How to save a ton of money by buying fresh organic produce

Welcome to Almost Fit. My focus at Almost Fit is on improving health by doing one thing: Eating real food in moderation. No low fat this or low carb that, just real, whole foods in reasonable amounts. I have lost 26 lbs this year (so far) by eating decadent foods, having a beer or two, and occasionally exercising - though I’m always working on increasing that last bit. If this sounds interesting, have a look around and let me know what you think. Thanks.

In part one of this series (”Want to save money and eat well? Join a CSA“), I introduced one of our primary methods of saving money and eating well: Participating in a CSA. This is part 2.

One of the biggest contentions with basing your eating habits on local, organic, minimally processed food is that it is just too expensive for most families. The truth be told, I don’t discount this opinion at all - in fact, for many of us, the cost difference in a grocery store is more than we can justify. Being frugal has not only become a pastime, in this economy it is increasingly a requirement.

In our case, frugality has it’s perks: We are actually saving money by eating better - thanks to our local CSA.

I Heart our CSA

We love our CSA for a variety of reasons. Here are just a few:

• First and foremost, the beauty of a CSA starts with the idea that we are eating as locally as possible, both supporting our community and building relationships with people who have similar values. We drive a small distance each week to get our CSA box, and it is well worth the drive.
• Second, the quality of produce is exceptional, and is harvested and cleaned with great care. All organic, no pesticides, and ready to eat straight out of the box. It is picked at the peak of ripeness - not weeks or months early and then left to ripen later with a heavy dose of chemicals.
• Third, having a weekly box of vegetables forces you to do something elementary: You have to eat your vegetables, otherwise they will go to waste.
• Fourth, it encourages you to find new recipes, try new things, and broaden your tastes for vegetable dishes that you may not have had growing up.
• And the fifth benefit has been huge for us: the money-saving value is outstanding. Even when gas prices where at their peak, it was still cost effective to drive out a ways to pick up our box of produce.

Think you can’t afford real food? Think again

Out of curiosity, I decided to inventory what we received in one-week’s worth of CSA produce over the summer, and then compare what we were getting to what we would pay at a retail grocery store. I was truly amazed at the value.

For our $20.00 per week, here’s what we got - and here’s what we would have paid based on our local grocery store’s prices:

All I can say is….WOW.

A couple of things about this chart:

1. The green rows indicate produce that was not available in organic form when I did the price comparison. So, I used the price of conventional for both just to try to be conservative on the cost savings. (Obviously if this was a comparison between conventional vs. organic, which it is not, that wouldn’t be a fair comparison.)

2. My first inclination is to quickly figure a months-worth comparison of organic vs. CSA (multiply the organic $74.79 times 4 weeks ($299.16!) and compare that to $20.00 times 4 weeks ($80.00!)) and say we just saved $219.16 a month. However, the reality is we wouldn’t have saved that much. Why?

Because frankly, we wouldn’t be eating as many vegetables because it would be more than we could afford.

So to me, the real value is much greater than the dollar-savings. Our CSA actually dramatically improves the quality of food we’re eating because it is reasonably priced and responsibly produced.

That is not the message you get from the food industry, who argues that you cannot have good food at a reasonable price - they argue that reasonable price equals cheaply made heavily produced food. If you want healthy food, you’re gonna’ pay dearly.

However in my experience, if you can find a local CSA and adapt your lifestyle a little to eating seasonally, this argument can be turned on it’s head. Our grandparents did it. People all over the world do it. I think we can bend a little too.

“But don’t you waste a lot of it?”

I know that some people have found that participating in a CSA doesn’t work for them for one reason: sometimes the produce goes to waste because there is just so much of it. For us, it hasn’t happened very often, but for others we know, that’s how it has gone.

Looking at the list I created, you might wonder if we eat all of it - or if much of it turns into so much compost.

The answer is for the most part, we actually do use it all. But we didn’t at first. We’ve adapted our diet according to what’s in season, and learned to cook, eat, and preserve things. We’ve had the occasional tomato or pear go too soft, or the remains of a head of lettuce that didn’t survive after a week or so, but for the most part we use it up.

Granted, there are four of us including a toddler and a 4-year-old (who both ask for salad), so if you are single this might be a challenge. But really, if you start to look at this list in terms of using parts of it in potentially 21 meals over the span of a week, I think it’s clear that you could put this to very good use.

And we certainly did.

So how do you find a local CSA? Stay tuned for the next article. Thanks for reading. If you found this article interesting, please consider sharing it via StumbleUpon. I do appreciate it.