Food Prices and Diet Changes

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SnakePlissken
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Food Prices and Diet Changes

#1

Post by SnakePlissken » Sat May 14, 2022 9:02 am

We all know food is getting more expensive and it's making me consider changes to my "average daily" diet. Some things I just won't get rid of because I like them, but I'm wondering if people that used to hate protein powder ever got used to it?

Right now a typical workday my meals look like this.
7:00 AM, 2 cups of plain oatmeal with 2 cups of coffee
9-10:00 AM, 1 cup of trail mix (getting expensive af)
11:30ish AM, 1 double decker peanut butter sandwich, 1-2 bananas, 1 protein bar, and a multivitamin
2:00ish PM, a large portion meal prep that usually has good amounts of protein in it like spaghetti with lots of ground beef or red beans with lots of ham and sausage
6:00ish PM, 5-6 eggs, 3-4 strips of bacon and a 12oz pack of vegetables like Brussel sprouts or cauliflower.
8-9 PMish, usually snack on something like some bagels, drink beer, or eat ice cream depending on my mood and hunger

Question to all of you is how do you get your proteins and carbs in on the cheap?
Protein bars I buy used to be 6 bucks for a $6 pack and now they're $9.50 and my old trailmix used to be $6 for a big bag and now it's $8.50 "on sale"

Also what do you mix protein powder with to make it bearable. I used to do smoothies with full fat greek yogurt and it was good, but sounds like a bad time with protein powders.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#2

Post by augeleven » Sat May 14, 2022 11:29 am

Lentils, chicken thighs (breasts when on sale), greek yogurt, protein powder. I’ve been eating more lentils to save money. I’ve been making a vat of lentils, veggies and spices for lunch most weeks.

Myprotein’s mocha flavored in my morning iced coffee is good and their breakfast cereal flavor mixed with nonfat Greek yogurt and cheerios is my favorite thing ever. Dessert for breakfast. If I’m feeling sassy I will use one of the garbage cereals my wife buys. Frosted Flakes or fruity pebbles. I’m a child.

I love white rice. I buy a 20 pound bag of jasmine. Compared to everything else, it’s basically free.

Trail mix is on the list of things I pretty much never get to eat due to price, caloric density, and my inability to respect acceptable portion sizes.
I wish I had more in the budget for beef and fish, although I’m thankful for my chest freezer and ground beef sales.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#3

Post by Allentown » Sat May 14, 2022 1:05 pm

augeleven wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 11:29 am I love white rice. I buy a 20 pound bag of jasmine. Compared to everything else, it’s basically free.
I've legit never heard someone complain about the price of carbs. I think the 12lb bag of short grain brown rice was like $12, and that was pricey but I didn't want to try and find a place for a 20lb bag.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#4

Post by asdf » Sat May 14, 2022 2:21 pm

SnakePlissken wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 9:02 am Also what do you mix protein powder with to make it bearable.
Unflavored whey isolate protein goes into the morning oatmeal, along with some walnuts, blueberries, and strawberries. Doesn't affect taste at all.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#5

Post by dw » Sat May 14, 2022 3:45 pm

I used to drink unflavored protein powder straight with water when I was on an X-treme diet. Had to hold my nose to keep from gagging.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#6

Post by asdf » Sat May 14, 2022 5:03 pm

If I'm drinking it, I usually blend in some berries and/or a banana. Natural sweeteners.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#7

Post by SnakePlissken » Sun May 15, 2022 3:53 am

asdf wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 2:21 pm
SnakePlissken wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 9:02 am Also what do you mix protein powder with to make it bearable.
Unflavored whey isolate protein goes into the morning oatmeal, along with some walnuts, blueberries, and strawberries. Doesn't affect taste at all.
I'll have to try this

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#8

Post by SnakePlissken » Sun May 15, 2022 3:57 am

Allentown wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 1:05 pm
augeleven wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 11:29 am I love white rice. I buy a 20 pound bag of jasmine. Compared to everything else, it’s basically free.
I've legit never heard someone complain about the price of carbs. I think the 12lb bag of short grain brown rice was like $12, and that was pricey but I didn't want to try and find a place for a 20lb bag.
Mainly just getting at the fact everything is more expensive now. When I think of carbs I think of bread and a loaf here used to be about $2.00 to $2.50 and now it's about $3.50 or 3 bucks on sale. Not as bad as protein but still sucks.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#9

Post by alek » Sun May 15, 2022 10:39 am

SnakePlissken wrote: Sat May 14, 2022 9:02 am Question to all of you is how do you get your proteins and carbs in on the cheap?
Do you have an Aldi grocery store near you or within a decent driving distance? One opened up really close to me about two years ago, and I can do about 95% of my grocery shopping there. It's usually less expensive than anywhere else for similar products, and most everything tastes just as good as more expensive stores. There's only a few types of items that we prefer to buy elsewhere, which includes bags of frozen veggies, paper products like toilet paper and paper towels, and a couple others I can't remember right now.

For protein, their dairy products like milk and Greek yogurt are good. They have an Icelandic yogurt now that I really like. I don't think I've tried their cottage cheese yet. They also have a soy protein based protein bar with peanuts and chocolate; I eat like 10 of those a week, and there's 10g of protein and 5g of fiber each per bar.

They have pretty decent salmon at ours, and it's around $8 to $9 per pound. Pork is pretty cheap. Ground chicken and turkey are around $3 to $3.50 per pound right now.

Their oatmeal packets are so-so on price, but their big tub of quick cooking rolled oats are around $3 for 30 servings I think.

