---
title: 'Why Grocery Shopping is bleeding you dry.'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=bb1GohjaYPk'
video_id: 'bb1GohjaYPk'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 1125
---

# Why Grocery Shopping is bleeding you dry.

> Source: [Why Grocery Shopping is bleeding you dry.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bb1GohjaYPk)

## Summary



## Transcript

Grocery shopping can be one of the most
frustrating parts of day-to-day life.
Obviously, we've all seen the price
increases in the past several years, but
even if those drop tomorrow, there are
still a lot of other issues that most
people don't talk about. There's the
information overload it takes to figure
out what you want and plan a list.
There's the stress of being in a packed
grocery store, especially if you go on a
Sunday when everyone else is there. And
then even when you get home and start
filling up the fridge, typically the
first day or two goes pretty well, but
then things naturally start to fall
apart. Maybe the recipe you planned on
Sunday doesn't sound too appealing on
Wednesday. You also realize you're now
missing an ingredient. The greens you
bought for the salad are starting to go
bad. Or maybe you're just tired from
work, kids, or life in general. So you
say, "Screw it. Let's just pay for some
delivery." And by the end of the week,
you didn't really save time. You didn't
really save money. probably wasted food
in the process. And the worst part of
all, you have this realization on a
Sunday and need to do this all over
again.
And that's why in this video, I want to
share five ideas that have helped me
grocery shop without wasting my time and
money. So, I'm going to show you how I
actually use these ideas together over
the course of a real week by showing
what I shop for, how much money I spend,
what I make with the ingredients, and
how I set myself up for success for not
just a single week, but week over week,
month over month, and year over year.
And by the end of this video, I promise
you will have a better understanding of
how to get more value out of your
grocery shopping. So to start, let's
talk about idea number one, and that is
there is no perfect grocery system.
If we were in a grocery shopping therapy
session and you said to me, I hate
grocery shopping, I would immediately
ask you, well, what part specifically?
Because I think a lot of the frustration
around grocery shopping can come from
the idea that we should be able to
optimize for everything at the same
time. And I'm just here to tell you, you
can't you can't simultaneously have the
lowest cost, the best tasting or most
seasonal ingredients, the healthiest
diet, while also having tons of variety,
zero food waste, and spending very
little time planning, shopping, and
cooking in the kitchen. All of these
goals tend to pull against each other in
some way. And the real work when it
comes to grocery shopping as a system
isn't trying to find some perfect one.
It's more about identifying which
trade-offs you're willing to make and
which ones you're not. Now, as you'll
see throughout the rest of this video,
I'm going to be making a lot of
trade-offs, such as which grocery stores
I shop at, how many times I go per week,
how much money I spend, what types of
meals I cook, what I prioritize, and
what I don't. But the key here isn't for
you to copy exactly what I'm doing. The
goal is for you to use me as a reference
point. I want you to notice the
trade-offs that I'm making and ask
yourself whether those are the same
trade-offs that you would choose. And
this means you'll need to ask yourself
questions about your own life, such as
who and how many people are you shopping
for? What is your preferred diet? What's
your budget you like to spend? When and
where do you actually have time to
grocery shop? When do you have time to
cook and when do you not? How important
is variety to you from week to week? How
sensitive are you to food waste? or how
much mental energy do you want to spend
thinking about food? Now, if a few
hundred thousand people watch this
video, everyone's going to have slightly
different answers to those questions.
But those responses are really important
because these are what will dictate the
practical grocery shopping choices that
make sense for you. And this is what
we're going to explore in the remaining
ideas. And this brings us to idea number
two. lowcost groceries still taste good.
And to start this section off, I want to
run a little grocery shopping
experiment. There are three different
grocery stores that I will tend to shop
at in any given week. The first one is
the closest to me and the lowest cost,
but it also has the least variety and
quality. The second one is the middle
ground, a few more minutes away,
slightly higher cost, but more variety
and quality. And then the third one is
the furthest away, but by far the best
variety and quality. However, it's also
the most expensive. And what I did is
put together a grocery list. And I'm
going to buy the exact same 10 items
from the lowest cost and the highest
cost grocery store. And I want you to
take a guess on what you think the price
difference is going to be. Now, before I
show you the receipts, I want to explain
the bigger picture behind this idea.
