Protein costs, with an update

Protein costs. When I priced various forms of protein (based on the USDA's definition of the usable protein per amount priced), here's what I found:

• Costs less than 2 cents per gram of protein: white and whole-wheat flour, dried beans, tuna, and peanut butter


• Costs less than 3 cents: brand-name tuna, oatmeal, high-protein pasta, frozen whiting (fish), large eggs, fryer chicken, brown rice, organic beans, 2% milk (gallon)


• Costs less than 4 cents: higher-end tuna, pork roast, powdered skim milk, chicken-leg quarters, cheddar cheese, ground beef (80% lean), beef chuck roast.

So your family wants to include some meat in the Cook for Good plan and still keep the costs down, you could substitute frozen whiting for large eggs, a fryer chicken for milk, or pork roast for cheddar cheese and still have about the same costs. What about tuna? Eat it rarely, if at all (see below). The costs above show a snapshot for one particular week; you'd want to buy what is on sale and use meat sparingly. Most adults eat far more than the recommended 55-60 grams of protein a day.

[Update: the prices show cheapest meat available. That's meat that would fit into my thrifty plan, if it had meat. This is the sort of factory-farmed meat that you would have sworn not to eat again if you saw Food, Inc. or Fresh. Kindly raised animals eating wholesome food cost more and are worth more. When you start saving money by using Cook for Good methods and if you eat meat already, put some of your savings to work by eating less but better meat.]


Unfortunately, tuna is easy, delicious, cheap ... and dangerous. The risk of harmful mercury levels is so high that the Mercury Policy Project asked the government to exclude light tuna from the WIC program. Albacore tuna, being larger and older, has even higher levels of this heavy metal. The MPP says that "the USDA cannot guarantee the safety of the mercury levels in canned light tuna because the FDA fails to adequately screen canned tuna and remove high-mercury canned tuna." MedicineNet describes the symptoms of mercury poisoning, warning that the effects are most severe for fetuses and infants:

Impacts on cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills have been seen in children exposed to methylmercury in the womb.

When I was in high school, my best friend had canned tuna with mustard every day for lunch as part of her Weight Watchers program. Thank heavens she wasn't pregnant! But mercury toxicity is cumulative, so even now I've got mercury in my body from the cheap tuna-curry dinners I made in college.

Dried beans still the winner. Even organic dried beans cost less than 3 cents per gram of protein. And they are superfoods, loaded with fiber, calcium, and folate, essential for early fetal development and good for us at any age.