Switch to a Two-Week Grocery Cycle to Waste Less Food [Saving Money]

via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 3/25/09

The Green Cheapskate Blog cites studies showing that the American grocery shopper wastes 25 percent of their purchased food—if not more. Switch to an every-other-week shopping regiment, and you might start throwing less money away.

Photo by lu_lu.

While weekly grocery shopping is a habit most of us probably learned from our parents, the Green Cheapskate suggests being a bit more realistic about what you're going to eat, and being ruthless on how you eat it:

Cook two or three meals' worth of each recipe at the beginning of the two-week period, and immediately freeze the extra portions for the second week. Freeze any meat that you won't be eating within the next 48 hours.

Use up fresh fruits and vegetables first, and then supplement them with just-as-healthy frozen (foods) as you get into the second week. Check expiration dates on dairy products before you buy them; in most cases you can find products that will remain fresh for two weeks or longer. The idea is to always USE UP what you buy before you shop again.

Then again, the weekly trip to the grocery/co-op/farmer's market can be a relaxing ritual for some, so trying out these tips as a kind of food-buying reboot, or just keeping to a stricter food-use cycle, might suffice. Hit the link below for more food-saving tips, and tell us how you avoid the gone-bad garbage guilt in the comments.

Learn to cut your food bill 25% [Yahoo! Green via Get Rich Slowly]