Thrift Week 2025, Day 2: Food

When you ask people to name a luxury good, many of them will probably think of traditional rich-people foods like caviar or lobster. And thirty years ago, this would indeed have been an accurate reflection of a multi-millionaire's diet. According to a 2018 story in Quartz, the 1991 Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook featured these two luxury foods right on the cover, alongside such other delicacies as chocolate-dipped strawberries and capital-C Champagne in crystal goblets. But in the years since, the article notes, the lifestyles of the wealthy—including their food choices—have changed dramatically. Today, rich-people food is all about "wellness": cold-pressed juices, organic produce, "fermented lamb and local lichens" served at a high-end restaurant on a remote Scottish island.

Healthy whole foods like these are indeed more expensive than processed foods, especially if you're looking for local and organic produce and the green halo associated with it. (As it turns out, this halo is mostly illusory; local and organic foods have roughly the same carbon footprint as conventionally grown ones. Some reputedly earth-friendly foods, like grass-fed beef, are actually significantly worse than their cheaper equivalents.) But the cost doesn't have to be prohibitive—particularly for those lucky enough to live near a Lidl store. 

Over the course of our two most recent visits to Lidl, we picked up ten pounds of mandarin oranges, a cauliflower, half a pound of Brussels sprouts, three bell peppers, a pound of mushrooms, two eggplants, an avocado, a head of broccoli, a bunch of scallions, a bag of red onions, and an English cucumber, all for a grand total of $25.86. That works out to $12.93 per week—slightly less than the $13.06 per week the average low-income household (under $15,000 per year) spent on fresh fruits and veggies in 2023. (To be fair, we also bought some produce from other stores, but our total food spending was still less than half the limit set by the USDA's Thrifty Food plan.) And if you're looking for more traditional luxury foods, like caviar, Lidl carries those too—at prices that, while a bit steep, won't break the bank.

Which brings me to my Treat for Today: a half-pound of smoked salmon, purchased on our most recent Lidl trip for $8.39. Admittedly, anything that costs $16.78 a pound is still an extravagance, but as extravagances go, it's a pretty affordable one. Served on Brian's home-baked no-knead bread with sliced cucumber, accompanied by a salad of red leaf lettuce with walnuts, dried cranberries, and our favorite honey-garlic balsamic vinaigrette, it's a meal that wouldn't look out of place in the pages of a modern Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook. And you don't have to be either rich or famous to enjoy it.