[PREVIEW] Is It Normal to Spend $700 on Groceries?
[PREVIEW] Is It Normal to Spend $700 on Groceries?  
Podcast: The Burnt Toast Podcast
Published On: Thu Feb 26 2026
Description: We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay and it’s time for your February Indulgence Gospel!Today we are talking about influencers who show their expensive influencer grocery hauls, as well as people who spend A LOT OF MONEY on food delivery. (If you too had feelings about that ChrisLovesJulia reel...let's get into it!) We also talk about our own spending on groceries and food delivery....and our complicated feelings about both. 🥴You do need to be a paid Just Toast subscriber to listen to this full conversation. Membership starts at just $5 per month!Join Just Toast!🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈Episode 234 TranscriptVirginiaToday we are going to talk about a phenomenon that I keep seeing on Instagram: influencer groceries. So these are reels where people unpack all their bags and show you all the food going in their fridge. It's like, 'Oh, by the way, we're a family of four and we spent $600 at the grocery store.'As someone who buys groceries for a family that size, I would like to say that that number is jarring and yet, also not totally out of the realm of possibility. It made me take a hard look at my grocery spending. What are we performing in these reels where people are showing what and how they eat, and what are the diet culture implications of that?Corinne, how about you? Do your groceries cost $600 a week?Corinne  I won't respond to that directly.VirginiaWe will just skip that question.Corinne  Groceries are a perennially interesting topic for me. Everyone has been saying that grocery prices are crazy now! VirginiaThey're so high. CorinneWhen I saw that particular reel about how much a family is spending per week on groceries, I was like, "believable."Virginia  Yeah. The reel that we're going to talk about is from Julia Marcum, aka @chrislovesjulia. I have talked before on this podcast about she is one of my problematic faves. She is a high-end, home influencer/Mormon wife and mother who now lives in North Carolina, just to locate the economics of her grocery shopping. She has talked openly about living with a lot of food restrictions due to health problems. She is grain, gluten, dairy, pork and refined sugar free. Which I was like, How do you spend money on groceries? There's nothing left to eat. This is a particular reel where we see her husband, Chris, coming into the house with multiple paper bags of groceries from, I believe, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Then he's unloading organic yogurt, so much produce, like nine boxes of blueberries, and these sort of, I don't know, some kind of special breakfast sausage, lots of packaged foods, but not the kind of packaged foods we would demonize as processed foods. It's very heavy on the wellness brands and the produce side of things, I would say.Corinne  I agree with that assessment. When I was watching it being unpacked, I was like, This feels like a treats grocery shopping trip for me. Where you go grocery shopping and buy yourself a lot of treats.Virginia  It's the fancy food shopping. That's what I thought, too.CorinneThe juice, the berries.VirginiaAnd they were like, 'No, this is how we eat every week. We just eat fancy food all the time.' There's two whole chickens in the mix, which I'm oddly fixated on. But it is true, sometimes a whole chicken doesn't feed as many people as you think it's going to. So I guess I understand roasting two at once. A couple of things were really interesting to me about this. One, yes, there's the diet culture piece of things: she says that her go-to snack is blueberries. That is both an expensive go-to snack, and not a very satisfying go-to snack. What's with the blueberries? I want to know. She talks about how she eats exactly what the rest of the family does, but if they're eating rice, she'll eat cauliflower rice. So I was like, Well, that's not eating exactly what the family eats. There's also a humblebrag that Chris "runs the grocery and dinner rhythm," as she puts it. She cooked for six months after they got married and then he took over. That's obviously fairly rare in heterosexual marriage. Much more often the mom is doing all of the mental load of grocery shopping and food prep. So I thought that was pretty interesting. There's also the backlash in the comment section. People were pretty mad about this grocery haul. Corinne  It's hard not to feel mad when you're seeing someone living it up when most people are stressed about grocery bills. Also, how are they keeping all those blueberries good for a week? One thing of blueberries in my fridge goes bad in like two days.Virginia  I know. You breathe on them and they all wither and die.Corinne  Just buy frozen