In January, my boyfriend Alastair and I did our first Whole30 diet. I wanted to see how much we would be spending over the 30 days since we would suddenly be buying more groceries, as well as a lot more meat. We had been eating out frequently, and now could not eat anything that we hadn't prepared for fear that it might have some "non-compliant" ingredients. For information about the Whole30 diet, please see their website.
I kept about 80% of our receipts and tallied everything up at the end. We didn't really have a food budget before, but I had certainly spent more money on groceries than I had in who knows how long.
Buying meat, which is pretty essential on the Whole30 diet, is expensive. Before starting the diet, I tried very hard to find resources about budget. There were few, if any. So I am glad that LearnVest, a women's finance magazine I have read for years, decided to feature one family's Whole30 budget in today's newsletter. I have some follow up thoughts.
The author, Gemma Hartley, probably has a family of four (she says "kids" but doesn't specify how many). A family of four with a monthly food budget of $600 is pretty good.
In the first paragraph, I already felt jealous, and a little less able to relate to her story. She lives in the Pacific region, which I know because she says "we went to our local Sprouts Farmers Market." Sprouts is a DREAM for people who eat Paleo or Whole30. They have all the brands, and all the substitutes, and it is easier to do Whole30 when you live near one.
Then, she says she went to CostCo, so already we know that she's buying in bulk, which is usually cheaper. If you don't have a CostCo membership, it's not possible to buy the Whole30 staples that they have. And she says she only bought a few things at CostCo (nuts, frozen fish, brussels sprouts, spinach, apples, and pulled pork). That's only a few things, but it's CostCo. So how much of all that stuff did you buy? She said in days 26 to 30 that what she bought at CostCo would see them through the last days, and she bought that stuff in days 21 to 25, so I guess she bought enough.
She also has a Trader Joe's nearby. They have a whole range of Whole30 products. She never said she went to Whole Foods. I suspect that buying your groceries to do Whole30 solely at Whole Foods would greatly increase your expenses.
Twice they had to get "emergency takeout." What do you have near you that's Whole30 compliant and able to take-out? If we wanted to do "emergency takeout" here in NYC, we'd have to go to Hu Kitchen, or starve. I wonder if Seamless allows you to search for "Whole30" or "Paleo" categorized food?
They did have some health benefits including weight loss, increased energy, and reduced sugar cravings, but were very happy to reintroduce whole grains, beans, lentils, brown rice, and tofu. All of those are cheaper than meat. She does not specify whether they came away with any health effects that prevented them from eating what they'd given up. Over the thirty days, they spent almost $900 on groceries for the family, and an extra $100 on food they bought just for their kids. It's a whole different ball game to do Whole30 with kids. So they spent about $400 extra.
My point is: Whole30 is NOT cheap. It will change your food budget as well as your relationship with food.
Did you do Whole30 and track your expenses? What did you learn? What habits did you keep? Where did you relax for your budget's sake?
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