This is from the USDA - thought it was interesting. It's showing me that I am really doign well for my family as far as food costs!

http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/FoodPlans/Updates/fooddec03.pdf

there is lots of information here, too:
http://www.usda.gov/cnpp

:eek: Those are much higher then I expected!!!!!

Their thrifty isn't thrift at all!!

I thought I was spending a lot right now, since I was doing lots of convenience foods due to morning sickness.

Their total for our family of 7 at the moderate level is over $1100. Holy carp -- we spend about $500/mo. at the commissary and co-op and then about $100 on takeout.

edited for privacy

Wahhh, I am curious but nothing shows up for me but a blank white page:( My dh works for USDA too, I will speak to him about this LOL...

Do you have Adobe Acrobat installed? Current version? It might be stuck when it tries to update itself if it seems like it's going to work and then doesn't - mine did that for a while, then when I went to the website and updated, it worked again. :)

Here's some of the info:

Monthly Grocery Expense for a Family of 4:

For a Couple 20-50 and children 2-5
Thrifty Plan - 421.60
Low-cost Plan - 529.90
Moderate-cost Plan - 651.70
Liberal Plan - 806.40

For a Couple 20-50 and children 6-11
Thrifty Plan - 487.50
Low-cost Plan - 626.10
Moderate-cost Plan - 780.80
Liberal Plan - 946.30

The page also gives weekly averages and then a weekly and monthly average per age for kids, and adult males/females, etc - lots of interesting stuff! :)

At least this gives you a little peek. ;)

Thanks snowflake. I guess we do pretty well to according to these figures. Dh looked them up for me at his work and reminded me that they did not include eating out and also that groceries cost differently in different regions. Just a thought to take that into account with the figures. I wish they had included eating out...and also broken down the averages by region.

I also printed it out and figured it out for our family size... we are spending WAY less than a thrifty plan for our family size! I showed it to dh and he comes home from work today and says: "If you need me to add to the grocery budget, we can work that in and rearrange a few other things."

There is even a menu plan for a couple of weeks (complete with shopping lists!) that is supposedly thrifty.

Glad you ladies appreciated seeing this. I thought it was eyeopening!

Can you post the link to the menu plan?

Can you post the link to the menu plan?
Oh yes, please!

That figure for a family of 4 was outragous! Thrifty? I don't think they are getting real thrifty people to do this.

Love Val

here is the meal plan for 2 weeks with recipes and shopping list. Personally, I thought there was WAYYY too much carbohydrates on the meal plan... and a lot of not so healthy options. A lot of it called for white bread, white rice, etc. But those are simple things to replace with much healthier alternatives.

http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/Pubs/Cookbook/thriftym.pdf

I posted another link to a month's meal plans at: www.modernfearn.com That looks a lot healthier to me... the food choices do.

Oh, and here is a link to the page at the USDA site that has all the links to the meal plans and the cost of groceries for different months. The one I posted earlier was for December 2003. Anyways... here is the link that you can get pretty much any info about the food plans/grocery costs.

www.usda.gov/cnpp

Hope that helps!

great links!! thanks!!