The True Cost of a Meal: Nutrition, Dollars… and Time?   /   Oct 4 @ 1:33 am

First, the scenario:

L: I’ve been craving baked potato for days, like really plain food, and yesterday I get an email from wendy’s with a new promo: their chili and baked potatoes are 99 cents for a limited time :-D

L: so M [husband] stopped by on his way home and picked up two potatoes and a chili that we shared. Dinner for 2 for $3!

Now, the question: ** Is $1.50 for this meal a good value? **

MyMoneyBlog presents a graphic comparing the cost of calories as function of their source. For example: $1 buys 875 calories of soda but only 250 calories of vegetables. If the objective only were to maximize calories, then $1.50 for baked potato and chili is a poor value; a large soda would be more effective. Obviously, we don’t want all our calories from soda. Eating healthy requires using fresher ingredients, which in turn requires (gasp!) cooking those ingredients into meals.

Go to any worthwhile personal finance site, and they will advise you to save money by preparing your lunch instead of eating at restaurants. Certainly, this approach will save you dollars, but does it consider the time cost of preparing your meal from scratch? I was about to calculate this myself, but then I googled “time cost of cooking” and found Macheesmo, who performs a nifty exercise on the cost of making burritos at home vs. buying them at Chipotle. The meticulous calculation includes the cost of consumables like aluminum foil. The findings?

-Burrito at home: $13.75
-Burrito at Chipotle: $15.04

(The calculation assumes you shop for your ingredients at Whole Foods, so with a regular grocery store that $13.75 would be lower.)

You may be wondering about utility costs: gas and/or electricity to power the equipment? I investigated: an hour of oven usage costs roughly 20 cents.

** Conclusion (so far): cooking your own meals is better for your health and in one case we examined, it costs less than eating out even when time is counted. Also, using the Macheesmo formula, the price of the Wendy’s meal is $1.50 plus the value we assign to the time spent visiting the restaurant. **

Why do we go to restaurants *despite* these findings?

1. Ordering at a restaurant guarantees that our food will be edible when we want to eat it. Unexpected late night at work?  The quick takeout order helps prevent the distraction of hunger so we can wrap up work sooner and get home to maximize our sleep (or seeing families, or whatever is important outside of work).

2. We need the social interaction. Restaurants facilitate social interaction, whether it is gathering with friends, flirting with the cutie behind the counter, or simply some people watching with the change of scenery.  If we wanted to bring friends over to our house, we have to add in the time cost of tidying up the place for company, preparing dishes and silverware for the additional diners, and cleaning up afterward.

Now, back to our pregnant friend: She could prepare baked potatoes at home for less than $1.50+ of her time and money.  But really, being on her feet tending the hearth is probably not how she will want to use her time after work, especially as the baby gets heavier.  And if her food preferences change on short notice, the ingredients for the desired dish might not even be at home, requiring additional thought and an additional trip to the grocery store.

Last thoughts: The interaction of how we use our time and our money when we eat is complex.  Accounting for different tastes, snacking habits, and eating frequency is beyond the scope of this post.  We may have to return to this topic in the future.  But I leave you with these suggestions on eating and spending, which can be applied in many different fashions:

-Limit your intake of sodium (for the sake of your heart) and of empty sugar calories (for the sake of your waistline).

-No matter what you eat, get at least four hours of vigorous exercise each week.

-And always look out for excellent deals like L’s $0.99 Wendy’s items or the get-a-burrito-with-purchase-of-soda that Baja Fresh has offered in the past.

Did you find this post interesting? annoying? detached and cynical? Leave a comment and let us know.