Today's issue is brought to you by Proving Her Wrong

Hey, friend! Groceries have gotten expensive, but we don’t think that’s news to anyone reading this. What surprised us, though, is how little of the increase is actually about food. In this issue, Lacey walks through where her grocery money used to disappear and the short list she buys on repeat instead. There is also a look at what happens to the average cart when prices climb, plus the surprisingly wide range the USDA says a healthy month costs.

— Lacey Baier, Dustin Baier

We feed six people on about $240 a week.

I know that number lands differently depending on who's reading. To some of you, it may sound like a lot. To some of you, it may sound impossible. Broken down, it's about $40 per person, just under $6 a day, and that covers everything, from dinners to snacks to restocking pantry items, as needed. We eat pretty much every meal at home, so we go through a ton of groceries.

We usually run out of stuff by the end of the week. That's fine, and it’s kinda the point.

But the number isn't the part that took me years to figure out. The cart was.

People love to say eating healthy is expensive. Walk down the right aisle, and they're right. A protein bar can run you six dollars. A cold-pressed green juice, nine. Let's be honest, both of those are aimed at the woman who's trying, and neither one is going to fill you up.

It's easy to spend a lot when you're trying to eat better. Heck, it even makes you feel healthy to do it. They look healthy, they're pricey, and a lot of them are about as good for you as a candy bar.

The food inside the wrapper isn't what costs six dollars.

I've made every one of these, some of them for years.

Buying the packaged version instead of the food. Bars, juices, keto snacks, pouches. I keep a couple around for a real pinch, and that's it. They're not groceries.

Shopping without a list. Full cart, no actual meals. I've done it plenty of times, and it adds up fast.

Chasing recipes. I'd find something online, buy the $8 spice for it, use it once, and then that jar would sit in my pantry for a year. Now, I stick to a few basics that work across everything.

Buying only fresh. Slimy spinach, moldy berries, herbs I fully intended to use. If you're throwing out half the bag, you already spent that money. Frozen does the same job and it waits for you.

Buying variety instead of versatility. This was the big one. I'd grab a bunch of different veggies thinking I'd make all these fun recipes, and then half of it would go bad. You don't need a ton of variety to eat well. You need a few ingredients you actually like, that you know how to use, that show up in more than one meal.

Protein

Carbs

Vegetables

Fruit

The expensive part of eating healthy is rarely the food. It's the packaged version of the food.

Now, there are some exceptions to this. Foods like chia seeds, real peanut butter, nuts, olive oil, and grass-fed beef are pricier. Some real food does cost more.

But price the serving, not the package. That jar of peanut butter lasts a month, the chia seeds maybe even longer.

A six-dollar bar is gone in one snack.

That's what you're paying for. Someone portioned it, sealed it, made it last on a shelf, and printed a promise on the front. What costs more is the assembly.

Hopefully, some of these tricks will help you save on your grocery bill as well. It's just a short list, and we use it over and over, and it makes things simpler. The repetition is what makes it work.

You don't need to buy all of it. Pick a few things you know you'll actually eat, and build the week around those. That's it!

Real talk on food, health, and feeling good in your body, no perfection required. Cut through the noise and support Cleanish.

Did you know the USDA prices out four grocery plans every month? They break down a Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost, and Liberal plan. All four are built to meet federal dietary guidance, and all four assume every meal gets cooked at home.

In May 2026, the cheapest came to $1,018 a month for a family of four. The most generous came to $1,675.

That's roughly $650 apart for diets that check the same boxes on paper. The difference isn't the nutrition. It's which foods you hit it with.

Some of that gap is real. Fresh produce and quality protein do cost more per calorie than flour and oil, and no amount of smart shopping changes that. A Harvard analysis, widely cited since it came out in 2013, put the difference between the healthiest and least healthy eating patterns at about $1.50 per person per day.

Knowing that doesn't make a tight budget easier to live with, but it's worth knowing that healthy eating isn't a single number. Where you land in that spread comes down to what goes in the cart.

Want to see the four plans and what each one costs this month? USDA publishes them every month.

26%

how much higher U.S. food prices are than they were five years ago, even though the month-to-month increases have slowed.

