Chapter 32 — Self-Check Quiz

20 questions. Answers with explanations at the end. Aim for 16+.

Questions

1. The cost of food, according to §32.0, is at least four numbers. Which is NOT one of them?

• a) What it costs
• b) When you have to pay
• c) What it costs to get to
• d) What the manufacturer paid for the ingredients

2. Two households have identical monthly food budgets. One pays more all year. Why?

• a) Poorer shopping skills
• b) Cash flow — money arriving weekly and variably prevents bulk purchase
• c) Different tastes
• d) They shop on different days

3. Bulk buying is primarily a problem of:

• a) Knowledge
• b) Capital — the cheaper unit price requires more money in your hand on the day
• c) Motivation
• d) Recipe planning

4. §32.1's recommended bulk strategy is:

• a) Stock the whole pantry in one trip
• b) One bulk item per pay cycle, prioritized by the size of the unit-cost gap
• c) Never buy in bulk
• d) Borrow to buy in bulk

5. "Store the buffer as food, not money" works because:

• a) Food appreciates in value
• b) A full cupboard cannot be spent on anything else
• c) Cash is unsafe at home
• d) It reduces tax

6. The cheapest foods per 100 kcal are:

• a) Pulses and eggs
• b) Refined grains, oils, sugar and starch
• c) Frozen vegetables
• d) Tinned fish

7. Foods that are cheap in EVERY column — calories, protein and vegetables — include:

• a) Salmon, quinoa and blueberries
• b) Dried pulses, eggs, milk, tinned fish, frozen vegetables, oats, cabbage, root vegetables
• c) Only refined grains
• d) There are none

8. The honest statement about eating well on a low income is:

• a) It is impossible
• b) It is possible, and the expensive part is almost never the food — it is time, equipment, storage, skill, access and daily cooking
• c) It is easy and people simply don't try
• d) It requires supplements

9. "It's cheaper to buy fast food than to cook" is:

• a) ✅ Well supported
• b) 🟠 Probably false per calorie, 🟡 unclear once time, fuel, equipment, skill and storage are counted
• c) ❌ Not supported in any sense
• d) ⚗️ Untested

10. The largest recoverable sum in most squeezed households is:

• a) Branded vs own-brand
• b) Food thrown away — typically 15–25% of what is bought
• c) Bus fares
• d) Spices

11. A household that wastes a quarter of its food is paying:

• a) A 25% premium
• b) A 33% premium on everything it eats
• c) No premium — the waste is already in the budget
• d) A 10% premium

12. The fuel point reverses which piece of standard advice?

• a) Buy in bulk
• b) "Batch cook a big tray in the oven" — efficient with time, inefficient with fuel
• c) Shop with a list
• d) Buy own-brand

13. The one piece of equipment the chapter says pays for itself:

• a) A blender
• b) A pressure or slow cooker — but only for someone who eats pulses regularly
• c) A food processor
• d) A bread machine

14. The eight-week pantry build starts with:

• a) Smoked paprika
• b) Salt and black pepper
• c) Olive oil
• d) Soy sauce

15. Amortizing a $3 jar of cumin over sixty meals gives a cost per meal of about:

• a) $0.50
• b) $0.05
• c) $3.00
• d) $0.25

16. §32.6's rule about the order of savings is:

• a) Hardest first
• b) Zero-time savings first, high-return time savings second, low-return time savings only if you want to
• c) Cheapest ingredient first
• d) Alphabetical

17. Which single row in §32.6's table returns most per minute?

• a) Soaking dried beans
• b) Cutting waste from 25% to 10%
• c) Making stock from a carcass
• d) Taking the bus to the large store

18. The most damaging part of the convenience-store premium is:

• a) Unit price
• b) RANGE — the cheap, excellent foods are simply not stocked
• c) Opening hours
• d) Queue length

19. New supermarkets opened in underserved areas:

• a) Transformed local diets
• b) Changed purchasing less than predicted — access was real but money was the binding constraint
• c) Had no measurable effect whatsoever
• d) Increased food insecurity

20. §32.11's three failure modes in food-poverty advice are:

• a) Too long, too short, too technical
• b) The competence assumption · the recipe that assumes a pantry · the moral frame
• c) Too cheap, too expensive, too foreign
• d) Wrong currency, wrong country, wrong season

Answers

1. d) What the manufacturer paid. ⚠️ The four are: what it costs, WHEN you must pay, what it costs to REACH, and what it costs to TURN INTO A MEAL. Advice that optimizes only the first fails the households it is aimed at. §32.0.

