Skip to main content

Saving Almost $800 a Year on Snacks

It may not be fashionable in the low-carb world, but I like to snack. I feel better when I snack. I don't feel good when I eat big meals and don't know how people put away three-egg bacon-cheese omelets with a bullet-proof coffee. The good thing about low-carb snacking is that by definition, you avoid eating junk like potato chips and fruit pies. The bad news is that low-carb snacks from the convenience store are expensive.

Time was when the only two kinds of coffee I drank were free and home-brewed. When I realized cream gave me problems, I started taking it black and then realized that the office coffee was terrible. But the little shop on the first floor made a wonderful cup for $2.11. An equally wonderful home-brewed cup is about 12 cents. Sleeping in an extra ten minutes, the time it takes to brew a 12-cent cup of coffee, is costing me almost $500 a year. I've set my alarm earlier.

The convenience store sells Kind bars for around $2.50 and large diet Dr. Pepper for $1.84; for me, that's 92 cents for one serving of soda. The grocery store sells diet cola and root beer $2.99 a six-pack, or 50 cents a serving. From now on, I'm bringing my own soda to work (and supporting a company I own stock in). That's $100 a year in savings. Yes, I could just drink water, but realistically, I want a soda when I'm stressed out at work, which is often.

I had a feeling I could make snacks similar to a Kind bar for less money. I made maple paleonola from 500 Paleo Recipes today, weighing the ingredients, and figured out it costs 90 cents a serving. Bonus: each serving has almost 400 calories (including 35 grams of fat) compared to 200 calories in a Kind nut delight bar. Ninety cents is cheaper than what 400 calories worth of free-range eggs costs me; all those nuts only seem expensive. Savings: about $192 per year.

Total savings from making, brewing and bringing my own: $792 a year.

Comments

tess said…
no kidding! we use premium ingredients, but in the end we get a better quality product with REAL nutritional value.... when you think of what that "doritos and a coke" or "starbucks and muffin" snack costs in money AND health, you wonder how you could have been so stupid for so long.

if you function best on smaller, more frequent meals ... that's what you should do!
Lori Miller said…
Suze Orman has always gone on about spending money on coffee, and I agree with her. If you're getting a fancy coffee every day (read: liquid sugar), you're really doing yourself a disservice.
Galina L. said…
At least you have the thing to drop from your diet (like snacking) if you need to .
No, I can't eat 3 eggs+bacon+bulletproof coffee in one setting myself, such coffee is a meal.
No-snacking took me from a weight-loss plateau for a while.
Lori Miller said…
The odd thing is, I'm not even hungry for lunch today, let alone a snack.
Guess we all have to plan our life/meals/exercise, sleep patterns etc that suit our life. For me the start of the day is so important. I find if I have a cooked breakfast for example eggs, bacon, mushrooms it keeps me going through to lunch etc. I am not a 'snacky' person, but whole-heartily agree if you can take time to make your own it is better than shop bought.

All the best Jan
Lori Miller said…
The maple paleonola is pretty tasty. And it's nice to not be rushed getting ready for work in the morning, since I get up a little earlier.

Popular posts from this blog

An Objective Book about Other Childhood Vaccines

Today's decision by the CDC to add COVID shots to the schedule of childhood vaccines has some people concerned about the rest of the vaccines on the schedule. Contrary to fact-checker claims, adding COVID shots to the schedule means children will be required in about a dozen states to get a COVID shot to attend public school. Indiana isn't one of them--our childhood vaccination law doesn't mention the CDC and such a requirement could run afoul of our ban on COVID vaccine passports. But even freewheeling Indiana has some vaccine requirements and this kerfuffle has people wondering how safe those vaccines are.  There's a book called Vaccines: Truth, Lies and Controversy  by Peter C. Gotzsche, DrMedSci and co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, about the safety and efficacy of all those vaccines, including COVID and others. Cochrane was founded to "to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving healt

Diabetes Down, COVID Curiosities, New Glasses after Accident

Diabetes Down Despite Dietitians' Directions Last Sunday when I wrote about the grifters over at EatThis.com, which calls itself "Eat This, Not That," I was worked up enough to tweet to their medical expert board members if they stood by the site's article flogging sugary drinks and fast food for St. Patrick's Day. The site has over 1,300 articles, mostly puff pieces, on McDonald's and a news feed full of "the most important breaking news" on Doritos, burger joints and Chips Ahoy! I asked a dietitian who responded to me what exactly the "not that" part was in "Eat This, Not That." Important news about what you should eat! I was worked up until I remembered the saying, "You can't cheat an honest man." Meaning that this con, like a lot of others, requires some dishonesty on the part of the mark. Every Joe Six-Pack knows that cookies, chips and coffee-flavored milkshakes from Starbucks aren't health food. It takes s

Battered Cod and my Eclipse Pictures of my Colander

If you miss battered cod on a low-carb, grain-free diet, here's a recipe that'll satisfy your craving. It's based on a Dr. Davis recipe. Battered cod and cole slaw Ingredients 1 pound cod fillets 2 eggs 2 tablespoons butter, melted 1/2 cup ground golden flaxseeds 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese 1/2 teaspoon onion powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 teaspoon garlic powder Instructions Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Slice the cod into 1-1/2 to 2 inch pieces. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and butter. Beat continuously--don't let the butter cook the eggs. In a shallow bowl, combine the flaxseeds, cheese, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Coat each piece of cod in the egg mixture and then roll in the in the flaxseed mixture. Place on the baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes, turning once. Eclipse Crescent Shadows Today was the total solar eclipse, and my house was in the "path of totality."

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm

Eclipse Glasses, Probiotics for Heart, Muscle Recovery

Are your eclipse glasses fake? The total solar eclipse over North America is almost here, and Indianapolis is in the "path of totality," meaning the moon will completely block the sun here. A lot of people have gotten special glasses to safely look at the eclipse. But the American Astronomical Society says , "counterfeit and fake eclipse glasses are polluting the marketplace." Some of the counterfeit glasses appear to be safe, the society says, but others are fakes that are no more effective than sunglasses. One of the counterfeits they describe matches the glasses someone gave me. I don't know where she got them, and she's not someone I'd trust to perform adequate due diligence. I just got over an eye injury and I don't need another one--I'll try the pinhole method instead to see crescents during the eclipse if it's not too cloudy. Picture from  Pexels .  Heart Centered Probiotic I started getting scary heart palpitations several years ago