Week Two

So, here I am in week two of figuring out an average monthly cost for a Paleo dieter. I promised a week or so ago that I would talk about the average cost of the first three days’ dinner menu. I’m a bit late on it but now I have a few grocery receipts so I can do some real math for you.

As John Durant mentioned in a recent post I generally prefer to buy higher quality cuts of meat verses organic vegetables. The difference between a high quality meat verses a conventionally produced meat is higher than organic verses conventional vegetables. The higher quality meats are usually grass finished or organic vegetarian finished cows or humanely raised pigs and ranged chickens. They are all relatively expensive with beef running the highest contrast. You can get a conventionally produced New York strip steak for around $10-12 a pound. An Angus will run closer to $20 a pound. But you can almost double that cost if you go for the full ranged grass finished cows!

How can you eat this much meat on the cheap? First off, you can focus on chicken. You can typically get a whole chicken for a few dollars and that can last a week for one person if properly prepared. I prefer red meat. That means I tend to purchase the low end cuts of the higher quality beef. A good bottom round of this variety will run around $8 a pound. Fairly pricey, but worth it in the long run.

I usually have an 8 ounce steak with a salad for dinner (or some variation). The salad, calorie per cost, is the most expensive part. A few ounces of locally grown arugula is usually around $4 but I can spread that over 4 meals. I dress the salad with olive oil and vinegar and some German mustard. Assuming that is the whole meal without factoring in the cost of dressing we have $1 for salad and somewhere between $4 and $5 for the main course.

That’s a healthy dinner for around $6 or $7 dollars. That brings the day’s total to around $10. You can bring that total down, of course. $10 a pound for meat is an average in my case. I can get 90% lean grass finished ground beef for $6 a pound and make a low cost healthy chili. I’ve also taken to eating some organ meats like liver. I grew up on liver so its not something that gives me the willies like others and I’ve gotten a pound of beef liver for under $3. The beauty of liver is that it is stuffed full of vitamins and minerals which conventional wisdom has lately held to only occur in dark green veggies. Nothing could be further from the truth! Even muscle meat is filled with vitamins and minerals in great concentrations. Organ meats are incredible in their allotment of dietary essentials. And its a cheap way of getting certain vitamins and minerals like vitamin A, B12, D, essential fatty acids, complete amino acids, and trace minerals like copper without resorting to expensive and ineffective supplements.

Admittedly, a life of bacon, eggs, salad, and beef or liver is pretty spartan and doesn’t seem to offer the calories you might need throughout the day. I’ll address snacking and calories in my next post.