Atkins: A Diet for Your Wallet?

[ReginaW]

Atkins: A Diet for Your Wallet? ABC news headline in their segment on the price of wheat - it doubled in a year!

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4320837

[kyrasdad]

The other angle on this: Atkins, in terms of profits to the actual company, is pretty light compared to various brand diets. You don't have the prepackaged foods or monthly fees that you see from WW or Jenny Craig. You do have some bars and such, but I can't tell you the last time I bought one. They are absolutely unnecessary to eat low carb. You spend your money not with Atkins (or even South Beach, which has done a much better job putting out products), but at the grocery store for meat and vegetables.

Low-carb is probably more expensive than a typical American diet. I don't know how much more, since that obviously depends on the menu, but it's more than I paid before.

[ValerieL]

I was just listening to a podcast of a Canadian public radio show that was talking about the rising price of grain. The the rising use of grains as biofuels has increased prices for grain as food dramatically. They were interviewing bakeries that were saying their wheat costs doubled. They also talked to farmers that were happy about it, though. They finally have a crop that is more profitable and not as subject to being wiped out by a little bit of of bad weather (apparently biofuel grain doesn't have to be as perfectly undamaged as grain for food).

We can't win, can we, as a society? Putting aside the low-carb and health questions of grain, society bitches if grain is too cheap and farmers are being forced to close and their way of life is being destroyed, but then let the grain prices rise and society bitches that the cost of food is too much for the poor.

[M Levac]

The other angle on this: Atkins, in terms of profits to the actual company, is pretty light compared to various brand diets. You don't have the prepackaged foods or monthly fees that you see from WW or Jenny Craig. You do have some bars and such, but I can't tell you the last time I bought one. They are absolutely unnecessary to eat low carb. You spend your money not with Atkins (or even South Beach, which has done a much better job putting out products), but at the grocery store for meat and vegetables.

Low-carb is probably more expensive than a typical American diet. I don't know how much more, since that obviously depends on the menu, but it's more than I paid before.

It is slightly more expensive to me. So now I look for the highest fat food I can find for the least amount of money. Bang for buck.


Wow, that news bit sounds end-of-the-world'ish.

[kyrasdad]

It is slightly more expensive to me. So now I look for the highest fat food I can find for the least amount of money. Bang for buck.
yeah - I am hamstrung to some extent because certain LC foods are repulsive to me. I can't stand eggs in any form. The sight, the smell trigger an instant gag reflex. I am close to the same way with tuna. I get into hamburger, chicken thighs, etc. I can't believe that at one point I considered the breast the best part of the chicken.

It's more expensive than noodles or pasta in initial cost, but losing 100 pounds and keeping it off for years has more than made up for that, to me.

[Nancy LC]

When I was a kid eggs would make me gag. Now I love them!

[Wifezilla]

If the price of grains goes up, so will the price of eggs and meat.

[probiotic]

Well, meat and dairy gets alot more expensive as grain does too, because of all the grain inputs as feed. However, without a doubt I find that eating low carb costs more in general than high carb, especially if one tries to avoid processed foods and/or eat more organic and free-range, and at the very least (since I know that the definitions of "organic" and "free-range" can be pushed to the limit) not the filthiest (as well as in-humane) factory mass slaughterhouse food. A small price to pay though.

[KarenJ]

I wish I could get my daughter to eat eggs, she hates them too.

I believe this WOE is more expensive, but not all that much so. One box of pasta doesn't cost much, but when I look at old grocery receipts, the boxes of pasta, potatoes, rice, bread, and other junk really adds up. The money saved from not buying the junk goes to buying good quality fat & protein. The extra expense now (for me) is buying organic vs conventional.

Yes, I have a bag of old receipts that I sometimes look at. Don't know why. :roll: Wild caught seafood and beef seems to have risen in price the most.

Edit: The farmer who I get my eggs from uses very little grain. He buys bugs for them in the winter, and pastures them in the summer. So I wonder what impact higher grain prices has on him? His eggs are less expensive than "enhanced" factory eggs. Same as the farmer who I get my beef from- he sells his corn cobs as squirrel food.

[Rachel1]

While low carb food is (probably) more expensive than high-carb food, I'm not sure it has to be. For one thing, low carb food is nutrient-dense, so I can be healthy and happy eating small quantities. Cheese is expensive, but I can make a block of cheese go a LOOONG way if I limit it to, say, an ounce a day. If I eat very simply, consuming, say, 10-12 ounces of cheaper cuts of meat (which I like anyway) and lots of green veggies every day, I guess it wouldn't cost me much at all. I LIKE to have low carb treats - chocolate, fancy nuts, flax crackers, tortillas, etc - but I don't really NEED them.

