Stealing a page from the Starbucks playbook

To look at today’s charts you might think we have started to get the hang of this. Indeed, we are under budget by $3.20 and we did some things well. Yet – there is obvious room for improvement in retrospect.

ED

Breakfast            

Go Lean Crunch in milk with raspberries

Lunch   

Turkey Sandwich on Wheat with cheese

Green lettuce

Pickle

Coke Zero

Dinner 

Tofu Vegetable (carrots, chard, onion and orange bell pepper) in Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce

Rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $7.72

JAMIE  

Breakfast            

Coffee

½ cup Milk

Apple

Lunch   

Starbucks Fruit Nut Cheese Plate

Dinner 

Tofu Vegetable (carrots, chard, onion and orange bell pepper) in Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce

Rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $10.79

CELIA

Breakfast            

Apple & Cinnamon oatmeal

Milk

Raspberries (1 oz)

Banana

Lunch   

Turkey Sandwich on Wheat with cheese

Green lettuce

Pickle

Raspberry Tea Snapple

Dinner 

Tofu Vegetable (carrots, chard, onion and orange bell pepper) in Trader Joe’s Red Curry Sauce

Rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $8.30

Lessons Learned and Observations

I am going to table the discussion of the Snapple beverage that Ed bough Celia today for another time. At 52 g of sugar you can see what it did to her chart. Mind you, a glass of milk would have perfected her RDA chart. Eat to the chart!

Anyhoo…

What is that definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different outcome?  What did I think would happen to my budget when I bought a coffee and lunch at Starbucks?

Here it is in a nutshell – I’ll type it out so the words might sink in this time – you CANNOT get take out while Eating in 3D. Unless you can find food for about $3.00 you will ruin your daily budget. And if you do find food at that price, it will likely ruin your nutrition numbers (hot dogs, tacos, etc…)

Still, I’m glad that I screwed this up again because my lunch purchase got me thinking. Starbucks makes themed meal plates: Fruit and Cheese, Protein, etc…  These handy little ensembles of 600 odd calories set you back a 5 spot but do a decent job of filling you up with nutritious food. So, while right in concept, the Starbuck’s profit margin is crimping my style.

Centralized planning is the key to societal improvement right? Look what it has done for track homes, hospital food and low-income housing projects. Okay – maybe those aren’t the right examples but when it comes to daily nutrition, this is definitely the way to go. It is evident from my efforts over the past few days that left to willy-nilly meal planning we will continue to fail to meet the daily requirements, blow our budget, or both. I have great control over what the family eats for dinner but I’m finding that we eat fast, fine but not especially nutritious lunches. This is largely to blame for our inability to meet our fruit, vegetable and milk requirements each day. I end up force feeding everyone inexplicable meals of milk-braised kale and apple slices by the end of the day trying to make up for lost lunches.

So I am going to take a page from the Starbuck’s playbook and make my own lunch plates – minus the hefty markup. My goal is to get the following into the family during the noon hour:

·         <20 grams of whole grain

·         1 serving of milk/cheese

·         1 serving fruit

·         1 serving of vegetable

·         1 serving of protein (4 oz)

In doing so, I may even reclaim the hour each evening I currently spend trying to chronicle the flippin’ things that Ed consumes for lunch like M&M inspired trail mix, Hawaiian Pork sandwiches and pickles. Adding up the nutrition in these items is an agonizing necessity of this exercise.

So my “Balance” themed plate might include:

·         1 whole grain slice of bread/bagel/crackers $0.18

·         8 oz of 2% milk $0.17

·         4 oz of cheese $1.32

·         1 cup apple sliced/dried fruit $0.42

·         1 cup carrots/bell peppers/celery $0.25

·         4 oz serving of turkey $1.32

This comes to $3.66 and makes a significant dent in our nutritional deficit come dinner time. I made four at a time in less than 15 minutes so there is no big hit on the time allotment for meal preparation.

I’m feeling pretty crafty tonight.