$1.50

the estimated daily gap per person between the healthiest eating patterns and the least healthy ones, from a Harvard review of 27 studies.

2.7 billion

people worldwide who still cannot afford a healthy diet, roughly one in three of us.

None of us sets what groceries cost. What we do get to decide is what goes in the cart.

Sources: CoBank Knowledge Exchange, July 2026; Rao et al., BMJ Open, 2013; The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026

I walk the store and show you exactly what goes in my cart when I am keeping the bill down, plus what I do with it once I get home. Watch on YouTube →

🌎 U.N. report charts rising cost of a healthy diet for billions

The daily cost of a healthy diet reached $4.28 per person in 2025, up from $3.44 in 2021, and roughly 2.7 billion people still cannot afford one.

💭 The Bottom Line → Affording good food is not a personal failing when the price of it has been climbing everywhere at once.

🦷 Bacteria from gum disease may harden heart valves

Early research presented at an American Heart Association meeting found gum disease bacteria in calcified aortic valves, another sign that dental visits are heart appointments, too.

🤝 Loneliness strongly linked to poorer mental health and wellbeing

Researchers used three different methods to test whether loneliness actually drives worse health rather than just travelling alongside it, and the answer leaned toward yes.

🦠 Gut bacteria may hold clues to how fast our bodies age

A University of Hawaii team found certain gut bacteria tracked with biological aging markers.

📺 Watching a lot of TV in midlife may shrink the brain

In about 1,700 adults, heavy TV viewers later had smaller memory-related brain regions, but sitting itself was not the culprit, since people in mentally demanding desk jobs looked better.

Proving Her Wrong is Lacey Baier's personal essay newsletter on identity, hiding, and finally showing up as yourself.

The USDA prices out four grocery plans every month, and all four are built to meet federal dietary guidance. The only thing that really changes between them is which foods you use to get there. In May 2026, the cheapest plan came to about $1,018 a month for a family of four. The most generous came to about $1,675 for a diet built to the same standard.

The catch is in the fine print of the cheapest plan. It assumes every single meal and snack is cooked at home, with no takeout and no convenience food anywhere in the month. It is also the figure that sets the maximum SNAP benefit, so for millions of households the Thrifty plan is not a budgeting idea, it is the ceiling.

One honest note: USDA calls its four plans Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost, and Liberal. We relabeled the top one “Generous” here because “Liberal” reads as politics rather than a spending level. Only the Thrifty plan was rebuilt recently (2021). The other three still rest on 2001 to 2002 food data adjusted forward for inflation, so treat them as cost levels rather than a picture of how people shop now. The family of four totals for those three are our own arithmetic from USDA's published per person figures, since USDA only publishes a household total for the Thrifty plan.

Source: USDA Food Plans, monthly cost of food reports, May 2026

When I started, I made just about every mistake there is. I went all in until I burned out, let the scale decide how I felt about myself, ate too little and called it discipline, and avoided lifting weights entirely because I thought it was not for me. This is what I would tell someone at the beginning instead, and why the slower, less impressive version is the one that actually lasts. Read it →

When grocery prices go up, we can buy cheaper versions of stuff we already purchase, like generic brands, or we can buy less food. Lately, most Americans are choosing to buy less food.

CoBank's July report put U.S. food prices roughly 26% above where they sat five years ago. Over the course of 2025, beef ran up 14.7% and produce 6.1%. The response has not mainly been brand switching. Progressive Grocer's 2026 consumer study found a third of shoppers simply bought fewer groceries over the past year, and Bain's read of NielsenIQ data has the total number of grocery items sold falling for five straight months.

Meat department volume was down 2.3% in June compared with a year earlier, while dollar sales still went up, because prices climbed faster than pounds fell.

Produce and Protein are proving to be the first things out because they are expensive and can spoil. It is also how a budget problem turns into a nutrition problem.

The full quarterly report is here if you want the numbers: CoBank on rising food prices, and Grocery Dive has the meat volume data.

Marinated chicken, peppers and onions, and a pot of spicy black beans, portioned into containers on Sunday. It comes to about $3.37 a serving, which is less than the side of beans costs at most restaurants. Get the recipe →

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