09/18/2026
I know… I hear it all the time.
“Meat is so expensive.” Maybe. I’m not naive. But I would certainly encourage you to start really comparing…deeper than what the food industry tells ya.
A bag of Doritos is about $5.49. A box of cereal is easily $5, and then you still need the milk.
Nobody looks at the Doritos or cereal and says, “I just can’t justify spending that much.” Moms everywhere throw them in the cart because “it’s what they eat.” They disappear in a day, and no one is actually full. Somehow, the nutritional content even managed to go backwards while the price kept climbing.
But somehow, we’ve been taught that the red meat is what’s too expensive. Maybe even “bad for you” 😂
Help me understand that.
I’m not saying grocery prices aren’t ridiculous. I’m feeding six people…I know exactly what food costs. I know what it feels like to stand in the aisle, do the math in your head and wonder how a cart of groceries became so outrageous.
But if that cheaper processed food leaves you hungry and hour later, gives you little to no legit nutrition and comes with a pile of ingredients your body has to sort through… was it actually a deal?
Or did we just get better at calling expensive junk “affordable” because it comes in a bright package?
We’ll spend $5 on chips, $7 on a sugary coffee, $10 on a fast-food meal and $8 on a box of snack bars without blinking. Then we act like a package of ground beef is an outrageous luxury.
There’s a difference between buying food that costs more per pound and buying food that costs more per meal because it never satisfies you. And what about the long game cost… does that not matter?
We’ve been trained to look at the price tag instead of the value. We look at cost per box, not cost per serving. We look at convenience, not nourishment. We look at how cheap something is today and ignore what bad programming and poor nutrition offer down the road.
What do we even consider real food anymore?
Because putting something in a colorful package, giving it a two-year shelf life and placing it in the grocery store doesn’t automatically make it food. A product can be technically edible and still be a terrible foundation for a family’s diet.
At some point, we have to stop pretending that the cheapest packaged option is automatically the most responsible choice…or that real food is somehow the problem.
Maybe the real cost isn’t just what we pay at the checkout. Maybe it’s what we pay when we keep feeding our families products designed by food scientists, marketed to children and sold as if they’re equivalent to a meal.
So yes, compare prices. But compare what actually feeds you. Compare ingredients. Compare how long it lasts. Compare how you feel afterward.
Because “cheap” and “worth it” are not the same thing.