Because one of the easiest traps to fall
into at the grocery store is just buying
the more expensive version of an
ingredient without even knowing what the
differences are. And this idea sits at
the core of a lot of the ingredient deep
dives where I've tested a lot of grocery
products such as canned tomatoes,
parmesan reo, chicken, eggs, steak,
canned tuna, butter, and milk. And in
every one of those tests that I've done,
there are real differences between the
products. But in every case of those
videos, the lowest cost options can
still be used to make genuinely good
tasting food. And a few months ago, I
did a video where I pushed this to the
extreme. I bought the lowest cost
version of everything for a meal and
then compared them to the higherend
versions, and the cost came out to about
$2.87 per serving versus $646
per serving. And yes, if price didn't
matter, I did prefer the higherend
ingredients, but the budget version was
still good. Like, it was still
completely edible and enjoyable
spaghetti and meatballs. And as we're
about to see, if you can learn to make
good tasting meals with lowcost
groceries, you can save quite a bit of
money on a single trip. And when you
multiply it week over week and month
over month, you could be saving a couple
thousand a year. Okay, so if you got
those guesses in, here is the final
answers. So, the same 10 item grocery
list, just shoed for at two different
stores. And here on my right, the lowerc
cost groceries were $3744
and then the higher cost groceries were
$6984.
And this one definitely surprised me. I
mean, we're essentially talking about
double the price between these two. And
we even got a little bit more food with
the lowerc cost groceries. I got.17 lb
more of the ground beef and then about.3
lb more of the chicken thighs. And
again, I'm not arguing that these are
going to taste exactly the same. There
are going to be flavor differences
between them. But again, if you go back
to concept one, you need to ask
yourself, is that tradeoff actually
worth it to you? However, now that I
have the groceries, we are ready for the
fun and creative part of the process.
And I've got another question for you.
How many different meals do you think
I'll be able to make with this pile of
groceries, as well as a few other pantry
staples I already have? Because that's
exactly what we're going to talk about
in concept three. So, over the next few
days, I was able to make a wide variety
of meals, which we'll go through
shortly. But the cookware I used to make
those all came from today's sponsor,
Maiden. And I think I used the entire
lineup of cookwware that Maiden has to
offer, outside of maybe a non-stick.
That's the one I think I just happened
not to use this week. However, instead
of trying to tell you about all of them,
I do want to call out two of my favorite
stainless steel pans, which are the
10-in frying pan and the 3ourt sauier.
Maiden's premium five ply stainless
steel is what sets it apart from other
pans out there. The five layers allow
for superior heat retention, even
heating, and ease of heat control. So,
I'll use the 10-in frying pan if I just
need to like quickly brown up some
ground beef or maybe sauté some
vegetables. And then the sauier itself
is very flexible. I probably use it the
most for quick pastas like I did this
week, but it can be used for frying,
cooking sauces, or even brazing. And
these are just great workhouse pans that
you'll have in your kitchen for years to
come. So, you can check out the full
stainless clad collection and my other
favorite cookware from Made In by using
the link in the description. and thank
you again for sponsoring this video. But
now, let's talk about that third idea.
And I want to explain why I believe that
in order to save time, money, and mental
effort when you're grocery shopping,
that 80% of the cooking you do should be
low activation energy and flexible. Over
the course of a week, I have about 14
meals, lunch and dinner, that I'm
primarily cooking for since I don't eat
breakfast. And on average, I also
probably eat out about once per week.
So, for roughly 80% or 10 of those
meals, the goal should be low activation
energy and flexibility. And by low
activation energy, I mean meals that are
easy to start. There's no big mental
hurdle, no long prep list, no elaborate
plan. And by flexible, I mean meals that
can adapt to your mood, your energy
level, and whatever happens to be in
your fridge that day. So, how do you
actually do this with real food in real
life? Well, there are a lot of options.
You could meal prep. You could use food
delivery services. You could make a new
recipe for dinner and eat the leftovers
for lunch the next day. And all of these
work, but they come with trade-offs.
Meal prep can be boring. Food delivery
can be outrageously expensive. And
making a new recipe every night can lead
to food waste. And this is why my
preferred method is what I call the PCSV
framework. And this stands for protein,
carbohydrate, sauce, and vegetable. I'm
not scrolling Instagram for ideas. I'm
not chasing recipes. I'm just asking
myself a few basic questions. What
protein do I have? How do I want to
season it? What's my carbohydrate? What
sauce am I making? And what vegetable am
I using? Fresh, pickled, roasted, or
sauteed. And when you start shopping and
cooking this way, the whole process gets
dramatically simpler. For example, from
my lowcost groceries, I know I have two
different proteins, ground beef and
chicken thighs, two different
carbohydrate sources, two different
sauces, and a few different vegetables.
