Papa Joe Aviance Lost 250 Pounds on the '99-Cent Diet'

Yahoo Health ^ | 6/4/13 | Jenna Bergen

[Kartographer]

Only $50 Per Week for Food While he was determined to eat better, Aviance had to find a way to do it on a shoestring budget. “A friend told me I should check out the 99-Cent Store. Since I couldn’t afford Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, I decided to see what they had.” Aviance was pleasantly surprised to find that the 99-Cent Store in his neighborhood had plenty of healthy foods to choose from. “Oatmeal, raisins, nuts, bananas, apples, oranges, bell peppers, spinach, salad dressing, tuna fish, eggs… I was shocked. I was blown away,” recalls Aviance. “It was a huge savings. I literally spent no more than $50 a week on food.” (Feeding a family? You can still do it on the (healthy) cheap—here are 20 ways to feed your family for $100 a week.)

[jiggyboy]

Don’t worry. Some is local-brand or store-brand instead of name-brand stuff, some comes from bankruptcies or store closings of other chains, some comes from trial runs of new flavors or new sizes, some comes because it is indeed getting close to the expiration date. But even with that last one, note that the FDA does not have a hand in those dates — it’s up to the manufacturer.

[petro45acp]

So did U.

It’s:

“Fitty Cent”...

LOL

Thought it was “Fiddy cent...” Must be a dialect issue...

[jiggyboy]

I'll say it again, the best place to get groceries "on a shoestring" is Grocery Outlet. If there's one near you, check it out every time you pass by. I can't count how many times I've gotten meat and cheese at 50-80% off what I'd pay at Safeway, but you have to keep an eye open for those kinds of deals.

[jiggyboy]

I'll say it again, the best place to get groceries "on a shoestring" is Grocery Outlet. If there's one near you, check it out every time you pass by. I can't count how many times I've gotten meat and cheese at 50-80% off what I'd pay at Safeway, but you have to keep an eye open for those kinds of deals.

[Vendome]

East Coast/West Coast iterations.

[CatherineofAragon]

I agree. I’ve read you should stay away from dollar store toothpaste and pet food, since it could be contaminated Chinese crap. No way am I buying food for myself there.

[LadyBuck]

The only things I ever buy at those Daollar Stores are:

Bazooka Bubble Gum (hubby loves it & it’s hard to find)

Wrapping paper around the Holidays

Mean Green Cleaning spray. That stuff killed all the black mold in my basement, when nothing else would. I still have cases of it, and if I could bathe my kiddies in it, I would ;-)

[stars & stripes forever]

“I can’t imagine eating anything that came from a 99 cent store.”

Actually the movie candy is very good. I never lost weight on it though.

[EQAndyBuzz]

Jasmine rice with chicken and lentils.

Chicken - 6 dollars
Rice - 2 dollars
Lentils - 1 dollar

I get 10 meals from it. 90 cents a meal. The rest of the family eats whatever. This week was a bonus. My dad got 2 pounds of free brisket from Rudy’s. He’s a Korean war vet. Came down to 30 cents a meal.

Now if I can only stay away from the pies, cakes ice cream and pretzels.

[libertarian27]

Looks like they buy a lot of ‘distressed’ products.
Nothing wrong with them....items that can’t move through the regular grocery channels for whatever reason.
(off buy, poor production planning, new items, dropped orders)

There are places like this all over the country. Stores like this buy products for pennies on the dollar and put very little markup percentages on them to move products through their doors quickly.

Some references (there’s more out there)
http://www.extremebargains.net/store/Independent_Discount_and_Salvage_Grocery_Store_Directory.html

[Tucker39]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think you BOTH did. In the hood, it would be pronounced: Fit-ty Cent.

[sheana]

Just got back from my monthly trip. Hubby eats alot of canned soups, etc. and it is always cheaper there. During the month I buy alot of produce there. My mom used to eat almost totally out of the 99c store for between $15-20 a week.

[Vendome]

That’s Southern Drawl for them.

Kinda like the difference between “Shit” for East and West Coast or “Shee-yit” for Southerners.

LOL

[Buckeye McFrog]

Only food I see in those places is Mexican cereal and peanuts from Vietnam.

[Iron Munro]

The food section at our local Dollar Store has expanded to two aisles and gets bigger each time we visit. They have now added a frozen foods section

Just like Walmart, Big Lots, Dollar General and many other stores that sell food products at a discount, some items are good value, some are not.

We have learned to stock up when we see something we like that is a good value because the item may not be restocked when sold out.

[petro45acp]

Bulls-eye!!!

Cheers
KYPD

[Vendome]

Depends on what the meaning of distressed is.

If it is nearing a “Best Used by Date” and it’s in a can, it means absolutely nothing to me.

The bucks saved do though.

you can Colgate, Suave, Dinty Moore, and many other name brand products for cheap, cheap, cheap.

two or three bars of Dial soap for a buck? Not anywhere else.

Gotta run.

[tbw2]

I’ll trust vegetables and fruit, but would be iffy on buying meat products.
There’s the discount beef frozen meals that are actually horse, and the Icelandic meat pie found by DNA testing to have no meat in it.

[Tucker39]

My wife wants to know: How long did it take him to lose the weight on that diet?

[tbw2]

Big Lots sometimes has good deals on groceries. They’ve even brought in their own line of generic foods, with canned tomato sauce and canned veggies due to demand.