Except for an occasional salmon, I don't eat any meat so my food bills are very low. I figured this morning I spend about $2.00 a day on food for myself which includes my black coffee in the morning, beans, nuts, grains, fruit and vegetables. If I go really crazy and eat a lot, it ends up being about $3.00 a day but rarely. I thought I was doing ok until I overheard a cashier at walmart the other day saying to a customer she spends $100 a month to feed her family of four.
She steals.
I think I spend about $7 to $10 a day on food.
I rarely go out to eat, but when I do, it's quite a bit more.
haha that was a good one, your one liners are becoming legendary here on blf! She is thin as a toothpick though and doesn't look very healthy. Probably just eats rice and potatoes mostly.
The main thing I’ve learned from discussing food budgets is that most people don’t have a clue how much they actually spend on food. If your budget is less than a USDA thrifty food plan then you’re probably not accounting for everything or you eat a lot of rice and beans. For a while a few years ago, people were posting their grocery receipts on Reddit to show how “healthy” they ate on a tiny budget, and I used to play a game of showing the total calorie content wasn’t actually enough to support life. Many of them didn’t include staples that made up the bulk of their calories, food purchased earlier, restaurant meals and take-out, their daily Starbucks, etc. That’s not to say you can’t live on a tiny food budget, but many people fool themselves into thinking they spend a lot less than they actually do.
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about $12 a day on average, some days more some less, this is only launch that i buy at work, if i go to work early i get brakfast there too, another 6-8 bucks, that is not counting food that we buy for home aka weekly shooping, on that we spend about 150 a week or so. that is not including ordering, usually on weekends, another 50-100, but not every week. there is no such thing as cheap food in NYC,
My friend always tells me food is expensive in NYC. Our little town has five supermarkets and food is really cheap here. Also, if we buy from local farmers it gets even cheaper. I did notice the canned bean section is slowly getting cleared out which makes me think some are already hoarding just in case.
I keep detailed records of pretty much everything.
In 2018, my average was $7.73 / day.
In 2019, my average was $8.38 / day.
In 2020 so far, my average is $6.64 / day.
According to a quick web search, the national average is about $7.64 / day.
Our family of 3 spends roughly $130 per week on groceries for home cooked meals. That figures out to $18.57 per day. So about $7 per day, per adult. But then we also go out to eat maybe once a week, and that is about a $38 bill.
Weekdays, my Big Meal is lunch, almost always choinese food, that sets me back 7-9bux. At home, its usually eggs, pb&j, farina, tuny-fish, grilled-cheese, etc. That’s usually “dinner”.
Almost never “buy” anything to drink, as it’s (free) coffee at work (liquid caffeine, the way I make it), or a bucket o’ limeade (squeeze a lime into a Big-Glup-sized pail, add 0-2 tsp sugar, and fill with water. Else 2L bottles of seltzer for a buk each at the supermarket if I want fizz.
(Yeah, gotta actually buy the limes, sugar, seltzer, etc., unlike Sticky Fingers working the cash-register, but never ever buy a can o’ coke, bottle of water, whatever like most people do. Hence quotes around “buy”.)
One weakness I do have are those envelopes of Knorr’s and other brands of noodles, etc. Stroganoff, chicken-flavor, broccoli-and-whatever, they’re quite good. Just add water or water’n’milk, bring to a boil, cook down ’til it’s the right consistency. Yummy, and not too much work.
This looks realistic for a frugal person. Precision down to the cent suggests good record keeping…
$2/day doesn’t sound right at all in Canada. Maybe it could be pulled off in a country where the dollar’s purchasing power is much higher. eg. nuts alone are quite expensive.
I used to spend $50-100 per week on groceries for myself as a frugal student, mostly on staples, and batch cooking for the week. Though it didn’t seem to increase much when a gf started living with me.
$10/day seems like a decent average estimate or target budget.
Special items, deserts, and especially eating out are what sky-rocket costs, I find, considering one meal out can easily eat several days’ budget.
One surprise is how quickly fresh produce can rack up costs.
I guess our forum members who are Breatharians are banking the money that the rest of us waste on food and water.
I’ve done some work in trying to optimize food expenses. The most important thing I found was to have a good measure of what food actually costs. To find that I figure out what 14000 Calories of any given food would end up costing. In other words if you ate that 1 food for an entire week how much would it cost.
The cheapest thing that Americans have access to is flour. $2.50/week to subsist off that. Of course that doesn’t include the energy to bake bread or the time to make your own pasta from scratch. Vegetable oil can be as little as $3/week. Bags of sugar are $4/week not including dental bills.
Most frozen meals are $30-$50/week. Chicken costs around $70/week. Fresh fruit and vegetables are around $100-$200/week.
I’ve got a table of a bunch of common foods at my site: Eating Inexpensively but not Cheaply
I would say $5-$8 maybe. I get bulk so I can put together something for a week or so. Cook up a huge batch of spaghetti sauce with meatballs, make a huge batch of curry chicken pastry puff or big pot of chilli and put em all in the freezer. 
$2 a day is easy if you don't eat out, don't eat junk food and rarely eat meat such as myself. I put $200 in a pot and see whats left after 3 months. My current 3 months ends in 4 days and I still have $37 in the pot. Need to average everything over 3 months because when I buy nuts, raisins, oats and seeds, most of them last longer than 3 months some shorter. Not doing it to be frugal, I do it because I enjoy being and feeling healthy every day. Eat salmon twice a month to keep my b12 levels up, other than that it's non meat products. Don't calorie count either and am always steady around 160 lbs at 5'11.
Light ringer you’re right but you are still a nut!
I have to agree with the others that are a bit skeptical. You are paying 1/4 the average and not losing weight? Are you sure you aren’t getting free doughnuts at work? Or meals from co-workers and friends? Or maybe you are drinking calorie rich drinks? I’d bet you are getting more calories than you realize from your drinks. That’s a form of eating.
Do you also grow food? 
I positively love oats, and yeah you could get 2000 calories per day for less than $2… but some of the other items like nuts and seeds tend to be expensive, unless you eat very very little of them.
I eat pretty clean too, but what I noticed is that a lot of junk food is relatively cheap. That doesn’t compel me, but I can see how someone on a tight budget might be steered that way.
Taking a look at Parametrek’s useful grocery table, perhaps the “shocking truth” is that the most expensive items aren’t meat but rather fresh produce. This is what I noticed myself. I would buy meat in bulk and freeze it, eg. a large pork shoulder which I sliced into over 20 pork chops/steaks that lasted me a long time and cost me quite little. On the other hand when my gf wanted to eat more fresh greens, that was the most noticeable increase the grocery bills.
We have a family of 3 and pet time extra one (my daughter at weekends)
My wife is an owner of a 25mill turnover company so she’s plenty more rich then me
We spend about 700-1000euros a month on food , maybe to much I know but we do try and eat healthy and natural (loumo) in finnish
Naturally raise animals and no generic stuff
We eat lots of salmon and other fish
We have cheat days and eat just food now and then
We also go out quite a lot and eat in sushi places
Naturally raise animals and veggies are quite expensive in finland
I remember coming to finland and being so surprised at the price of food compared to UK
Also when ever we goto UK we always take an extra suitcase and stock up on everything we can
And when ever we goto Estonia on the “booze cruise” we bring back cheese-meats-bread and of course a bottle of whiskey
Maybe it’s a lot of money to some people but the price of food in finland to say USA and UK is very different
I grow much of my food in Summer but didn't add that into my $2 a day average. As far as not being too skinny, it's probably because every now and then I steam some potatoes and then fry them in olive oil without burning them. Maybe not the healthiest but I really like it. That's what probably keeps my weight in check. We get a lot of bulk stuff here at different times of the year. No frills had recently a $10 lb bag of beets for around $6-7. Farmer sells me $10lb of potatoes whenever I want for $2 and yams for $3.50 for 10 lbs. Walmart is selling yams right now for 68 cents/lb, so I get them for almost 1/2 that. It's cheap living in a small town.