How do you guys spend sub 700$ on food

[Craigslist]

Before you people start saying you spent 200$ a month on food and then competing on who spends the least. How do you people spend less than $600 a month on food. The food in the cafeteria sucks, Doordash/Uber Eats easily puts you over a 1000$ a month if you were to buy something everyday. Theres no time to cook. I must assume a majority of you guys are small frail women. For context I am a 6 foot adult human male.

[CordMcNally]

1.) My wife cooks pretty much all meals fresh and does quite a bit of meal prepping.

II.) Food at the hospital is free for physicians.

C.) The baby is breastfed plus homemade puréed veggies.

Fore.) We typically only eat out 2-3 times a month and usually do cheap Mexican when we do.

Our food bill is typically right around $600-$700 or so. We buy meat on sale and stock up the deep freeze. We’ve never done DoorDash or Uber Eats for ourselves.

[wcinewbie]

Doordash/Uber Eats easily puts you over a 1000$ a month if you were to buy something everyday. Theres no time to cook.

Consider ordering the food directly from the restaurant for takeout yourself. You'll save on delivery fees/tips and better support your local restaurants as the delivery services take a pretty hefty cut. There's plenty of time to cook.

[AR]

$700 wouldn't be that hard if you didn't eat out. Especially for a single person. If I were single and I had the time and energy to cook and prep all of my meals, that would be easily achievable. I'd probably have room in that budget to eat out a few times as well.

[WorkingToFish]

Family of four - me, my wife and two children under 5 years old. We are consistently under $450 a month for groceries and $100 a month for eating out. We eat out maybe 2-3 times a month. We do our grocery shopping at Aldi and Costco. I am not a small frail woman but a 6'3" 200# dude that eats over 200g of protein a day. You're not trying hard enough to be frugal if you can't get under $700. Especially if you're single.

If I was single I guarantee I could stay under $250 a month for food. Breakfast burritos, protein shakes, beef and rice, chicken and rice. All day. Every day. 24/7/365.

[ENT Doc]

Family of four - me, my wife and two children under 5 years old. We are consistently under $450 a month for groceries and $100 a month for eating out. We eat out maybe 2-3 times a month. We do our grocery shopping at Aldi and Costco. I am not a small frail woman but a 6'3" 200# dude that eats over 200g of protein a day. You're not trying hard enough to be frugal if you can't get under $700. Especially if you're single.

If I was single I guarantee I could stay under $250 a month for food. Breakfast burritos, protein shakes, beef and rice, chicken and rice. All day. Every day. 24/7/365.

That's awesome. But wait until they grow and eat constantly.

[WorkingToFish]

That's awesome. But wait until they grow and eat constantly.

Oh I know. I recall myself as a teenager inhaling everything in sight. I’m fully prepared for that monthly $450 to double.

But really, if OP is single, under $700 should be a walk in the park.

[Hatton]

I just looked this up. I am spending $511/month on groceries and dining out. I have never done doordash or ubereats. I eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. I buy at farmers markets when I can.

[artemis]

There's plenty of time to cook.

You can also make meals that require little or no cooking. Things like sandwiches, salads, meats/fish that can be quickly grilled under the broiler, egg dishes, etc. Those are my staples during the week; I save anything that requires real cooking for the weekends.

It also helps to batch cook when you have the time, then divide the results into single-serving portions and freeze them. Then you have homemade microwave dinners, both cheaper and healthier than what you can buy at the grocery store!

And pack a lunch to take to work, if you have a refrigerator you can put it in.

[Nysoz]

Heck, even if you go full pre made meal prep.

A local place by me sells healthy pre made meals for $6.10 a meal bought in bulk. 60 meals would be $366 and you're then just responsible for breakfast.

[NumberWhizMD]

Family of 4. Increasing food consumption as the kids get older (hubby is also a food pit...former college athlete who still keeps up with a lot of exercise).

