Saving money through baby food
Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I鈥檓 going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.
Calista writes in: Does making your own baby food purees save pennies or dollars?
As always, it depends on the source of the food you use to make the puree. If you鈥檙e using excess produce from your garden, it鈥檚 going to be cheaper, of course.
However, where Calista raises an interesting point is with fresh fruits and vegetables that you can buy at a very low price at the grocery store. How do you decide when it鈥檚 worth it to make it yourself versus simply buying those convenient Gerber baby food containers?
I鈥檒l use bananas as an example. I can frequently buy bananas at my local grocery store for $0.49 a pound 鈥� and, often, they鈥檙e on sale for less than that. If I peel out a pound of bananas, I鈥檓 left with about eleven ounces of fruit, based on my weighings on my kitchen scale. To this, I would add roughly five ounces of water, milk, or formula to create a smooth texture, then puree it in a blender. After that, I鈥檒l have to individually package it in some method, usually by filling up an ice cube tray with the puree and freezing it. Boom 鈥� a pound of 鈥渂anana baby food鈥� for about $0.50.
On the other hand, I can buy a 3.5 ounce tub of pureed bananas from Gerber for (16 containers for $9.13). A pound of these containers would be about the same as four and a half of these containers, or $2.28.
In other words, I鈥檓 saving about $1.78 per pound of bananas that I turn into baby food. This requires the time to peel a few bananas, put them in the blender, add some liquid, hit the puree button, then pour the liquid into the ice cube tray and pop it in the freezer. That鈥檚 about five minutes of work for a pound of baby banana puree.
So, in the case of straight-up bananas, you鈥檙e saving dollars and not cents making the baby food yourself.
So, what鈥檚 the cutoff for value? I鈥檇 be willing to make my own baby food if I were saving about $8 per hour. I would estimate that I could convert a pound of raw foods (like bananas) into baby food in about five minutes, and a pound of food I鈥檇 have to cook (like broccoli) into baby food in about ten minutes. Thus, I鈥檇 have to spend an hour to convert twelve pounds of raw food into baby food or six pounds of cooked food into baby food.
It costs roughly $2.28 to buy a pound of processed baby food, or $13.68 for six pounds of processed baby food or $27.36 for twelve pounds of processed baby food.
To make cooked baby food worthwhile, I鈥檇 have to find a source of the food at $5.68 ($13.68 minus $8) for six pounds of the food, or about $0.95 per pound for the raw food. So, if you can find, say, broccoli at $0.95 a pound or less, it鈥檚 probably worth your time to turn it into cooked baby food.
To make raw baby food worthwhile, I鈥檇 have to find a source of the food at $19.36 ($27.36 minus $8) for twelve pounds of the food, or about $1.61 per pound for the food. So, if you can find, say, bananas at $1.61 per pound or less, it鈥檚 probably worth your time to turn it into cooked baby food.
In the end, you can certainly save dollars by turning some foods, like bananas, into baby food. It gets trickier when you look at out-of-season fruits and vegetables, though, as the cost for a pound of those foods tends to make the savings quite small (and can even result in a loss).
