My inner artist has a vested interest in keeping my meat body as healthy as possible within reasonable budget considerations. But food prices are a bit of a shell game, so I created the following food cost calculator to help me see through the obfuscations, and thought I’d share it with you:
For example, I wanted to compare the following two types of canned chicken, both claiming 5 oz. of Net Wt:
The one on the left had 2.8 oz of chicken in it, the rest was watery liquid. The one on the right says it contains 100% chicken, but there was still 1.5 oz of savory broth (not watery), leaving 3.5 oz of chicken meat. The one on the left states $10.26/lb, but the cost for the chicken meat is actually $18.24/lb. The one on the right states $16.10/lb, but the cost for the chicken meat is actually $22.88/lb (I do give this one extra points, however, because the liquid looks/tastes like chicken juices, rather than water). At the time I’m posting this, raw boneless skinless organic chicken is running $8 to $11 per lb depending on where you buy it…but the catch here is that raw meats cook down to ~75% of their packaged weight, making the actual cost per lb $10.64 to $14.63 per lb (packaged cost per lb x 1.33 = cost per lb of final cooked meat).
Use my food price calculator to check the *real* price of many of your staples…you might be surprised at the results!