Cooking a proper meal vs pre-packaged meals. Is there a substantial saving?

Mar 29 15:33 UTC 2007

Is cooking at home in the West more expensive than eating out or ordering
take-away or heating a pre-packaged meal, for the same type of meal.

How often do American families cook at home? Is it a regular thing, does it
mostly involve heating pre-packaged meals. How varied is it? Are there
special days of the week wrt food?

Is there a correlation between income brackets and cooking at home? Do poor 
people cook more at home or is it the other way around?

How much money would you save approximately, if you cooked at home? Don't
factor in cost of time.

response 2 of 21:

Mar 29 16:38 UTC 2007

I believe it is cheaper to cook at home than go out to eat.

I also only speak for myself....I think I probably save a lot of money 
by cooking at home - I know I save a lot for my husband because I take 
leftovers and freeze them so he has stuff to warm up for lunch.

I tend not to use pre-packaged anything in terms of cooking.  It's 
just as easy to chop up my own stuff and tends to be fresher.

I'd say I probably spend on average about 30-45 minutes a day in the 
kitchen.  This does not include time I bake, and it's an average per 
week.  I might spend an hour and a half in the kitchen on Saturday or 
Sunday, but will just reheat leftovers during the week, or keep things 
simple.

response 4 of 21:

Mar 29 21:07 UTC 2007

We cook 95% of what we eat if not more, and spend about $100/month on food
for two of us.  Eating in restaurants would probably cost at least five times
as much.  I don't remember the last time I ate in a restaurant but sometimes
we eat food at receptions after lectures (cookies last night).  The last
restaurant might have been on Thanksgiving Day when we went for a walk and
got cold and were near a Chinese takeout place and I paid $4 plus tip for
vegetables and rice to warm up.  We also make our own bread and noodles, and
try to buy most of our food either from the farmer's market or a food buying
club.

response 6 of 21:

Mar 30 02:06 UTC 2007

What do you cook that costs as much as prepared food?  We would typically cook
a large pot of grain (rice, millet, barley) or potatoes or a loaf of bread,
and another pot of beans, and stir fry some vegetables.  

response 8 of 21:

Mar 30 12:16 UTC 2007

"Cheaper than food" has been the slogan of Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burgers,
Division at Packard, since the mid 50s.  

If you buy frozen prepared food at a large chain grocery, you can usually get
a meal for about the same cost as preparing it at home.  However, you
sacrifice control over volume of fat, type of fat, amount of sugar, amount
of salt, and spicing.  

Most people also buy a higher quality of food for home consumption than the
stuff that goes in prepackaged food.  The saving comes from quanty purchasing
and low labor-cost of factory prepared vats of food, which is somewhat offset
by packaging costs.

Buying this allows you to trade personal time spent cooking for personal time
working, out with your friends, or driving small children from activity to
activity.

All that said, I get personal creative relaxation from cooking, so I tend to
linger in the kitchen, making food from scratch.  I've always prefered higher
quality fresh vegetables, and obscure or exotic food, which is seriously
cheaper when you prepare it yourself at home.  

I also cook a lot of meat dishes, so I cook those from scratch too, for the
same reasons.  

I cook large volumes at once (rice in 6 - 8 serving quantities) and then
package and freeze the remainder for quick, on the run meals other nights.
I"ve gotten more into this recently, and find I can keep almost a month of
meals in a small apartment sized freezer compartment.  That surprised me.

Now I'm more consciously setting aside one evening a week to make large
amounts of several dishes, and preparing them for easy later consumption.

Its very hard to say how much time I spend.  Some nights its 10 minutes
microwaving; some nights its 2 hours making 3 or 4 main dishes.

response 10 of 21:

Apr 2 03:06 UTC 2007

Thanks :) that was neat! I was curious because a friend who had lived in
America for like 10 years during the 80's had told me that it wasn't
absolutely necessary to learn how to cook to survive there (though it's
necessary here). He mostly used pre-packaged meals through out college :)
Anyway so when a recent discussion on another thread brought it up,
i got worried that i might have accumulated yet another skill that wasn't
particularly useful <g>. Glad to know that you can save some money by DIY,
and even happier that we haven't entered a age, as yet, where mass production
has made useless a pretty fundamental skill and interesting skill.

response 12 of 21:

Apr 2 19:11 UTC 2007

Pre-packaged does not equal McDonalds.

Cooking isn't a useless skill - even if it doesn't end up saving you money,
you're most likely getting a more nutritious meal at home than outside for
the same money.

response 14 of 21:

Apr 4 12:49 UTC 2007

Oo found a super link:
"http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/biz/2002/11/04/stories/2002110400100300.htm"

Looks like google has been busy indexing :) that didn't show up last time i
searched. A nice studly gas oven.

response 16 of 21:

Apr 5 03:59 UTC 2007

American gas stoves run on natural gas which is what people have used to kill
themselves.  Just turn on the gas and close all the windows.  It is the gas
itself that is the poison.  Burning it in a room without enough oxygen will
produce carbon monoxide.  You don't need an oven to cook.  One burner will
do it.  I have cooked that way for a year at a time.

response 18 of 21:

Apr 5 14:35 UTC 2007

Re #15 #16 #17: Well, we use LPG (Liquified petroleum gas) and it's got 
mercaptan in it so we know if there is a leak. I want to use the oven to bake.
The trouble with baking with a microwave or a electric-range(oven) is the
electricity it consumes. LPG is a lot cheaper and my mum uses it anyway
for cooking (double burner - stove). Also, would it be possible to bake
with a pressure cooker? I know that sounds a little weird but has anyone
tried cakes using a PC? About CO poisoning, that probably happens in winter
out there, when ppl have to close windows. It's summer here all year around
so i don't think we'll have a problem and in any case we have a huge chimney.

response 20 of 21:

Apr 5 15:48 UTC 2007

Were people trying to heat with their gas stoves and the windows sealed?