blueberries?Virginia  I buy quite a lot of frozen blueberries for smoothies every week and they are much cheaper.Corinne  Definitely more economical.Virginia  If you're just standing there snacking on them like a squirrel, what difference does it make if they're fresh or frozen? This reel was posted the first week of February. It was just a couple months ago that the federal government canceled SNAP for all of November. Millions of families didn't know how to buy groceries at all. So there's a real lack of awareness. The Marcums are never political, but I would guess their political leanings run conservative. There's probably a conscious choice not to worry, 'Are we offending people who are struggling to feed their families when we talk about spending $657 on one week of groceries?'It also made me think about Mormon prosperity gospel culture. This is very celebrated to be able to live lavishly and well in this way and have all of this elaborate food, and they kind of dress it up in 'food is an important part of our family's bonding time.' But you can have quality family bonding time around food and not have it be this kind of food.Corinne  One question I also had was, when they made this reel, did they think, 'Oh, people are going to be outraged by this.' I'm just so curious what they expected the response would be.Virginia  I can't decide if they are that out of touch with what the average family is like. Is this like the Lucille Bluth banana moment? Is that what's happening? Or was it honestly a little more insidious, and they knew that number would get crazy engagement? Because it absolutely did.Corinne  I kind of think the latter. Did they respond at all?Virginia  Yes, there is a comment from Julia where she says, “I know that's a big grocery budget. Everyone prioritizes their money differently.” Some people just don't have money Julia! But sure, it's priorities. “I've been sharing Chris Cooks recipes for 17 years, and our budget has fluctuated from price matching everything in my cart to this.”And then she talks about her eating issues.“The back story that newcomers may not know. Two years ago, I had a really bad relationship with food. It felt like every month I had to cut out a new food group due to health complications. My blood sugar was out of whack. I was diagnosed with reactive hypoglycemia and celiac disease. On top of my autoimmune condition. I coped by completely disconnecting from food and saw it as fuel only. It wasn't fun to eat because my diet was so restricted.”She names all her restrictions. “At the beginning of 2025 I made it a goal to have a better relationship with food, for me and my family's sake, food is so much more than vital. It brings people together. It's an activity and a hobby and an experience. I still don't eat more food groups, but I no longer eat the same thing every day out of fear.” Other than the pint of blueberries, I guess. “Yes, we spend a lot of on groceries. It's usually closer to $550 a week, to be honest. But this week we got more because of bad weather. But it is also Chris's hobby, my medicine and the way we show our love to others, no regrets.”Corinne  In a way, I do find that comment sort of convincing.Virginia  It's really her experience of it. Corinne  If you have a hard relationship with food, I think there is freedom in just being like, 'Yeah, I'm going to spend more money on food I like.' If you have the money.Virginia  There's a tremendous privilege here. I would love more acknowledging of the privilege rather than just saying, 'Everyone has different priorities.' Some people's priority is keeping their heat on, so they're not spending a lot on groceries.Corinne  I don't follow her, so maybe I should start. But what is she cutting back on?Virginia  Absolutely nothing. One of my favorite comments in the thread/backlash is a person being like, 'Are you all surprised? They live in a million dollar home. They just bought a lake house. Like, was this your first clue that they are living a lifestyle the rest of us cannot afford?'So no, she's cutting back on absolutely nothing in order to pay for these groceries. It's not a question of priorities. It's a question of conspicuous consumption. I also think it's interesting that she frames it as Chris's hobby, that family dinner and feeding the family is his hobby. She's propping him up, like, 'Oh, what a hero. He does the grocery shopping and makes dinner, so I don't have to. What a good husband.' And then also, it's like, 'Well, guys, he just really loves it. It's his hobby.'Corinne  That is a justification people use for spending more on groceries though. It's entertainment, basically.Virginia  And I don't think that's the worst thing. I just think it's interesting in the context of her saying, 'This is labor he's performing for the family.'Corinne  I would not like to hear a husband say that about his wife, that