Beating Breakfast's High Costs
It's said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
But it can be tough to fuel up your family in the morning when the cost of breakfast foods keeps rising.
On "The Early Show" Monday, financial contributor Vera Gibbons offered pointers on keeping costs relatively low, while keeping quality, flavor and nutrition high.
She points out that factors contributing to the climbing cost of breakfast foods include the weak dollar, an increase in demand, America's vulnerability to crops from developing nations, and the higher cost of raising livestock.
The Department of Agriculture expects overall food prices to rise as much as four percent in the United States by the end of 2010 -- including the prices of breakfast staples such as eggs, wheat, flour, sugar, orange juice, and cereal.
Food prices, Gibbons explains, are determined, as are most prices on commodities markets, by supply and demand.
Breakfast foods depend largely on crops from developing nations. For instance, the biggest sugar suppliers are Brazil and India, and the biggest growers of tea are countries such as Kenya and Sri Lanka. That means the supply of many breakfast staples is subject to crop disruptions. When supply is down, demand goes up. That's a recipe for high prices at your supermarket.
The mega-economies of India and China also are demanding more food supplies. That drives the costs up here at home.
And the weak U.S. dollar means we will be exporting more of our homegrown food -- again, causing prices to rise in our grocery stores.
HOW YOU CAN SAVE
As bleak as that picture may seem, there are some real ways to save at your grocery store.
First, try to plan your breakfasts in advance, and don't be afraid to repeat menus, so you can use up all your ingredients.
Gibbons used two different breakfasts to demonstrate ways you can be thrifty. The first was a meal put together with no thought to price, using expensive products and high-end items. The second, less expensive breakfast incorporated the tips Gibbons served up.
Expensive breakfast has name-brand cereal, name-brand orange juice, Starbucks coffee, scrambled eggs, a cup of tea, and a name-brand sugar:
.41 per serving for name brand cereal
.09 per tablespoon for sugar
.40 for 2 fresh eggs in dozen container
.19 for half-a-cup of OJ from a Tropicana carton
1.40 for Starbucks Coffee
Cost = about $2.50
Inexpensive breakfast has a generic cereal, oatmeal with bananas, orange juice from concentrate, home-brewed coffee, generic tea with generic sugar, and hard boiled eggs:
.17 per serving of generic cereal
.08 per serving of generic sugar
.29 per serving of 2 bulk-bought eggs
.08 per serving for oj from concentrate
.55 for home brewed coffee
Cost = about 1.17. That's a savings of $1.33 PER BREAKFAST. Do that 365 days of the year, and you'd save close to $500!
CEREAL: GO GENERIC, GO BULK, OR TRY HOT ONES
Name brand cereals are expensive. They'll run you about $4 to $6 dollars for a 12-to-18 ounce box. Kids love brand name cereals, but generic brands offer the same flavor for much less. The savings are often as much as 15 percent. A big bag of Malt-O-Meal cereals are often 30 ounces for only $2 dollars more.
Which leads us Gibbons' next tip: Buy in bulk. Instead of buying a can of oatmeal for $4, buy a ten or twenty pound bag of rolled oats for a dollar more.
Also, hot cereal is less expensive. Using oatmeal and grits will save you money. And you can add bananas, fruit, butter, jelly, brown sugar to make the flavors vary.
COFFEE AND TEA: TRY NEW ONES, BREW YOUR OWN, BUY ONLINE
One way to find great deals on all of your coffee and tea is to buy items that are newly-released. Certain coffee and tea varieties are new products, which means manufacturers and distributors are interested in getting the public to try them. To try to do that, most of the time, good sales are needed to get the ball rolling. Therefore, if you're adventurous with your coffee and tea samplings, you should give new coffees and teas a try, while gaining a good discount in the long run.
Also, brew your own! Brewing your own cup of coffee will cost you no more than 55 cents. At Dunkin' Donuts, you pay almost $2 a cup. That's a 300 percent markup. Sales of Mr. Coffee are way up, as people are figure that out.
Another way to find fantastic deals on coffee and tea is to buy the products online. There are many online retailers specializing in coffee and tea items, so finding one is easy. Many online retailers of coffee, tea and related products will offer discounts in the form of Web-only specials in which prices are deeply discounted to attempt to sell the products quickly and efficiently. In addition to getting great deals online, you'll have convenient access to the items.
Brand-name tea can cost $4 a box, while generic tea can go down for as little as half that.
And again, for significant savings, try generic.
EGGS: BUY BULK, FREEZE THEM, HARD-BOIL THEM, OR TRY POWDERED EGGS
Purchase eggs in bulk if you can. The price will usually be less, and you can be on the lookout for sales.
Eggs can be stored in your refrigerator, where they'll keep for three-to-five weeks safely.
If you have a lot of eggs, you can save money by hard-boiling ten or twelve and using the hard-boiled eggs for sandwiches or salads throughout the next week. After hard-boiling eggs, refrigerate them within two hours, and they'll keep in your refrigerator for up to one week.
Another way you can save on eggs is by using powdered eggs to replace part or all of the eggs you use.
ORANGE JUICE: BUY IN CONCENTRATE OR DILLUTE IT TO MAKE IT LAST
Use frozen concentrate to make your juices and skip the cartons. Concentrate is about half the price. If you think you won't like it, you can always cut back on the recommended amount of water to add by 10 to 15 percent. You'll still save, and the taste will be more intense. The average gallon of OJ is now about $6, so if you're buying two gallons a month, that's $142 a year you could keep in your own pocket. If you were to buy the juice in concentrated form, you could save $71 dollars a year.
Try to dilute your juice with water, or for some bubbles, try seltzer. Your kids probably won't notice the difference. Simply add 20 percent of water or seltzer to your juice for instant savings.
FOR SUGAR: GO GENERIC
The production, packaging and storage of single ingredient items such as flour, sugar, and salt are federally regulated. So, there really isn't any difference between brand name and generics, and you could save as much as 50 percent.
Another reason to go generic: brand-name single ingredient items are rarely part of in-store sales, and you typically can't use coupons. With generics, you won't have to.