And then obviously I have spices and
other sauces already in my fridge or
pantry that I can use as well. So let me
show you what I made with this
framework. So for Tuesday's dinner, my
protein was the ground beef and I
seasoned it with salt, garlic, and
oregano. Then for my carbohydrate, I
used the pita bread. For my sauces, I
put hummus on the bottom and then
drizzled a dill sauce that I made with
some ingredients from the fridge over
the top. And my vegetables were lettuce,
tomato, and some red onion with sumach.
Very simple. took about 10 minutes to
make and very satisfying. For
Wednesday's lunch, I mixed it up. For my
protein, I again used the ground beef,
but just seasoned it with a bunch of
black pepper and some salt. For my
carbohydrate, I used rice. And then I
also had some thyme roasted sweet
potatoes as my vegetables. And then I
also added some pickled beets that I'd
had in the fridge for about 3 weeks that
I've been meaning to use up. And lastly,
my sauce was just some of that leftover
dill sauce from the night before. And
this one was really good. I didn't know
what to expect, but I really, really
enjoyed it. For Wednesday's dinner, this
might have been my favorite so far. The
protein was some simple seared chicken
thighs that I tossed in that teriyak
sauce. The carbs were jasmine rice and
once again, some roasted sweet potatoes.
I love that combo. Then my sauce was QP
mayo over the top before finishing it
with some pickled onions and the mix of
sweet, sour, salty, and umami. So good.
Here for Thursday's lunch, I actually
ate out with a co-orker, so I didn't
need to cook. And if we zoom out and
start looking at the whole week, you can
see it starting to take shape. And as I
get into these last few days, the meals
are naturally going to need to become
simpler as I run out of ingredients. But
that's okay. Not every meal needs to be
an event. Thursday night was the tar
chicken thighs and a salad with toasted
pita hummus salad vinegrett pickles
and cherry tomatoes. For Friday's lunch,
I finished the rest of that ground beef
and mixed it with a little barbecue
sauce. then served it over rice with
beans and just added some chopped up
pickles and white onions. Definitely
more of a struggle meal, but still hit
the spot. Then for Friday dinner, I
found some noki in the freezer that I
mixed with some chicken thighs, roasted
cherry tomatoes, and parmesan reo for a
quick late night pasta.
So hopefully you can see how this method
starts to play out over a few days. None
of these meals are elaborate or
restaurant quality. They all take 20
minutes or less. I'm just changing the
spices I grab from the drawer, swapping
sauces and pickles in the fridge, and
rotating my carb sources. And even
though it's simple, I find these dishes
to be pretty fun to cook. It's a way to
be creative without being overwhelming.
Now, a lot of people might think that in
order to cook this way, you need to go
spend a bunch of money and like stock
your pantry and your spice drawer and
your fridge all at once. However, that's
not what I would suggest doing at all.
There is a much easier way and it's what
I think of as a grocery loop where
essentially that the leftovers that I
have now are going to inform what I buy
at the grocery store next time and what
I buy informs what I cook. What I cook
creates new leftovers and then it loops
back around. Now, the challenge about
executing the grocery loop is that it
can be hard to do if you're only doing
one big grocery trip per week. And this
is going to bring me to idea number
four. And I believe that for most
people, doing two medium-sized grocery
trips are probably better than doing one
big one. And the reason why is because
you're essentially shortening your
feedback loop. Let's break it down. A
feedback loop is just the time between
making a decision and seeing the result.