cooking dinner "was her hobby."Virginia  'She's just so into it, she just can't get enough.' No, it just has to happen every night, but ok.Corinne  Should we talk about our own grocery bills?Virginia  I'm not going to share numbers because numbers are triggering to me, personally. But I'll share a few numbers. I will say that in order to prep for this episode, I went and added up everything I spent on groceries in January and the number is much higher than I expected it to be. Some context is, this number does include all of our household items. I noticed Julia did not unpack any toilet paper, kitty litter, or cleaning supplies. All of that is a separate line item in her budget. My number includes everything that we buy at the grocery store for our house. So there's that. We also did host out of town guests twice. So there was buying more hobby type of food for entertaining. My kids have particular food preferences. It is absolutely a privilege that I can support those preferences and buy the specific brands of certain items that they really rely on. I think anyone who deals with a kid, picky eating, ARFID, or anything in that universe knows what I'm talking about. We get real excited when we see Amy's burritos on sale, but they are not always on sale, and they are still a staple in our house. So, yeah, my numbers are high. I would say the average grocery trip is around $180 to $200, and we're probably going at least twice a week. Corinne  One thing I was thinking about when I was looking at my own numbers was the fact that last year we stopped shopping at Amazon. For me, that included Whole Foods, where I was getting a lot of groceries.VirginiaDid you save money? CorinneWhole Foods has the reputation of being crazy expensive. But what I've been substituting it with is the Co-Op, and the Co-Op is definitely more expensive than Whole Foods. The basic grocery store here, which is Kroger variations like Albertsons or Smiths, is less expensive than Whole Foods most of the time, but sometimes comparable. So I think I'm definitely spending more this year, rising food costs aside. In January, I was traveling for a week, I had my birthday and all kinds of other stuff. So I looked back at a couple months and I had a crazy amount of variation. Some months we're talking $350, some months we're talking $1,000.VirginiaTotal for the month? Not $1,000 in one grocery shop?CorinneOh, yeah. No. Sorry, I was looking at the month not the week.VirginiaI just wanted to clarify since the Chris Loves Julia reel is $657 for one shop.Corinne  I think my average is probably $100 a week. But that's for me, one person. Their number is for five people. Is that right? So yeah, they're technically, maybe spending less per person than I am? I don't know. Virginia  I mean, they are buying a lot of blueberries, but I hear you. It's interesting how uncomfortable it is to look at this spending, and some of it we don't have any control over, because, again, food prices are astronomical right now. They're only getting worse. I think there is so much cultural pressure to eat healthy in certain ways, which are almost always more expensive because of our broken food system. It still feels super uncomfortable to look and realize you're spending more than you thought you were, or that you want to be, but it's like, are we - not to be a Chris Loves Julia apologist now - but are we holding ourselves to a standard of not spending a lot on food? Is that actually a realistic standard in this day and age? I'm not sure that it is.Corinne  The other thing their grocery bill doesn't show is how much they're spending on takeout or DoorDash.Virginia  Let's talk about that. Also, a hard moment for me. But yes, we want to also talk about a piece that was in New York Times Cooking, a story from New York Times food writer Priya Krishna, about people who are just really dependent on the convenience of food delivery, but aware that the costs are insane. The example she uses, that was in an Instagram post, is a married couple with kids who were spending about $700 a week to order in. I guess by that math the Chris Loves Julia tab is not so bad, because I assume they were only ordering in dinner, although I'm actually not sure.Corinne  This article is wild, and I will say that I was much more afraid to look at my own numbers on this. Then I looked at them, and I was like, This is actually not bad at all. VirginiaOh, wow. That's great for you. CorinneHowever, I've really been thinking a lot about food delivery because, I don't know if you saw this, but at the beginning of the year there was a Reddit food delivery whistleblower post. I think it was about Uber Eats. (More on this here!)Someone posted all this stuff about how literally evil these companies are, how they give drivers a "desperation score," and then give those people lower paying jobs. And how if you