Aldi for the win. We get most of our food from there and only get specialty items elsewhere. We do eat mostly vegetarian with some fish. Hubby does get meat for the weekends. Only time we go over $800 are the months we have guests or get more alcohol and specialty cheeses (yum).

Meal prepping is key (get it all done Sundays for the week). There are plenty of foods as well that involve minimal prep. We don't eat out often, as we both like good food and most take-out isn't that good. We usually just make it ourselves and have several dishes we can get done pretty quickly during the week. Planning a night or two for leftovers also can help decrease time preparing food.

[JBME]

Oh I know. I recall myself as a teenager inhaling everything in sight. I’m fully prepared for that monthly $450 to double.

But really, if OP is single, under $700 should be a walk in the park.

it's going to more than double my 7-year old is already eating almost as much as I eat, and he's a perfectly normal weight as am I. He's 7! I've got a 5 year old as well who I expect will be at this level in a couple of years too, and then one even younger. At this point I'm fearful for the teenage years.

That being said, our budget for the family of 5 is around $700-750/month. So getting it under $700 really shouldn't be hard at all if you're a family of less than 5. We shop mostly costco and target

[zlandar]

PBJs. Since you are 6 ft two PBJs.

[MaxPower]

We don’t, as a family of 5, stay under $700 a month (not sure if that is an arbitrary number or if I missed something somewhere about that being a key metric). We hardly ever eat out, but we eat well at home.

We had this discussion before on this forum (a certain pig poster was incredulous that people would actually pay to buy Iberico ham and anything other than Kraft singles for cheese, for example), but some people eat to live and some people live to eat, so to speak. I could never eat beans and rice or beef and rice for every meal every day, especially now as an attending. That isn’t to say we eat king crab and prime rib every night, but we do eat those things at times.

We buy 90% of our food at Costco, and buy in bulk. We have two freezers and buy butchered pork or beef when we can ($3/pound for grass fed Texas longhorn beef) to supplement our meat purchases when available. We also eat a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits which are pricier than their canned counterparts. If we had to eat canned veggies we probably wouldn’t.

We incorporate rice with a meal or two per week, which helps stretch the food budget, but clearly rice doesn’t go with every meal. We also have a few pasta dishes that we make with some regularity and aren’t expensive.

For lunch I usually take leftovers. Lots of meals are better a day or two after you make them, and it’s nice being able to just grab something from the fridge in the way out the door rather than having to make something in the morning when I’m scrambling to get out the door.

Edit: oh yeah, we have two teenagers and an almost teenager, so they are constantly eating when they are home.

[Zaphod]

1.) My wife cooks pretty much all meals fresh and does quite a bit of meal prepping.

II.) Food at the hospital is free for physicians.

C.) The baby is breastfed plus homemade puréed veggies.

Fore.) We typically only eat out 2-3 times a month and usually do cheap Mexican when we do.

Our food bill is typically right around $600-$700 or so. We buy meat on sale and stock up the deep freeze. We’ve never done DoorDash or Uber Eats for ourselves.

This has been most people all year as you couldnt eat out, and lots have never done expensive delivery apps. Always been us.

Grocery costs have skyrocketed in last year, but still wasnt able to have these crazy low prices people put up.

I will literally, and quite gladly eat leftovers for days, in fact I routinely get 'in trouble' for eating what was supposed to be dinner again at lunch (what can I say it looked good).

We are in no way snobby about stuff, yes we like fresh and use veggies which is expensive, but like i almost never use glass plates, so it aint fancy thats the issue.

Maybe something to do with family sizes but...still, couldnt feed us for 2 weeks on some of these budgets.

Half of me thinks people arent paying as close attention as they think and have a guesstimate thats wildly off. Otherwise I'd like to shop at your stores.

Typical average everyday lunch if I dont sneak leftovers is just pb/j and two apples. Our family apple habit is kind of expensive by itself.

Maybe if you just ate garbage and crap, but fresh vegetables/fruit, and some good food are quite expensive. We usually grate our own cheese even, and its not expensive it just lacks sawdust.