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Comparing the Cost of Canned and Frozen Meat to Fresh

Fresh fish or canned? Fresh liver or frozen? What about that ground chicken and turkey meat in the freezer case? Sometimes it’s enough to derail your shopping cart.

To Google I went, and I found the following information on a website:

Comparing canned/frozen meats vs. fresh meats: To figure the cost of meat per serving, divide the price per pound by the number of servings one pound will yield. A 3-ounce portion of cooked lean meat is a serving. Go by the following in deciding how many 3-ounce servings you can get from various cuts of meat, fish, and poultry.

· Lean, boneless meat: Extra-lean ground beef, liver, fish fillet, lean boneless roast, and ham and canned meats = 4 to 5 servings per pound.

· Small bone-in meat: Such as chuck, round and rump roast, turkey and chicken breast, stew beef = 3 to 3.5 servings per pound.

· Large bone-in meat: Boston Butt (pork) roast, pork chops, whole chicken and turkey, drum sticks, thighs, whole or ham halves = 2 to 2.5 servings per pound.

· Bony meat: Spareribs, pigs feet, ham hocks and chicken wings = 1 to 1.5 servings per pound. (Now you see why these meats are so cheap--they yield more waste and less actual meat per pound than boneless cuts--not a bargain at all)

Calculate the cost per serving of the canned or frozen meats, and compare it with that of fresh meat, fish, and poultry. The canned or frozen may cost less per serving than the fresh since there is usually no waste in the canned product—however, you may unknowingly be paying a premium for the container it’s packed in (such as plastic chicken liver buckets). Canned fish, for example, is definitely cheaper than fresh unless you fish your own.

One disadvantage of canned meats is the high sodium content. Since the majority of these meats are canned in brine, rinsing the meat in a colander may remove some (but not all) of it. Boiling may remove more, but won’t do much for the meat’s appearance or taste. Perhaps you can compensate for the extra sodium by increasing your potassium intake to offset it—see your doctor about this first, as dangers exist with excess amounts of any nutrient.

Canned meats may be okay for emergency supplies, but not recommended for everyday use unless you have no other alternative.

UPDATE: Another disadvantage of canned meats is the use of BPA in can liners. Over time, BPA leaches out into the canned food, making it an effective means of poisoning you. What does BPA do to you? Well, it's a known hormone disruptor for one thing--it displaces your natural hormones, and this is especially bad for diabetics (insulin is a hormone), thyroid patients (thyroids produce hormones for the brain), and women with fertility issues (estrogen is a hormone). For another, it's been linked to cancers and other serious diseases.

Canned foods are available without BPA in the liner--check the label to see if the product is BPA-free.

As for false economies when it comes to meat, I’d like to share one of my most controversial favorites—the one that gets me the most hate-mail: carcass meats like whole chickens and whole turkeys. I’ve been preaching about the inefficiencies of whole-carcass meats for some time, such as the cost per pound when the carcass is frozen and filled with ice (which adds weight), and the amount of actual usable meat compared to the amount of bone, fat, and other waste.

Bone-and-broth devotees will write me and say how wrong I am about avoiding buying bone-filled meats, because you supposedly can’t make gelatin for soups and stews without boiling bones, and they state how much healthier those soups and stews are with the gelatin. I’m here to inform you that I, too, make gelatin without a bone in sight—you don’t need bones at all to do it. Meat drippings from browning, broiling, or roasting are all you need—drain the drippings into a bowl and refrigerate overnight, so the fat can rise to the top and harden, leaving pristine gelatin underneath it. The fat layer can be easily removed intact or mostly so, leaving the same gelatin you so fondly crave.

I do this with regularity—I make my own cat food, and the drippings from the meat I brown get strained into a bowl for overnight refrigeration. The next batch of cat food I make after that automatically has a bowl of fat-topped gelatin waiting for it in the fridge—I just remove the top fat layer, and add the underlying gelatin to my food processor, along with the rest of the recipe ingredients. I’ve never used any kind of bone for this, and have all the gelatin I could ever use just by saving my meat drippings and refrigerating them overnight. If you need gelatin sooner than the next day, cook your meat early in the day and refrigerate those drippings NOW—the earlier you can get them into the fridge, the sooner you’ll have evening gelatin. Placing the bowl in the back of the fridge helps cool it down faster.

Rubber chicken devotees will also e-assault me with their stories of how many ways they were able to stretch a carcass after most of the usable meat was already eaten, and again, this points to the waste issue: after you’ve made casseroles, soups, stews, gravies, and gelatin out of your poor bird, what’s left besides WASTE? You paid for those bones, that fat, and that cartilage, and at a per-pound price too. Waste is waste, and if you’re throwing anything at all away when you’re done, it’s waste. If you aren’t grinding those bones up into calcium for the garden, then it’s waste—I can’t think of another way to use bones, other than possibly for a kid’s science or art project.

I leave that particular waste at the grocery store, letting them deal with it instead. I buy (and continue to buy) boneless and 100% usable cuts of meat, and get my gelatin too—no bones about it.

If you find boneless cuts too expensive for daily feeding (and many of my hate-mail writers do), then learn the fine art of price-per-serving and portion control. The Food Guide Pyramid says we only need 3 oz. of meat twice a day, so multiply the number of people you’re feeding times 3 oz., and you get the amount of meat you actually need for your dish—too many people think a whole “family size” package is the norm for a family meal, and it’s meat overkill for many of us. Too many people are guilty of eating more than their fair 3 oz. share of meat at a meal, too, and this is the ultimate waste—right into your toilet! A 1-lb. package of hamburger, before cooking, yields 16 oz., or 5 1/3 raw servings. When cooked, it yields somewhat less, due to the meat/fat percentage. However, this can be remedied by adding reconstituted TVP to the meat, using beans to add protein and fiber, or a handful of nuts, a cup of cheese, a scrambled egg or two, or tofu. The point is we consume way too much meat in one sitting, and our cholesterol profiles are proof of that. Getting a tighter rein on our meat expenditures and portions will go a long way toward minimizing waste, possibly eliminating it altogether.

Avoid the false economies of rubber chicken and bones for gelatin. Instead of buying a whole bird to ultimately make your soups, try using only a portion of that boneless meat family pack, subdividing and freezing the rest. I find a cut-up single boneless chicken breast, boneless beef rib, or boneless pork chop more than adequate for a pot of soup.

Posted by Cute at 6:48 PM

Labels: financial (non-tax), food purchases