tip high, they lower the base pay. However -VirginiaWait, if you tip high, they lower lower the base pay?Corinne  Ok, let me finish! I literally read this and was so upset. I was like, I'm never DoorDashing again. Then when I went to do a light bit of research for this episode and it turns out that it was an AI-generated thing. It's not real. Whether or not those policies actually exist, I don't know. But they tried to fact check it and it turned out to be fake.VirginiaHow do we trust anything? I don't understand. I don't know.Corinne  I also had this crazy experience where I DoorDashed a few things and saw them get stolen off my porch. I chased the person down, screaming at them through my neighborhood. I did not get my things back. I was just like, What am I doing? I'm trying to make my life easier, but I'm actually just making it harder and more miserable. These companies are bad, even if they're not as evil as I thought.VirginiaI mean, they're not good.Corinne  So I've really been trying not to do DoorDash.Virginia  I'm cutting down. I'm a work in progress. I've been ignoring all of the hidden fees. I also tip really high because I've been worried about the worker experience, although now I'm wondering if it's good to tip high if they lose the base pay. I assume me over-tipping is still the way to go. We are down to ordering Uber Eats probably once a week, and it's usually around $100 every time for dinner for two people, which is wild.Corinne  That doesn't seem bad, because I feel like every time I order it's $80.Virginia  It's a lot. I feel complicated about this because there was a season in my life, quite recently, where I was very dependent on delivery. After my divorce, it was just me doing all the things in my house, and feeding us was a place where my bandwidth really - like, I was just done. I was maxed out. I was so burned out on cooking. It wasn't fun cooking for just me and my kids. It was really hard. Being able to order delivery got me through that season. And now that there's someone sharing cooking with me again, I feel like, Ok, we could work on this more. We could cook the pantry more often, even if we didn't make a meal plan. We don't have to default to ordering sushi. But also, I love sushi. I'm not saying I'm never going to do it.Corinne  I will say, for me it's a fallback. Whenever I'm stressed and feeling like I don't have enough time, I'm like, I'll just DoorDash it, or, I'll just Instacart it. I do feel like forty percent of the time something ends up going slightly wrong.Virginia  I live on a road where I'm on a road named South, and there's also a road name North. If you go to the road named North, you're on a mountain lost to civilization. So I've definitely had a few deliveries go off into the ether that way, which, I feel awful for them, and sad for me. I agree. It's this thing that's supposed to reduce friction and make your life easier, and then it can end up being absolutely not that, which is frustrating, but again, for folks who are primary caregivers, single parents, disabled folks, there's a lot of reasons why the accessibility of delivery is important. It would be nice if, as a society, we valued that labor and paid delivery drivers well for their work, because it is, I would argue, kind of a vital service.Corinne  It's a really interesting, big change in the way the world works in the past five years. I also think about working in a restaurant and what it must be like to make so much food that's getting eaten elsewhere.Virginia  Yeah, you're just boxing stuff up. You lose the community feeling of eating out. That feels like a loss. I felt less judgment for the couple spending $700 a week to order in than I did on the Marcum's grocery bill. I don't know what that means because they're both performing wealth, for sure. If you're in a position to spend $700 a week on dinner, even if you're scandalized by it, you have wealth. But also, man, cooking is hard. I'm tired, too. I get it.Corinne  Personally, I was feeling more judgment for the $700 a week, ordering-in people. But I will say, ordering in is so dependent on where you live. Like, if you live in New York, the quality of food you can order in is just a lot higher than for example where my mom lives, the only option is Domino's.Virginia  We have more options than that, but in terms of really good meals that I'm excited to order in, sushi or Indian, that's really it. Again, during that stressful period, there were weeks I ate sushi more than once, for sure. But it does put a cap on how often that works. I'm like, Well, you literally just ate that. My main critique of the Marcums is not that they spend that much on groceries, but that they so obliviously performed how much they spend in order to get engagement. Were sponsors involved? They weren't disclosed, but it seems very likely given how many product labels