Well, I don’t buy meat, so it’s not such an issue, but when I see it on sale at the grocery store, I think “Wow, that’s expensive. A pound of veggies would be cheaper!”
I’ve never really done a side-by-side comparison to prove I’m right or wrong because it doesn’t matter - even if it turned out to be cheaper, I’m not going to be eating meat anyway.
If you eat out, the vegetarian dishes are inevitably cheaper than the meat dishes, too. At real restaurants, not McDonalds.
Gunslinger and I usually end up spending $20-30 each time we go to the grocery store, which is usually like once every two weeks or maybe week and a half. That’s supplemented by weekly stops on the way home just to pick up milk, bread, more Dr Pepper, etc. Say that’s an extra $5 a week, and that brings us to… about $80 per month, up to maybe $100 if we splurge in the meat department.
We eat some form of meat every day, usually beef, as well as a great deal of baked goods and pancakes and the like.
About $400 a month, family of 3.
About $10/day, mostly for prepared food. So, $300 a month - single guy.
And, well, I maintain the occasional (~once or twice a month) evening out, when dinner costs between $65-120, under the Arts and Entertainment category.
It costs me $1 for a head of lettuce, which makes way more than two salads. I would estimate 6 or 8 side salads, of the type I have with dinner most nights. I get 3 cucumbers for $1, and tomatoes are $2 a pound, or about $0.50 apiece.
I’d bet that my salads cost less than a dollar apiece, and I put a lot of stuff in them.
As for the OP, my roommate and I spend about $300-400 on groceries per month, and I go out to eat about twice a week (lunch, usually), for another $100-150.
Before he moved in with me, I probably spent almost as much on groceries by myself. I have expensive tastes and he doesn’t, and I feel bad having him split the costs for my luxuries and don’t want the bother of separate accounting. I also ate out way more when I lived by myself.
We mostly shop at Shop Rite in New Jersey. My family is my husband, myself and our toddler daughter.
In general I go shopping about once a week to once every ten days. Without diapers and cat food we average about $80. Add in both items and the bill jumps to about $100. This also includes stuff like soap and toilet paper. My husband and I are not vegetarians but we do appreciate good produce. I like to treat myself to cherries and red peppers out of season or a nice sourdough bread and some fine lox to spread on it. Once or twice a month we like to spend an additional $50 at an ethnic market for spices and perhaps a great cheese like a Bulgarian feta.
So the total bill comes to about $400 a month. My husband and I eat all breakfasts at home which mostly consists of cereal or eggs or dinner leftovers. We generally prepare great home cooked dinners 5 days a week. I like to keep a nice pot roast and fresh home made kosher chicken soup on the menu but we also eat our fair share of macaroni meals.
I am Jewish but do not keep kosher. If I kept kosher I estimate it would add another $75 a month to the food bill because kosher meat is not cheap.
I should also explain that mine does not include my bar bill 
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It does include cleansing agents (such as dishwasher detergent which can contribute a lot). We rarely eat out which means what we buy is it.
Single male; Very heavy - and with appetite to match; I like cooking, so while my staple meal is burritos or glop* I usually splurge once a week for something interesting and different. I spend about $40 a week on groceries. $10 of veggies/produce, $10 meats of various kinds, depending what’s on sale or what I want, $5-10 on various non-edible necessities. Of course $10-15 of that weekly budget goes to my version of ‘fun’ things: Elixer of Life**; guacamole and chips; the flavor food group***.
So, for a month call it about $200.
** Also known as Coca-Cola, but that doesn’t really describe the relationship I have with it as well as the proper name I use.
*** In the Navy I learned they use a different set of food groups: The Shoe Leather Group; The Cardboard Group; The Glue/Paste Group; and finally, The Flavor Group, of which McIlheny’s Tobasco Sauce is the most familiar example. I go through a large bottle of this in three months. By myself. :o
Ok, I’m going to sound like King Glut or something, but I spend about $800 a month on groceries for my wife and I and kids age 6 and almost 3. :eek: Of course, this includes some household products, so I’d say maybe $700, but that’s still too much, isn’t it? And believe it or not, I do try to buy stuff on sale mostly.
…and the quality of beef in groceries has plummeted to third-word levels, WTF is going on there? (just an aside).
It’s just my husband and I right now. We shop about once every week or two. If I’m doing the shopping it’s about $70-80. If he goes by himself, double that. We do our shopping at the commissary, which helps cut down the costs a lot.
When we lived in New York (not the city), we would spend about $100 getting the same stuff at Wal-Mart.
