All my meals are balanced. Half the plate is meat, and the other half is potatoes.

Do a search for how much food is thrown away every day by the local grocery store. It would shock you.

But one thing about real estate taxes. Subdivisions raise property taxes, not lower them. Here's why. A new home will probably have a family of two school age kids. The average cost to educate a child today is 12 to 14 thousand per year. Two kids, $24,000. The property taxes on that home are about $4,000 per year. The other $20K must be picked up by all the other property owners. Now, figure the costs for a subdivision with 100 homes.

So a solution to prevent property tax increases is forced sterilization and a ban on new construction?

Oh, and food rationing?

These two aren't the most coherent posts I've seen.

Come, come, Christopher ...
... regarding your "balanced diet" - do you mean to tell me there are no veggies ... no salads (and no chips ... sodas [which we call "pop" in Canada] ... cookies ... pie ... cake ... ice cream) occupying your plate on occasion?

Surely you jest!

(And you're a lot more self-disciplined than am I!)

Actually, having benefitted from advanced education (7 years after high school, subsidized from general government revenues, and one of them in the U.S.) I feel that it would be ungrateful of me to complain about some of my taxes going to pay for high quality education for today's children.

Having lived for part of my career in employer-owned housing, and in 22 places in my 86 years ... I've never owned a house. Also, renters pay a higher tax rate per $100,000.00 of property value than do home owners.

And some of those school children, on graduation, may help build businesses which may
employ my grandkids ... non-existent though they may be, in actuality.

While much of the cost of education to the end of secondary school in our province used to be on the back of local real estate, in recent years much of it is carried by the provincial government.

But the main point of the original topic was - save money simply by eating less.

ole joyfuelled

Ole Joyful - I can't disagree at all about "save money simply by eating less". People seem to be unconscious about what they eat, and how much they eat. It's not uncommon for me to observe people (guests in our home or at a restaurant) eating as much as hubby and me put together, or more.... Serving sizes at most restaurants are obscenely large. My cousin recently treated us to a restaurant that serves a home-style fried chicken dinner. I brought home 7-pieces of chicken and most of the side dishes . Enough for at least 4 more meals.

1. My first way to save money on food is to have a budget - $125.00 per month for 2 adults - for food ONLY. To date for 2015 I have spent $577.31 and have a surplus of $172.69 for the year (unspent). Most people don't have any idea how much they spend on food and eating out. It's an emotional thing....not a budget thing. They like it, can afford it, so they eat it! I use surplus funds for large purchases (bulk amounts of grains/seeds/beans, powdered milk, etc.). We practice home food storage, so I try to purchase food at rock-bottom prices and rarely pay retail for anything.

2. Of that budget, $10/week is my limit for meat. Some weeks I can't find a bargain, so I'll save the meat money until I find a stock-up price.

3. Since meat is the most expensive food item I purchase, I am also careful to figure the price per serving, not just the price per pound, which can be deceiving. There can be about 1/3 waste from bone-in chicken, 1/6 waste in bone-in pork, and 1/5 waste in bone-in beef. I keep a chart with me so I can figure how many 3-oz. servings of meat I can expect to get from meat that is boneless, with some bone, and with much bone.

Here's an example where bone-in chicken breasts are actually more expensive than boneless:

Boneless - $2.39/pound
Bone-in - $1.89
Take the cost-per-pound $1.89 x 1.5 (amount of waste) = $2.83 when you factor in the waste. But in my home "waste" is also used.

I serve many meatless meals (using high-protein meat alternatives) as well as meals where I use a small amount of meat and mix it with low-costing meat alternatives to control costs, yet still provide a full serving of protein. Be willing to compromise. When the price of ground beef skyrocketed, I switched to ground turkey at half the price. Buy turkey thighs and make my own ground turkey. Now that eggs are no longer a great bargain (I won't pay over $1.50/dozen), I'm using powdered eggs we've had in storage for just such a need as high-prices, and a variety of egg substitutes (flax and chia seed gel) until the price stabilizes again.

4. Avoid waste as much as possible.... I realize this part doesn't appeal to most people, and may even seem a bit extreme (some present have attacked me on this before, but since this is about saving money on food - I'll address that issue), but "extreme" has it's place when people don't have ample funds to go ahead and WASTE perfectly good food, or for people who have a conscience about waste. Most people can't be bothered to save! Wastefulness is just so much easier.

