Food Prices for Cook for Good Top 20

Use this chart to find food bargains and to spend your money for organic food wisely. It shows the current prices for a serving of twenty ingredients used year round. Cook for Good will track prices for these items each month and show the rise or fall of the cost of the basics in our menus. (See the serving sizes at the bottom of the page and the definitions of regular and green.)

March 2009 — If you could buy just one serving of each of these items, the total cost for the regular servings would be $3.32, down from $3.51 last month. The green servings would be $5.27, up from $4.90 in part because I was able to find organic cheddar cheese instead of just rBGH-free cheese. (At least, those would be the prices if you could find a store that would sell you 1/4 onion or one tablespoon of butter.) Going from regular to green would cost $1.95 or increase your grocery bill by 59%. Compare to prices from February 2009.

Getting the most for your money

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. In March, organic diced tomatoes, carrots, and onions only cost a penny more a serving than conventionally grown ones. And you could go green on a serving of cheddar cheese for 37 cents or for the same price go green on tomatoes, carrots, onions, potatoes, olive oil, tea, kidney beans, butter, rice, and peanut butter ... and still have two cents left over.

See a larger version of this chart. || See the chart for 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)