are in that reel - that somebody was paying them to promote that stuff. That is worth critiquing more than people's individual eating habits, because feeding yourself is hard, and feeding your kids is hard.Corinne  I think there's more guilt in general over ordering in versus buying groceries. Like buying groceries is better?Virginia  Yeah, it's Chris. He's out there making dinner with the two roast chickens every night. That's noble and heroic. And ordering in is like, 'Oh, you're just a slob on your couch.' I think they're morally equivalent activities, for sure. They're both ways to feed yourself. There's no bad way to feed yourself. Corinne  I definitely felt more guilt looking at my ordering in number versus my groceries number.Virginia  I felt bad about all of it. I felt I there was no good here for me, and also I feel like, Well, I'm doing what I can to get everybody fed in a house with a lot of complicated needs, and that is what it is. All right. Well, this was a really juicy conversation. I'm excited to hear people's thoughts. You can tell us if you think we spend way too much or not enough, and how you spend on groceries and take out. I would love to hear. 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈ButterVirginiaShould we do butter? CorinneYeah, what's your butter? VirginiaMy butter is my amazing calendar that you gave me for Christmas by your friend Robyn Frank.CorinneYes, Robyn A. Frank (website here.)VirginiaIt's been making me happy. I hung it up in January, but then I just switched to February and the February picture is so beautiful. I was just like, Oh, all year long, this is going to give me joy.Corinne  It's an amazing calendar. I also have one. Robyn is a friend and we do the Fat Swim together. She's an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based artist.Virginia  Her work is beautiful. It's really cheerful and rainbow-y, but not cutesy rainbows, like aesthetic rainbows. I may not be describing it well.CorinneThat's a good description. I like that. VirginiaI should also note that Corinne's other Christmas present to me, which I was going to make its own separate butter, but I'll just go ahead and shout it out now, is the L.L. Bean boat and tote that she had monogrammed with the word "BUTTER" on it. You guys, it's such a good gift. Corinne  Can't wait to see it in the wild.Virginia  It's been getting a lot of use. I need to take photos of it out and about. It's great. All right, what about you? Corinne  Ok, well, my butter is that this past weekend, one of my friends came over and we made Valentine's. VirginiaI love that. CorinneIt was really fun. I couldn't tell you the last time I did that - make a Valentine, or do a glue stick based craft. Afterwards, I was like, Wow, that was so fun. Am I going to start collaging? I know we were talking about that with Kim, too. So my butter is paper crafts, glue sticks.Virginia  I love collaging and glue sticks. My kids have never been super into it, but I do keep a lot of glue sticks on our art table to encourage it. I have found that if you're someone who has sensory feelings about glue sticks, a good sticker collection is really great here. Sometimes I'll just sit and make little sticker postcards. It's very satisfying. Are you sending them out to people?Corinne  Well, I haven't yet, but that is my intention. I will say, I think I made like, three. It took longer than I thought.Virginia  That makes sense. It's not a holiday gift, or like a Christmas card list.CorinneNope!VirginiaTwo hundred people are getting handmade Valentine's? No. That makes sense. I love that. And I love any opportunity to make Valentine's Day and adjacent activities that are not so, you know, commercial and heteronormative and blah, blah, blah.🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 All right. Well, this was a good episode. Make sure you are following us in your podcast player. Scroll down wherever you're listening, tap the stars, five of them please, and leave us a review. That really helps us grow and helps new listeners find conversations like these.Today's Indulgence Gospel is hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay. You can follow Virginia on Instagram at @v_solesmith and on Bluesky at @virginiasolesmith.bsky.social. You can follow Corinne on Instagram at @selfiefay, on Bluesky at @corinnefay.bsky.social and on Patreon at Big Undies.This podcast is produced by Kim Baldwin. You can follow Kim at @theblondemule on all platforms and subscribe to her newsletter at The Blonde Mule.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Farideh.Our video editor is Elizabeth Ayiku, who also runs the Me Little Me Foundation, a virtual food pantry supporting multiply marginalized folks recovering from eating disorders. Learn more and donate at melittlemefoundation.org.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!