And if you do one big grocery trip for
the entire week, you're making a week's
worth of decisions trying to predict how
much money you'll need to spend, what
your schedule looked like, what you'll
be in the mood for, or the expiration
date of all these products. And the
further out that you try to predict the
future, the more likely you are to be
wrong. And this is why so many of us who
have done that big grocery trip hate
when we ultimately end up at the store
again anyway. Maybe you forgot an
ingredient or something went bad. you're
not in the mood for what you planned or
your schedule changes in some way. But
if you split that bigger trip into two
smaller sized ones, you're going to
create a shorter feedback loop, which
often is going to create a better
system. And here is my theory that I
would love to test. If you gave two
groups of people $100 for groceries and
one group had to spend all of it in a
single trip while the other split it
into two equal $50 trips, I think this
second group would have way more
success. They'd waste less food because
it's easier to notice what you didn't
use. They'd spend more efficiently
because you can correct midweek. And
they'd have less stress because you're
not trying to predict a full week all at
once. And this leads to a little bit
more enjoyment as well. Now, there are
plenty of ways that you could structure
doing two grocery trips, but that's more
of the theory. I want to show you how I
actually do this in practice. And my two
grocery trips that I typically take each
week solve different problems. My first
trip this week was on Tuesday, and that
is my PCSB trip. Proteins, carbs,
vegetables, and seasonings. I do zero
planning. I can be in and out of the
store in 10 minutes. I can take
advantage of sales because I'm not tied
to specific recipes. And as you saw, I
turn that first trip into multiple meals
while spending only $36.
Now, the second trip that I'm going to
take this week is on Saturday, and this
one serves a different purpose. I'm
going to ask myself, what do I have
going on this weekend? What do I still
need to use up? and is there something
I'm genuinely excited to make? So, I
knew I was golfing on Saturday and then
playing ultimate frisbee on Sunday. So,
I had these big blocks to work around.
And then what I was in the mood for was
a big fat Chipotle style burrito to look
forward to on Sunday. So, that is what I
built my second trip around. So, on this
second trip, I spent $48, but I'm not
shopping for just this meal. I'm making
sure there was enough overlap
ingredients to carry me through to
Tuesday again. And here is how the rest
of my week played out. For Saturday's
dinner, I made a chopped cheese with
frozen French fries that I had just
bought. Then on Sunday morning, I
started my Sunday braze for the burrito.
But for lunch, I just had a quick smash
burger. And then Sunday night, I made
that big Chipotle style burrito with the
corn, sour cream, and all the fixings.
Then I had a bunch left over for Monday
and Tuesday. On Monday, I had a leftover
burrito bowl and then also made another
chopped cheese, but this time with some
frozen pablanos I had in the freezer.
And then on Tuesday, I use the last of
that braze beef with some Mediterranean
beef and rice bowl. And now you should
really be able to start to see the power
of all these ideas together. I have the
built-in flexibility while cooking with
lowcost ingredients and can do these
smaller trips to keep the system going.
And this brings me to the final idea
that I have for you when it comes to
grocery shopping. And that is make it
meaningful. For this last part, I want
you to forget about everything we just
talked about for just a second and let's
zoom all the way out. At its most basic
level, feeding yourself is something
every human has to do every single day.
And because of that, grocery shopping
doesn't have to be seen as some annoying
chore to get through. It is a core life
skill that can have a lot of meaning.
Now, that meaning can look different for
different people. For example, it can be
how you take care of yourself and the
people you love. It can be a way to take
control of your health, your budget, and
your time. It can be a source of
creativity. It can be fun or a place to
experiment and try new things. And for
me, I think it's a little bit of all of
those. And when you really think about
how many times you'll grocery shop and
cook over the course of your life, it's
worth trying to figure out what's going
to work best for you. And hopefully
these comparisons I've shown you
throughout this week have given you a
clear picture of what trade-offs may
matter to you. And if I was talking to
my kind of collegeage self, for example,
I would keep my advice very simple.
First, I'd do my shopping at a lowcost
grocery store. I'd put a short list
together with a couple of protein
sources carbohydrates different
vegetables, and then a few sauces or
spices, and then just cook that way for
a few days. sprinkle in a recipe that I
really want to make on the weekend and
then just do it again. And if you want
some more help on the cooking side of
this equation, I do have the Cookwell
YouTube channel where there's a big
backlog of videos where I cook kind of
in this exact way, thinking in
categories and frameworks instead of
very strict recipes. But as always, the
most important part isn't just watching
the videos. It's actually trying those
things out for yourself. I can't tell
you exactly what's going to work best
for your situation, but I can put you on
a pathway to help you find out for
yourself. So anyway, that is going to
wrap it up for me in this one. Hopefully
you all have enjoyed. Hopefully have
some more fun and excitement when you're
grocery shopping next time. That is
going to wrap it up for me in this one.
I will catch you all in the next one.
Peace y'all.