Rachel

[ReginaW]

I believe this WOE is more expensive, but not all that much so. One box of pasta doesn't cost much, but when I look at old grocery receipts, the boxes of pasta, potatoes, rice, bread, and other junk really adds up. The money saved from not buying the junk goes to buying good quality fat & protein. The extra expense now (for me) is buying organic vs conventional.



I think the thing most people fail to see is that the starchy carbs aren't eaten in isolation - they're almost always eaten with something added to enhance their flavor and palatability.....pasta gets sauce or butter & cheese, potatoes get butter and/or sour cream, cereal gets milk, bread gets butter, mayo, peanut butter or something added to it, rice gets paired with other foods, usually with fats and protein......why? Because starchy carbs alone are bland and tasteless for the most part and most people would have a difficult time eating them alone without that something other added to them....they're palatable when they're combined with more expensive things, which is really where IMO it is misleading to think a higher carb diet is less expensive.

A few months ago I did a food stamp challenge and managed to feed my family a nutritionally complete diet for a week for $3.00 per person per day (well, I went over for the week by $1.99) - and managed to keep carbohydrate to 73g net a day on average (24g fiber per day, 93g total carbohydrate).

Typically, on average - eating a diet that is close to 95% organic with 98% of our animal products being pastured/grass-fed and controlled-carb - I averaged $3.93 per day per person in May 2007....I calculated it out after the food stamp challenge. That has probably risen since my calculation in May since the milk, yogurt and raw cheese I buy has gone up in price....but I doubt we're spending that much more now since it's about $10 more a week now....so, we're up about 0.50 more per person per day - or $4.43 per person per day (about $93 a week)....it's just hard to really pinpoint since we buy our meats in bulk, so I haven't bought any since October!

[probiotic]

Wow, Regina, I just checked out the Time 'what we eat' story and pics linked on your WOE blog, and while not surprising, its amazing to see in comparative photos what the week of *garbage* in the standard diet of the typical American family eats. Box after box of cereals, potato chips, cokes, candies, and other nutritionally worthless cr*p. Some of the other country pics have tons of carbs in them too, but none as blatantly full of worthless refuse as ours.

[M Levac]

I just thought it would be interesting to consider medical and other expenses related to eating high carb. Then make the comparison.

[ReginaW]

I just thought it would be interesting to consider medical and other expenses related to eating high carb. Then make the comparison.

Oh, I definitely think if you factor in health related expenses, a high carb diet is significantly more expensive....and not just to the bottom-line!

[kyrasdad]

I just thought it would be interesting to consider medical and other expenses related to eating high carb. Then make the comparison.
I don't know that I could point to anything personally, since I was relatively healthy before LC, aside from weighing nearly 360 pounds. I didn't have major healthcare expenses. I can't prove that I avoided any, so it's difficult to quantify those savings. I would say that at 360 pounds (and climbing), you'd have to think I dodged a bullet or five from the medical point of view.

The other thing to calculate in is extra income. I *absolutely* have that and the lost weight has directly impacted it. I make double what I did when I was that large. That's not unrelated. But again, it's hard to prove.

[mike_d]

Fasting has cut my grocery bill at least by half :idea:

[Bat Spit]

If the price of grains goes up, so will the price of eggs and meat.

Maybe we'll get really lucky and the price of grain will go up to the point they'll go back to letting cattle eat grass!!

[Wifezilla]

Higher grain prices could make grass fed beef a comparable option. Most likely, the grass fed beef farmers will raise their prices so they can stay ahead of the grain fed beef cost :p

[LC FP]

Not so fast--- Are you really saving?

When your high carb friends are in the hospital getting stents "installed" and CPR and getting shocked back to life, they have insurance to help pay the bills. Whereas you who are playing golf at Pebble Beach, hand gliding in Colorado and deep sea fishing off Bimini have to pay all your bills yourself.

[Calianna]

Higher grain prices could make grass fed beef a comparable option. Most likely, the grass fed beef farmers will raise their prices so they can stay ahead of the grain fed beef cost :p

That's not really how farming works, unless you just happen to be selling directly to the consumer. Based on the fact that some people here are buying their beef directly from the farmer, yes, some farmers are setting their own prices, which are based at least in part on what you would pay for the exact same thing at the grocery store.

