I win.
I am not feeling the pain at checkout, thankfully.

that's it?!
I thought it'd be WAYY MORE.
Then again, I'm a college student. I get to buy my meals.

that's IT?!

i don't know why i thought that it was higher. there are so many shows and tips on how to spend less that i assumed it meant that people were spending too much on food each day.

I also thought it would be higher, but I was think of a family, not an individual person.

I was torn between $7 and $10. Would it be higher for a household of 1 than a household of 4, I wonder...

I guessed $10, but $7 IS a lot if you're counting per person. That's $210 a month. That's $280 more than we spend on our family of four. I wonder if this counts eating out or solely eating in.

Haha, I meant we spend $280 less than $840, which is what you get if you times $210 by four .

$7?! what?!! Could have swore it was more.

I don't believe it. People eat out a bunch, especially during lunch...that's $4-15 right there.
I cook most of my meals at home [the only fast food I can eat is subway's $5 footlong once a week, ha], but even if I do the per unit costs of food per day, it seems more like $10/day to me. Maybe I'm getting ripped off at the store...?

I eat almost every meal out, so I spend way more than $7 a day on food!

huh, really thought it was more... I know it's more for us for sure. 7$ a day??? how could you possibly eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner on that?

I think most people shocked by the $7/day forget: A) How incredibly cheap fast food can be, and how many people eat it often, and B) Making your own meals at home = cheaper than eating out.

For instance, for breakfast I'll have a bowl of cereal with soy milk and a banana: 1 box of cereal costs ~$4 for ~8 servings ($.50/serving) + .5 gallon soy milk costs ~$3.50 for ~8 servings ($.44/serving) + 1 banana ($.20) = $1.14 for breakfast. Granted, this is generally the cheapest/smallest meal of the day, but you could get by on an average of $7/day pretty easily, I think.

I definitely agree, jasmint. I just know I personally spend a lot more than $7/day!

I'm stealing jasmint's idea:

1 box of cereal costs ~$2.50 for ~8 servings ($.31/serving) + 1 gallon milk costs ~$4.40 for ~10 servings ($.44/serving)= $.75 for cereal (breakfast) - OR -

1 loaf of wheat bread ~$2.15 for ~20 slices ($.11/slice) + 1 small container of margarine ~$2.00 for ~50 servings?? ($.04/serving) = $.26 for toast (breakfast)

1 loaf of wheat bread ~$2.15 for ~20 slices ($.11/slice) + 1 container organic pb ~$4.00 for ~6 servings?? ($.67/serving) + 1 apple ~$.85 = $1.74 for peanut butter sandwich and an apple (lunch)

thin slices of chicken ~$6.00 for 4 ($1.50/chicken slice) + broccoli ~$3.30 for 3 crowns ($1.13/crown) = $2.63 (dinner)

That's a total of $5.12. And if you throw in some oil/seasonings with the dinner, you could easily increase that total to a dollar or more.

But breaking all that down, makes the $7 seem a bit more reasonable as an average.

//I'm not a math major! don't quote me on these calculations.

Uh, I don't eat out a lot but I definitely spend more than $7 on groceries a day. And I'm not shopping at Whole Foods either.

I think that the word "worth" in there is probably the key part in terms of the price of eating out -- we might spend $15 but the worth of the food is less than that. The $7 number surprised me but I guess I can see it...

My husband and I spend about $350 a month on groceries, and we don't eat out often. Maybe spend $100/month eating out. So that's, $7.50/day each. And we're adults. Our trick is not to throw away anything. Use what we have. Of course, our liquor bill adds a bit of (frothy cold) cream on top.