I go to a local produce-only store for our vegetables and fruit. Typical prices are a third of what the local supermarkets charge: Bananas are .25/lb, celery .79/bunch, tomatoes .99/pound, lettuce .79/head, eggplant .79/pound, brussels sprouts .89/pound, etc. My parrots eat nothing but fruit, veg, and some kinds of nuts, so I go through a lot of produce a week. But because of the prices, I can fill one of those boxes they ship bananas in for about $12.
I buy meat either on markdown at the grocery stores, or go to local Asian and Hispanic markets in the area. I shop for meat as I need it - never a whole week’s worth if I can help it. Sometimes, though, prices are too good to pass up. For example, a fresh pork shoulder at .69/pound!! I made curried pork, pork cutlets, chili, pork fried rice, Hungarian porkolt, fried pork rinds, and wonton soup (with a broth made from the bone.) Meats and snacks all week for about 8 bucks. Good thing the family and I loves pork.
We eat a lot of rice. Once again, we buy rice at the Asian market where the prices are half of the supermarket prices.
When I shop in the supermarket, we use coupons and special offers. We also take advantage of store brands and generics, which in many cases are just as good if not better than the national brands.
Our typical grocery bill for the week is about $40. That’s a family of three (me and the missus and our daughter), a dog, and two amazon parrots.
Same here…roughly $800 a month to feed two grownups, a 14-year-old, and a 9-year-old.
95% of our groceries are from the local Communist Hippie Food Co-op, so the prices are lower than they’d be at other places, but it’s ALL organically-grown fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts, plus grass-fed (or organic) meat, fish, and poultry. Very little processed stuff (peanut butter, canned tomatoes for pasta sauce, jarred salsa and mayo, etc.).
We cook dinner from scratch nearly every night.
Just me, Ava, but if you aren’t familiar with WinCo, they don’t accept credit or debit cards, and if they can’t get a product for the cheapest price they usually don’t stock it. I also benefit from living in central Oregon, where produce is supercheap.
Here’s my latest grocery bill:
1/2 gal milk
6 bottles water (1/2 liter)
Frozen enchilada dish
Frozen mac & cheese dish
1 tin Altoids
1 pk Arm & Hammer Dental Care gum
12 oz vanilla milk (quite tasty, BTW)
1 box (28 holes) Krispy Kreme cake doughnut holes
$20.96
So how long will that feed you, fetus? Two days, maybe?
I have a wife and 3 kids (7, 5, and 2 years respectively), so it seems to get worse every month for us as the kids grow. Fortunately, my wife is a stay-at-home mom and works the deals pretty well with coupons, etc. We do about $500.00 a month groceries, but we probably also do around $300.00+ a month in restaurants.
I’m not looking forward to the teenage years, because I still remember when I was 13 years old and skinny as a rail, but I could eat 8 pieces of KFC in one sitting and still be hungry. 
Jammer
I usually make one trip every other week to the nice grocery store (a Price Chopper ~10 minutes away.) That trip used to run ~$50-$60, but once I got a lot of staples and spics purchased (I’ve been in a new place for just 4 months) it’s now down to $40-$50. Then on the off weeks I usually make a tirp to the ghetto store one minute away to get some more milk (I drink a gallon a week…by myself, is this normal?), soda, maybe veggies and meat, too. This is usually a $20 trip.
It’s hard to figure in my “eating out” total, because of my job circumstance. I travel a lot for my job, and I get lunch paid for, but only if I remember to a) get a receipt, and b) send it to them on time. But, in a couple weeks, I’ll be transferred to a non-traveling position where I can bring a lunch everyday, so I’ll be able to see a real food budget.
So right now I’d say it’s $150-$200 a month. Maybe I can get it down to just $150 a month.
Depends which veggies, and whether they’re in season. I went grocery shopping tonight, and bell peppers were $2.50/lb., but carrots were 4 lbs/$1, cabbage was $0.08/lb., kale was I think $0.69…if you aren’t tied to getting specific veggies in the form of a tossed salad, you can eat quite a lot of veggies for very little money.
When I was living with my veggie roommate (who was nuts, having nothing to do with what she ate) it was significantly more expensive to buy food than when I lived with a meat eater. My roommate would freak out if I wanted to cook tacos with meat in my own wok. Hence I ate what she wanted. Cost me a lot more than eating meat. Granted, she also insisted on buying only brown rice, whole wheat flour, all natural peanut butter. . . I could never convince her that a calorie from sugar was a calorie just the same as a calorie from her sacrisanct brown rice. But like I said, she was nuts.
I no longer have a food bill, as I live on campus. I wish I did have one. I’m sick of campus food.