restaurant meals
  2. Soda
  3. Junky snacks
  4. Cable TV
  5. Movies in the theater
  6. Electronic gadgets and video games
  7. New cars
  8. New clothes

Related post: “Reaching the Promised Land: Home Style or Restaurant” Style? https://www.thehappydinnertable.com/2009/09/28/reaching-the-promised-land-home-style-or-restaurant-style/

read more

To Melissa G., the Recessionary Grocery Shopper / Part II: Two Choices of the American Every Mom

Oct 5, 2009 by

Melissa G. represents the average American grocery shopper (as targeted by Campbell Foods) during the current recession, according to a Sept. 7 article in Advertising Age.

Dear Melissa, Cambellsvisitsscan

You have no reason to listen to me. I’d be pretty surprised if you took to heart anything I have to say. Actually, I don’t see that you even have much choice about it.

Since those nice folks at Campbell Soup came out, and acted like you were doing a great job as a mom, and declared you the representative of their target market, it’s a little like being crowned queen.

read more

To Melissa G., the Recessionary Grocery Shopper: The Official Kid-Will-Eat-It Guidelines

Oct 1, 2009 by

Dear Melissa G.,

Congratulations! You have been named “ground zero for the new austerity” by one of our food industry giants, according to an article I just read in Advertising Age.  Industrial edibles manufacturers, scrambling to keep their profits up while consumers like you look for ways to spend less, are taking a hard look at you, the average grocery shopper, and how you think and behave.  Melissa, you represent today’s Every Mom:  the very picture of the grocery-shopping parent. You are the bull’s eye of the target for processed food manufacturers in this economic downturn.

It’s quite an honor, and a responsibility, a sacred destiny even, Every Mom. The wellbeing of the American child is in your hands.

While Campbell Soup was analyzing your habits and attitudes…

read more

Eating Mindfully: How to Keep Your Kids from Getting Fat

Jul 17, 2009 by

Stock scales

The human appetite, like the human conscience, quits working if you ignore it long enough.

According to Brian Wansink in his 2006 book, Mindless Eating, modern humans have learned to tune out the appetite and the body’s cues about what and how much we need to eat. Instead we are relying on external stimuli to regulate our intake.

We don’t stop when we get enough; we don’t stop until the container is empty, Wansink’s experiments reveal. If the container’s bigger we’ll eat more. If given bigger packages of ingredients, we’ll cook and eat it all. If the soup bowl is being secretly refilled from the bottom, we’ll just keep eating and eating because it never disappears. Like goldfish, we tend to eat whatever…

read more