In most cases though, the middlemen are setting the price for beef on the hoof, based on the price they think will allow them a decent profit on it from the next person in the chain of middlemen, no matter how much it costs to raise the cattle. If the middleman's price is lower than the farmer's cost to raise the beef, his options are to either sell at the lower price... or not sell at all. This is actually how it works with all farm produced goods, whether it's grains, vegetables, fruit, tobacco, or animal products - and is why a lot of family farms have gone bankrupt. A lot of people are not aware that farmers are just about the only businessmen who buy all of their supplies at retail prices, but then sell everything at wholesale prices (with the exception of things like the direct to consumer meats or small produce stands), and if those wholesale prices are not as high as your production costs, well too bad, you just take a loss.

The last of the middlemen (there's more than one along the way to the supermarket) then also sets his price to sell to the grocer at a profit, which in turn needs to set their price to have some profit left over after all their overhead costs are covered.

So if grain land is reverted back to pasture land, that would be a good thing as far as the quality of the meat is concerned, but what it does to meat prices will depend on many other factors.

[Wifezilla]

In Colorado, a majority of grass fed beef IS coming directly from the farms, hence my example...but you are right about how the price of store meat comes about.

[Azlocarb]

Using your food for energy is one of the stupidest things we have ever done. Oh and it sure has lowered gas prices…not. But maybe it has turned global warming around. Did you her that the average temperature dropped by almost a full degree C from Jan 07 to Jan 08. One of the largest drops on record.

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

[Wifezilla]

Al Gore fixed Global warming right after he invented the internet and rid the world of ManBearPig! (Our ex-president is a busy guy!)
http://www.southparkzone.com/episodes/1006/Manbearpig.html

[ReginaW]

Already we have riots, hoarding, panic: the sign of things to come?

The spectre of food shortages is casting a shadow across the globe, causing riots in Africa, consumer protests in Europe and panic in food-importing countries. In a world of increasing affluence, the hoarding of rice and wheat has begun. The President of the Philippines made an unprecedented call last week to the Vietnamese Prime Minister, requesting that he promise to supply a quantity of rice.

The personal appeal by Gloria Arroyo to Nguyen Tan Dung for a guarantee was a highly unusual intervention and highlighted the Philippines’ dependence on food imports, rice in particular.

“This is a wake-up call,” said Robert Zeigler, who heads the International Rice Research Institute. “We have a crisis brewing in rice supply.” Half of the planet depends on rice but stocks are at their lowest since the mid1970s when Bangladesh suffered a terrible famine. Rice production will fall this year below the global consumption level of 430 million tonnes.

Street protests and rioting in West Africa towards the end of last year were a harbinger of bigger problems, the World Food Programme said. The global information and early warning system of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has monitored outbreaks of rioting in Mexico, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. There have also been protests in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, over government price increases.Population pressure and increased wealth are mainly to blame for the resurgence of food insecurity. More people are eating meat and dairy products in Asia, which increases the demand on the animal-feed industry. Milk powder prices rose from $2,000 to $4,800 per tonne last year as rising consumption of milk products in Asia coincided with shortages in the Western world. Drought in Australia has worsened the problem as have government policies in Europe and America to increase the use of biofuels.

Mounting concern about rice has prompted the Indian Government to restrict exports of certain varieties. The measure triggered a surge in global rice prices, which have risen 50 per cent in a year, according to the FAO. The rice shortage is even felt in Britain where the price of basmati, the biggest-selling variety, is rising rapidly.

Wheat is suffering even greater pressures, with prices up 115 per cent in a year. A succession of droughts in Australia has put upward pressure on the cost of a food commodity that is already in short supply. Stocks are at a 40-year low and exports are being restricted from Beijing to Buenos Aires. Ukraine started closing its door to grain exports in June and Russia set a 40 per cent export tariff on wheat in January.

Argentina has delayed the reopening of its wheat export registry until April to protect domestic supplies, and China, a net exporter of corn, rice and wheat last year, has imposed export quotas on grain in order to stem runaway food price inflation. A surge in its inflation index in December was blamed entirely on rising food prices, notably pork, which rose 48 per cent.

Farmers worldwide are worried about feed costs. In Europe pig and poultry breeders are threatening to cut production unless they are paid higher prices.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3500975.ece

[LC FP]

More people are eating meat and dairy products in Asia, which increases the demand on the animal-feed industry.
This is probably not a LC friendly trend, if grain availability lessens and people riot.

[LessLiz]

That is frightening -- the most disturbing thing I've read in a long time. I remember the Bangladesh famine, and it was horrible.