Prepared for home demonstration agents and home economics specialists of the Agricultural Extension Service, this publication reports current developments in family and food economics, and economic aspects of home management. USING THE ESTIMATED COST OF ONE WEEK'S FOOD IN BUDGET COUNSELING 1/ The "Estimated Cost of One Week's Food," published in each issue of Family Economics Review, is a useful tool in helping families with their food management problems. It can be used in food budget counseling of families, both rural and urban. It may also be useful in answering questions regarding the cost of food for individuals. Families.--Families sometimes want to evaluate their expenditures against a standard plan. The USDA food plans, giving suggested quantities of food for good nutrition at low-cost, moderate-cost, and liberal levels, may be used as such a standard. It Often the chance to help with food budgeting comes via the telephone. may be a call from a homemaker whose husband thinks their food bills are too high. She wants to know how much she should spend for food. To help her you will need to know the ages of all family members. By adding together the estimated cost of food for each member for one or more of the food plans, you can give the homemaker an idea of the weekly cost she may expect. You will need to explain that these estimated costs assume that all 21 meals are eaten at home or are prepared from home food supplies, that they include the money value of home-produced food as well as expenditures for purchased food, and that the family must allow more for food if members eat some meals out. Remind the homemaker also that paper goods, soap, and other nonfood items purchased at the grocery store should not be charged against food expenditures. If the family ate some meals out during the week, it will need to take this into account in comparing the cost of its meals served at home with the estimated cost of the USDA food plans. For example, if the father and one child each ate five lunches away from home, a 4-person family served at home during a week 74 out of a possible 84 meals (21 x 4 84 - 10 = 74) or 88 percent (74+ 84 x 100). If family members had eaten all meals at home the total cost would have been roughly 1.14 times the value of the food consumed at home (100 + 0.88). = A southern family of four with school-age children recently estimated they had food at home for the week valued at $25. This included the expense for the purchased food and the estimated retail value of the home-produced food used. The father and one child both had bought lunches away from home-again 10 out of a possible 84--so had eaten 88 percent of all meals at home. Had they had all their meals at home, their food costs might have been about 1/ Adapted from a talk at the Southern Regional Training Conference for Agricultural Extension Specialists in Nutrition, Food Conservation, Health and Family Life, October 1959, Washington, D. C. 10 318SU 7/02 31150-116 NLB $28.50 (25 x 1.14 or 25 + 0.88). Compare this with the estimated weekly cost of food for the USDA food plans as priced for the South--$21 for the low-cost plan and $28 for the moderate-cost plan in July 1959. The family thus had food of about the same money value as the moderate-cost plan. Individuals.--The estimated costs of food are also useful for figuring the cost of feeding individuals. When a boy goes to college the additional expense of his food to the family is the difference between the cost of board and the cost of feeding him at home. We may estimate the value of the food for a southern boy of 16-19 years at about $10 a week when his family has food similar to the moderate-cost plan. For a 40-week school year this amounts to $400. This amount can be subtracted from his college bill to get the "additional" costs for boarding at college. The family can expect a reduction of about this amount in its home food costs. In a similar manner, you can help a family estimate the value to charge against wages when feeding hired help. For example, at harvest time a farmer feeds four extra men for three days at lunch and dinner. The estimated weekly cost of food in the moderate-cost plan for a man 20-34 years old for July 1959 was $8.30 in the South. Since farm workers are probably doing more active physical work than the average on which the food costs are based, round this figure generously upward--to say $10. Also, this would allow for the fact that noon and evening meals may cost more than breakfast. To this raw food cost you can add a percentage for overhead, labor and food preparation costs. The National Restaurant Association reports raw food costs as 30 to 40 percent of sales. Both of these figures, of course, provide a profit to the restaurant. For our purpose we might use the one giving the smaller profit--that in which food represents 40 percent of sales. If we assume the $10 for raw food represents 40 percent of the total weekly value of one man's meals, the total value, including the allowance for overhead, labor and food preparation costs, would be $25 ($10 + 40 x 100). The cost per meal would be $1.20 ($25 21). The cost for the 4 men in the example would be about $29 (4 (men) x 3 (days) x 2 (meals a day) x $1.20 (per meal)). The expense for feeding a full-time employee can be calculated in a similar manner. Table 1.--Estimating cost of feeding a child over a specified time period We sometimes are asked in connection with foster care cases for an estimate of the retail cost of food for a child during a period of past years. We can make an approximation by using the Bureau of Labor Statistics price index for food at home to project backward the current estimated costs of the food plans. 2 The BLS index gives average prices of food at home as a percent of the average price in 1947-49. Table 1 (opposite page) illustrates how we used the current estimated cost of food with the food index to figure roughly the cost of feeding a boy who was 12, 13, and 14 years of age in 1952, 1953, and 1954, respectively. Farm families.--Farm family food consumption patterns were not used as guide lines for the USDA food plans, because by producing their own food farm families can frequently afford a more costly type of diet than their income indicates. Each time we revise the estimated cost of a week's food we compute the per unit (qt., lb., doz.) prices of the 11 food groups. With these unit prices a family can estimate roughly the value of its own home food supply. Table 2 Table 2.--Average prices paid per unit of food group in spring 1955 by U.S.A. nonfarm households adjusted to January 1960 by BLS retail food prices 1/ 1/ These prices per unit are those by which food plan quantities are multiplied to give the total cost of the USDA plans for each of the 19 sex-age groupings. An estimated amount is also added to the total for accessories such as coffee, tea, vinegar, and spices. Prices for the low-cost plan were based upon practices of households reporting in the 1955 Food Consumption Surveys with incomes of $2,000-$2,999; moderate-cost, $4,000-$4,999; liberal, $6,000-$7,999. 2 Consumer Price Index, published monthly by the U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington 25, D. C. |