random curiosity

[ratcreature]

Poll #4781 the price to feed yourself

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

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How much money do you spend on food per week per person? (in an average week, eating your average food, not an exceptional one with a holiday feast or a dinner treat at an for you unusually fancy restaurant or the like)

View Answers

less than 20 € (currently exchanged to about 27.50 US$ or so or 17.50 UK£, convert € below accordingly, though I realize the exchange rate vagaries don't reflect local purchasing power for stuff like food necessarily)
4 (9.5%)

20-30 €
11 (26.2%)

30-40 €
11 (26.2%)

40-50 €
3 (7.1%)

50-60 €
5 (11.9%)

60-70 €
1 (2.4%)

70-80 €
2 (4.8%)

90-100 €
3 (7.1%)

100-120 €
2 (4.8%)

120-140 €
0 (0.0%)

140-160 €
0 (0.0%)

160-180 €
0 (0.0%)

180-200 €
0 (0.0%)

200-250 €
0 (0.0%)

250-300 €
0 (0.0%)

more than 300 €
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[sapote]

In the US the cheapest cheese is actually price-fixed by WIC (they don't define it as price-fixed, but it's totally price fixed). I accordingly have measured the two extremes of my income level as an adult as "government cheese" versus "organic cheese" :) It's kind of indicative of our food funding priorities that whenever I help a friend who's down and out figure out what to do about groceries, I start with "okay, so you're going to buy a large block of cheese..."

[ratcreature]

Here the lowest price store brand basics usually end up costing the same everywhere too (at least in a region, my sister tells me that the city she moved to is way cheaper than here both in rents and in food prices), presumably because people comparison shop (at least the stores deny coordination and price fixing when accused of such). Like in 2008 with that food price spike, all the discounters somehow raised for example the price for a basic 500g bag of pasta within a few days of one another (I have three discount supermarket chains in walking distance and checked in all of them when suddenly pasta cost a third more). And this year when the butter jumped from 85¢ to 1.05€ for 250g that price hike happened simultaneously too.

[sapote]

Well, in this case (to clarify), foods that are included in the Supplemental Food Program for pregnant women have to be below a certain price, or the county office withdraws WIC authorization from that store. So you can always get things like gallon milk, cheese, certain whole-grain cereals, certain fruit juices, etc. at a stabilized price regardless of how crazily inflate-y all the other prices get. It's not a bad trick, though I'm always surprised how few people use it.

Otherwise there's no logic - the same box of crackers that costs $2 at one grocery tends to cost $4 at another.