Cook for Good Top 20 Foods: A Monthly Look at Prices for Grocery Basics

Use the charts below to find food bargains and to spend your money for organic and sustainably-raised food wisely. The first chart shows the changes over time of the Top 20 for the thrifty and green plans: the cost of one serving each for twenty ingredients used year round. The next pair of charts show the Top 20 prices in detail in July and August, 2009. Cook for Good tracks prices for these items each month. See the serving sizes at the bottom of the page and the definitions of regular (thrifty) and green.

Summer 2009 Cost Summary — Total cost if you could buy just one serving of each item in the Top 20.

month	Top 20 Thrifty	Top 20 Green
June	$3.57	$4.67
July	$3.62	$4.04
August	$3.85	$5.26

Getting the most for your money in the summer

The Cook for Good Top 20 list is in order by the difference in the cost between the regular and green versions of each item, so you can easily see where going green will cost you the least. At the height of summer, the costs of fruits and vegetables harvested in the fall soared. Why not? You are paying the cost of storing these perishable foods in controlled climates for months. The big bags of apples and potatoes that I'd been buying at the green store were not available in August. Organic apples went from 44 to 83 cents a serving. Organic potatoes soared from 37 cents up to 85 cents a serving! Time to eat rice? Maybe ... the price of regular rice went down while the price of organic rice went up.

And yet, this is the least expensive time of the year for menus focused on seasonal produce. The price of canned tomatoes started to drop in August and will drop more in the fall. The real bargains are found in summer squash, green beans, peaches, and melons. Conventionally grown cantaloupe and watermelon cost just 13 cents a serving, while bananas are 34 cents a serving.

July 2009 — larger version >>

August 2009 — larger version >>

See the analysis and charts for June, May, April, March, February, or January 2009.

Serving sizes

top 20 core items	serving size
all-purpose flour	1/4 cup
apples	1 small apple (5 1/4 ounces, 2 3/4" across)
butter	1 tablespoon
cabbage	1 cup chopped
carrots	1/2 large carrot (2 1/2 ounces, 8 inches long)
cheddar cheese	1 ounce
eggs	1 egg
kidney beans, dry	1/2 cup, cooked
milk, 2%	1 cup
olive oil	1 tablespoon
onions	1/4 large onion
peanut butter	2 tablespoons
potatoes	1 medium potato (8 ounces)
raisins	1/4 cup
rice	1/4 cup dry (1/2 cup cooked)
rotini, high-protein	3/4 cups (dry and cooked)
sugar*	1 tablespoon
tea	1 cup
tomatoes, diced	1/2 cup (7 ounces)
yeast, rapid-rise*	2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet)

* Only the thrifty prices are shown for sugar and yeast, since the green versions are so expensive as to not be practical.