My goal today was to do groceries for 40 meals with a budget of ₱1,400 (basically my 2-person household’s usual 2 meals /day /person for 10 days). Did my local supermarket fail me?
INGREDIENT PRICES
First, let’s lift off the prices from my grocery list:
|
Price |
Volume |
Volume to Feed One Person |
# of Meals Provided |
Price / Meal |
|
|
Luncheon Meat |
₱338 |
2 Cans |
0.25 Cans |
8 |
₱42.25 |
|
Canned Corned Beef |
₱326 |
2 Cans |
0.25 Cans |
8 |
₱40.75 |
|
Burger Patties |
₱104 |
12 Pieces |
3 Pieces |
4 |
₱26 |
|
Hotdog |
₱181 |
16 Pieces |
2 Pieces |
8 |
₱22.625 |
|
Canned Tuna |
₱106 |
3 Cans |
0.5 Cans |
6 |
₱17.67 |
|
Giniling (Ground Pork) |
₱255.6 |
1 kilo |
0.0625 kilos |
16 |
₱15.97 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spaghetti Noodles |
₱53.25 |
400 grams |
100 grams |
4 |
₱13.31 |
|
Rice |
₱5 |
1 cup |
1 cup |
1 |
₱5 |
|
Spaghetti Sauce |
₱35 |
1 pack |
0.25 pack |
4 |
₱8.75 |
|
Carrots |
₱50 |
250 grams |
62.5 grams |
4 |
₱12.5 |
Apologies that the prices are the totals of each item as I bought them, but I work my way to get you the how much each ingredient will cost to feed one person one meal. For example, 2 cans of Luncheon Meat cost ₱338 pesos, and 1 can usually gives 4 meals, or .25 cans feeds 1 person 1 meal. So I divided 2 by .25 (Volume Column divided by Volume to Feed 1 Person column), to get that my purchase will give 8 meals. Dividing total price by this amount gives me the price per meal or ₱42.25 from ₱338 divided by 8. One insight I have from this is on the first 6 rows, which are basically mga ulam or the main meat viands. Ground pork and Canned Tuna cost the least at ₱13.31 and ₱17.67, while Luncheon Meat and Corned Beef cost the most at ₱42.25 and ₱40.75.
Note that this list is not meant to be exhaustive, and you will notice that there are a lot of canned goods here. In general, the fresh meat section will give you better prices. Finally, the rice portion here is an overestimate.
APPROXIMATING COST PER MEAL
The final comparison however is when we put these ingredients together into the meals.
|
Rice + Luncheon Meat |
₱47.25 |
|
Rice + Corned Beef |
₱45.75 |
|
Spaghetti Noodles + Giniling (Ground Pork) + Spaghetti Sauce |
₱38.03 |
|
Rice + Giniling (Ground Pork) + Carrots |
₱33.47 |
|
Rice + Burger |
₱31.00 |
|
Rice + Hotdog |
₱27.62 |
|
Rice + Tuna |
₱22.66 |
Again, these are approximations that do not include the less expensive spices, or oil. They also don't consider how long it will take to prepare.
But they do give us a good idea of how much each of these meals cost. For the most part, most meals are driven by the meat viands. So the full meals for Luncheon Meat and Corned Beef remain the most expensive meals. However, when you get to meals with ground pork, because it needs a lot more additional ingredients (see the third and fourth row), these become more expensive than some other more ready-to-eat meals like the hotdogs and burger patties. Spaghetti for example, needs the spaghetti noodles and sauce. Even adding only carrots to the ground pork and having that with rice still bumps it up.
VERDICT
■■□□ Needs improvement
My total, without the rice is ₱1449, but this fed 12.5 days worth of meals for my household. Mission accomplished. Still let’s examine the quality. I would say that he Pork Giniling Meal would be the best, having the most coverage since it has all of vegetables, meat, and rice. This is a good time to evaluate my meal choices which are driven by price, yes, but also by convenience. Hence you will notice that most of meats are canned--- definitely not good. Aside from that the meals will indeed get a bit repetitive, as at my house, we will usually have dinner of one day the same as the morning of the next. But this is a symptom of my household being small.