We get the 20lb bag of jasmine rice from Sam's; never got rice from Aldi. The potatoes at Aldi are pretty cheap for basic potatoes. Most of the bread products are also less expensive than elsewhere.

Their pizzas are cheap, too. Although prices have increased, they're still around $6.50 for a whole 16" pizza.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#10

Post by Allentown » Sun May 15, 2022 12:22 pm

My parents are obsessed with Aldis, but my n=1 is that most of the stuff I have had from there is kinda sub-par.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#11

Post by 5hout » Sun May 15, 2022 3:22 pm

I aggressively hunt for meat sales and buy in bulk, when no meat sales I eat eggs/tuna/venison. I'm still keeping my price per lbs of meat under 3, but less so under 2 (which used to be the limit for chicken/pork). Beef is more of a "treat" food now when people are coming over, but if you check 3-4 different stores can sometimes find good sales.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#12

Post by alek » Sun May 15, 2022 4:20 pm

Allentown wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 12:22 pm My parents are obsessed with Aldis, but my n=1 is that most of the stuff I have had from there is kinda sub-par.
I’d be curious as to what you’ve had.

I did think of a few more things we prefer to get elsewhere: coffee and Triscuit crackers. Their coffee is mediocre at best, and their imitation triscuits aren’t good. Their wheat thin imitation crackers are real good.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#13

Post by Allentown » Mon May 16, 2022 3:16 am

alek wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 4:20 pm I’d be curious as to what you’ve had.

I did think of a few more things we prefer to get elsewhere: coffee and Triscuit crackers. Their coffee is mediocre at best, and their imitation triscuits aren’t good. Their wheat thin imitation crackers are real good.
Nothing memorable- some sort of spicy mix thing, some cookies, a few other things?

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#14

Post by omaniphil » Mon May 16, 2022 6:09 am

Allentown wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 12:22 pm My parents are obsessed with Aldis, but my n=1 is that most of the stuff I have had from there is kinda sub-par.
Agreed. Almost everything at Aldi that is a knock-off/substitute for a well known brand is not as good - e.g., cake mixes, bfast cereals, crackers, etc.
We use Aldi for commodity type items, and you can save a lot of money that way: milk, cheese, flour, sugar, beans, vegetables, frozen chicken breasts, etc.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#15

Post by Renascent » Mon May 16, 2022 7:01 am

@SnakePlissken, protein-wise, how many grams does your trail mix contain per serving? How many servings per box/bag?

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#16

Post by Culican » Mon May 16, 2022 8:13 am

They opened and Aldi about 6mi from me. I went there one day and saw that you needed a quarter to get a shopping cart out of the rack. Unfortunately, I didn't have a quarter on me so I went in, looked around, and left. I wasn't impressed enough to ever go back with a quarter.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#17

Post by mouse » Tue May 17, 2022 2:39 am

We go through spurts where we will check out Aldi... and then after a couple weeks we just forget about it again. We've never been able to save enough to justify not just doing all the shopping at Wally World...

This is compounded by putting our weekly grocery bill on a line of credit I have with them (Wally World) and just pay every other week to rack up rewards points.

To try and answer the original spirit of the thread... I haven't made any changes so far because my diet was already designed to be as cheap as I can possibly make it without being absolutely miserable. Although the whole $2.99/lb chicken thing is pretty bullshit...

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#18

Post by Brackish » Wed May 18, 2022 3:40 am

I know these have been mentioned already, but I'll add my +1 to both of them. Rice is dirt cheap, and it's easy to prepare in bulk. 90% of the meat we purchase is purchased in bulk from a local butcher. Two weeks ago we bought two full NY strips and had them cut the way we prefer. It cost us $6/lb compared to the $16/lb charged at the grocery store. We do the same thing for chicken. We'll buy 10-20lbs of boneless/skinless chicken thighs, bag them up in smaller portions, and then freeze them.

Completely unrelated to both of those two things, I got slightly tipsy at a charity auction at my boys' school two weeks ago and bought an assorted meat package from 4 local farms. The cost came out to about $6/lb (50+lbs total). Long story short, we won't need to purchase meat for a while.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#19

Post by 5hout » Wed May 18, 2022 6:22 am

We've adopted Casserole Tuesday and I picked up 3 locking top food grade 3.5 gal buckets, going to do 1 Rice, 1 Pasta, 1 Beans and then rotate them out. The 3.5 gal buckets fit a lot easier in normal life than 5 gals. 1 3.5 gal bucket of dried rice or beans is ~35k calories, pasta less calories (and highly depends on type).

I'm trying to make a list of casserole recipes where the meat is easily picked out so wife/kid can eat the whole thing and I can stay keto, so if people have favs send them along.

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Re: Food Prices and Diet Changes

#20

Post by Renascent » Fri May 20, 2022 10:10 pm

Like @augeleven suggested, a pot of legumes (Great Northern beans, navy peas, kidney beans, and so on) goes a long way.

Also, canned seafood. I found a local store appropriately named "Asian Market" and have since lost my fucking mind.

A can of eel is something like 20 grams of protein per serving. Tuna is about 15 grams, oysters are about 18 grams, squid and sardines are like ... 20 grams, depending on whatever the manufacturer claims.

A handful of almonds is supposedly 6 grams or so. They ain't cheap, but if you can get a decent-sized bag and stretch it for a week or so, well ... there you go. Dried chickpeas could work, too.

Duck eggs are, like, 8 grams per egg. Mix a boiled duck egg with a single-serving can of calamari and a bag of Nissin Demae ramen, and you're looking at somewhere around 40 grams of protein in a glorified bowl of broth.

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