Save and use bones to make broth/stock. Make homemade soup more often. Collect chicken skin to render schmaltz - a useful fat that is just a fond memory that our frugal parents/grandparents made, now that people purchase "I Can't Believe It's FAKE Butter".

Consider how much we toss in the compost (or trash if you don't compost) each time you peel potatoes, instead of scrubbing them and eating them with the peel on. Same goes for many other fruits/vegetables. I use citrus rinds to flavor water kefir, rather than chucking them out. I make water kefir instead of buying bad-for-you and expensive beverages. I use pineapple cores and apple cores to make homemade vinegar. These things are second nature I've done them so long. There are charts on-line that will show you how much waste there is in most fruits/vegetables so you can begin to realize the real cost per serving. Try to choose food you can eat whole and not have any, or very little waste, to maximize your food dollars.

5. Know what a serving size is, and how many servings one requires. I've been following the old BASIC-4 since the 1970's and make sure there is a wide variety of foods to consume from the 4 food groups.

Bread & Cereal - 4 servings (I choose wholegrain and avoid processed foods)
Fruits & Vegetables - 4 (or more) servings
Meat or Meat Alternative - 2 servings
Dairy (if tolerated, or substitute) - 2 servings
I also add a serving of nuts each day.

Gluttony is still one of the 7-Deadly Sins. Overeating ANYTHING, at least in our home, is wasted food and wasted money. And we eat very well, thank you. Never doing without - it just needs to fit into the food budget.

Joyful, I do eat a pretty balanced diet. I always have vegetables with dinner (I love spinach) and although I am overweight, I don't gorge myself at meal time.

My only real vice is milk. If my wife would let me I would probably go through a half gallon per day. 2% of course. Since I quit drinking oh so many years ago, milk is my beverage of choice.

I agree with what you are saying and I do think that as a society we tend to eat far more than what we need and many times it's the wrong things. I'm Canadian as well and poor eating habits cost us a fortune in health care costs. Junky foods are already taxed, but I would love to see a larger tax increase on junk food and prepared foods, but offer subsidies on things like fresh fruit and vegetables. It isn't cheap to eat healthy. We do have a garden in the summer here and I do can seasonal fruit and vegetables but it's pretty expensive to do so if I have to buy the produce. In the last week & half for our family of 5 we've spent $200 on groceries and almost all of it was fruit and vegetables. So probably 2 weeks worth by the time it's used up. We did buy a few loaves of bread, 2 boxes of Cheerios and I think it was 4 bags of milk - that's 4 gallons for you Americans. The rest was fruit and vegetables. This is bare minimum stuff too because we are cutting back. That's no eggs, meat or cheese either. We raise our own meat and eggs. The meat does cost us slightly less than it would in the grocery store and it's pretty darn close to organic, but it's not cheap. We don't even really factor in the cost into our groceries, since it's a barn expense but in reality it is a food expense. Unfortunately eating a well balanced diet is pricey and no everyone can afford to do so.

If you really were determined you could provide all of your nutritional needs for free. Between hunting, foraging, and gardening this could be done. Meat can be in the form of wild game/road kill. Road kill when fresh is edible btw but you have to be in the right place at the right time. Foraging for wild herbs/nuts can give you some diversity in your diet. Acorns can be foraged and made into flour so that takes care of your grains. Gardening can provide fruits and veggies. Its a lot of work but gratifying.

I didn't mention above that I buy mostly basic food.

And I buy mostly stuff on sale, and try to buy enough ahead that it'll last me for a whole ... before it goes bad.

Food budget isn't large.

ole joyfuelled ... aided and abetted by some plain food, from time to time

Son and I use bread machines ... or, I did, until mine died. I know - I should make the bread by hand, but some somewhat arthritic fingers might object. However - is it fair to back off, not having tried?

For those of you who buy flour by the 2.5 kg (about 5 lbs) bag ...

... have you checked the price per kg. of that bag contrasted to the price of a 10 kg. bag (which is often a little over double the price)?

How about recruiting a few friends who buy the smaller bags, buy the larger one and split it among you, hanging on to some of that cost?

ole joyful ... who claims to be well-bred ... bread? ... (named Baker)

Problem with doing the splitting the bag is that in some regions the price per pound for the larger bag is now higher than for the smaller one. Used to be a money saver every where but not so much now.

maifleur01, I've noticed the same thing more and more in the grocery store. It used to be a given that the larger size cost less per ounce or per serving. Not so any more.