Decrease Your Grocery Bill by Half – Move to Mexico
Updated September 2023
The last time I shopped for groceries in Denver, Colorado, my bill was $108. My purchases weren’t extravagant, no prepared food, no empty calories. The provisions provided by my purchase fed me for about four days.
in Mexico, shopping at one of two Walmart grocery stores in Mazatlán, Mexico, which is the pricier of chain grocery stores in Mexico, provisions for four days cost about $50. Why? One big reason is price controls on food in Mexico.
Food prices have traditionally had a political impact in Mexico. In 2008, Mexicans took to the streets to protest the rise in tortilla prices, called the Tortilla Rebellion.
While that phrase would have made me giggle a few years ago, tortillas constitute more than half of the daily calories and protein of Mexico’s poor. As a result, the Mexican government imposes price controls over a 150 basic foodstuffs. Many are items you generally cook with - eggs, oil, milk, meat and sugar
Moving to Mexico has been a real relief in terms of shopping for healthy food as cost controls keep these prices from rising to the degree they do in the US.
Another reason is the greater simplicity in your meals due to the differences in availability. Less choice, and using the same ingredients for many recipes is actually great for your wallet. (My cookbook, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, makes the most of ingredients easily at hand).
I could save even more money by shopping at el mercado, the central open air market that is duplicated in some fashion in every Mexican town of any size. Organic markets are becoming increasingly common in cities with large expat populations and you’ll find produce to be riper and fresher.
The highest increases in food costs are almost always on the items in the periphery aisles in the US.
Every health-conscience menu planner knows that the outside aisles are where you should be shopping the most. In fact, the dietary goal is to avoid the center isles, where the processed food is located.
In Mexico, I never look at my grocery bill on the way to the car and think, “Really? Those four small bags cost $150?"
Instead, in Mexico I look down and think, "that looks about right." In Mexico, you can expect your grocery bill to run 50% less if you avoid imported goods. However, you will likely will need to travel to more than one store, for example a local open market and then a large supermarket for everything on your (more limited) list.
Walmarts and Costcos tend to become the store for expats to find certain items like walnuts, lemons and canned tomatoes. Availability compares to that of small American towns (great cheddar is what I miss the most).
Meal planning in Mexico
Although you do pay less for food in Mexico, you’ll have to adjust your cooking. Milk, butter, hamburger, sugar, salt, brown sugar, sour cream, cheese, taste different due to processing differences. Availability is more limited, especially outside. major expat cities such as San Miguel de Allende.
Cooking has been one of the more interesting experiences of my living in Mexico, and finally drove me to write a cookbook for those trying to maintain a healthy diet in Mexico (and can’t look at another taco).
Community cookbooks a great resource
Two resource you can go to for recipes appropriate for Mexico are 1) local English-language library sections in Mexico or 2) old cookbooks in general that you can find in thrift stores back home.
Many expat communities have had an enterprising and restless retiree who has put together a local cookbook. Both are similar in that they are reminiscent of the cookbooks I grew up with in rural Oklahoma compiled by farmers’ co-ops and civic women’s clubs in that they are recipes compiled by local cooks rather than produced by professional publishing houses.
Like most of Mexico, rural areas in the US have nothing like the variety offered in grocery stores in cities. (In places like West Virginia, this contributes greatly to poor diets and the highest obesity rates in the country). Old cookbooks tend to use far few ingredients than they do today, and you’ll be more likely to be able to duplicate these recipes in Mexico.
Locally-compiled cookbooks in the US are often amusing. One recipe for Wash Pail Cookies from my ancient Taste of Oklahoma cookbook began with instructions to, “get out your wash pail,” and made 450 cookies. Recipes featured Cool Whip and Cheez Whiz as well as how to make clay from dryer lint. I’m sure you can find parallel humor in old English-language cookbooks in Mexican libraries.
Locally-sourced recipes from Mexicans can be a good start to meal planning in Mexico, where availability of ingredients will depend on locale more than it does in the US with its better climate-controlled delivery systems.
Mexican cuisine pre-dates the Spanish conquistadors and Mexican cooking includes some ingredients exotic to us. My contributor to The Lazy Expat shared in the cookbook the fact that traditional pozole includes a pigs head “for a special flavor.”
Once you are in Mexico and cooking, you will uncover previously unexplored cooking opportunities in low-cost items such as fresh pineapple, mangoes, avocados, and limes. Fruits and vegetables are picked riper, a real pleasure.
Until you get the hang of cooking in a foreign culture (or buy my cookbook), remember: You can stuff almost anything into a fresh, skillet-fried tortilla.
Related Links:
How to tell the quality of your water in Mexico, including bottled water.
Cooking in Mexico: The Good News and the Bad News - Ventanas Mexico
Ventanas Mexico Pinterest Recipe Board
About the Author: Kerry Baker
Hola, I am a partner with Ventanas Mexico, which provides advice and resources to those considering explore full or part-time expat-life in Mexico.
In addition to the cookbook, check out "If Only I Had a Place" a book on renting for less, luxuriously in Mexico," and includes a list of rental concierges in all the places you'd consider to live in Mexico.
“The Mexico Solution: Saving your sanity, money and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico ” is a game plan for moving and adapting to life in Mexico. Most recently she wrote The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico.