Thursday, December 6, 2007

Frugal Tip: beat the 100 Calorie packaging scam!

The 100 calorie packaging scheme is everywhere these days. I understand that this is convenient and it helps with portion control, but its a rip off! The cost per ounce of food product is easily doubled by buying the portion controlled packages. I never buy these, it is so much cheaper to buy a bag, box, or jar of an item and use my food scale to measure out the proper portion controlled serving and store in baggies or some kind of appropriate container. For example, I recently had a coupon for chex mix. I usually make this but when it went on sale for .99 cents a bag I used my coupon and got a bag for .49 cents. I measured out seven 30 gram servings out of that one .49 cent bag of chex mix. When I was at the store last week I noticed that the 100 calorie packages of the chex mix sell for 2 for $4 on "sale" for 5 individual serving bags. That is a 400% price markup just in price alone. I should also mention that you actually get more ounces in the big bag than the individual 100 calorie bags. Even with coupons and sales you can not overcome that big of a price difference.

So, take a little time and measure out individual servings and make your own 100 calorie packages.

2 comments:

Kim said...

Oh wow - ok so you just started this blog - here I was looking for the archives :D

No I am not stalking you but I must be the most frequent commenter to date LOL.

Are you planning to post before & after pics of yourself? I love seeing those - they really motivate me and make be believe that real people can lose weight.

I would love to hear how you lost your weight and what exercises you did and when you started doing them.

Thanks - I'll go away now.

Chatty Kim

Melonie said...

This is such a GREAT point! It drives me nuts how these 100 calorie packs are supposedly such a great deal for dieting.

Unfortunately my mom buys lots of them for her and my step-dad to help control his diabetes with small snacks here and there - I keep trying to tell her the money would be better spent on a bunch of Ziploc bags. ;-)