Last night a friend raised a very simple point that I have failed to address in my blog entries. He said "when I go to the supermarket and I compare a local, organic item to a none-local one... the local, organic one is always more expensive. How can you not be spending more money?"

Thanks, Tariq. I'm going to think about that while I jot down our numbers for March. If you haven't been following the Number muncher$ entries click here for some background.

In March 2008, we spent 8% more on grocery store items than we did in March 2007. And we spent a whopping 80% less eating out in M08 than in M07. This all adds up to a 33% decrease in food costs in M08 compared to M07. Looking back through the '07 numbers it looks like we did a staggering amount of eating out - can't remember why (maybe we were trying to impress visiting parents with fancy dinners on the credit card). And so - our running total for the year shows that we are spending about 11% less in '08 than we did in '07.

So Tariq - it seems clear that eating out less is saving us money, but I think this is only part of the issue. Indeed local cabbage is more expensive than cheapo cabbage but I've noticed that our fridge isn't nearly as full as it used to be.

We are spending more time preparing food (home-made brownie ice-cream sandwich hearts take time, my man!), we are wasting less food, the food we are eating is filling us up for longer, and we simply can't put that many items in our basket when we go to the store. These things are making up for the more expensive local items.

So - to boil all the complexity down to a single sentence: Eating a couple of local things may be more costly but committing to a local diet can save you some greenbacks.

Filling up on local food... next blog entry? Tastes Great... More Filling!?