2. b) Cash flow. ⚠️ Income and cash flow are different constraints, and this is the most under-stated fact in food-budget advice. Household B is not poorer on this measure and will pay more all year, permanently. §32.1.

3. b) Capital. ⚠️ A 10 lb sack at $0.84/lb is 53% cheaper per pound and requires 4.7× as much money on the day. If you have $40 for the week, you buy the small bag — knowing it is worse value — because the alternative isn't waiting, it's not eating on Thursday. §32.1.

4. b) One bulk item per pay cycle, by unit-cost gap. ⚠️ Not the things you use most — the things with the biggest bulk discount, which is rice and pulses. It is the only bulk strategy that survives a tight week. §32.1.

5. b) A cupboard cannot be spent on anything else. ⚠️ Money set aside in week one for week three gets spent on week one's emergency, every time. CS1 demonstrates it: her monthly total didn't change, the shape did. §32.1.

6. b) Refined grains, oils, sugar, starch. ⚠️ And that is not an accident of retail — it is what a century of agricultural policy, processing and distribution was optimized to produce. §32.2.

7. b) The dozen intersection foods. ⚠️ They are cheap in every column and nutritionally excellent by every standard this book has applied. It is not a compromise list and it is not a poverty list — it is close to what Chapter 37 will recommend to everybody. §32.2, §32.3.

8. b) Possible, and the expensive part is not the food. ⚠️ A four-serving lentil, onion, tomato and rice dinner costs about $2.60 total and beats most $12 ones. It also takes 35 minutes, a hob, a pan, six spices bought once, and someone with the energy to stand up and do it. §32.2, §32.3.

9. b) 🟠 per calorie, 🟡 overall. ⚠️ Per meal, at the point of purchase, requiring no equipment, fuel, time, skill, storage or leftover management, fast food is frequently the cheapest option available — and it is available at 10 p.m. after a double shift, which the lentils are not. §32.2.

10. b) Waste. ⚠️ Bigger than own-brand, bigger than the convenience premium, bigger than unplanned purchases. And Chapter 31 §31.13 established it is a planning and storage problem, not a discipline problem. §32.4.

11. b) 33%. ⚠️ Buy $180, eat $135, and your effective cost per meal is a third higher than the receipt says. Which makes throwing away less the highest-yield financial intervention in this book — and it involves buying nothing. §32.4.

12. b) The oven tray bake. ⚠️ An oven at 200°C for an hour is on the order of 1.5–2 kWh; a hob ring with a lid is a fraction of that. On a prepayment meter that is money visibly leaving a display while the food cooks. If fuel binds, the answer is the hob, a lid, or a pressure cooker. §32.5.

13. b) A pressure or slow cooker, conditionally. ⚠️ It converts a permanent TIME cost into a one-off MONEY cost: dried beans are 2–3× cheaper than tinned and the reason people buy tinned is the soak-and-simmer, not the price. The condition matters — it pays for itself only for someone who eats pulses regularly. §32.5.

14. b) Salt and pepper. ⚠️ Nothing works without them and they last a year. The whole build is about $20–25 spread over two months, and after week eight a bag of lentils and a tin of tomatoes stops being a chore and becomes a dozen dinners. §32.5b.

15. b) About $0.05. ⚠️ Judged against the meal it is bought for, a spice looks expensive; judged against the year, it is the cheapest thing in the kitchen. This is why "just add smoked paprika" is bad advice given once and good advice given eight weeks ahead. §32.5b.

16. b) Zero-time first, high-return second, low-return only by choice. ⚠️ Own-brand substitution costs literally no time and returns real money, which makes it the first thing anyone should do and the thing least often discussed. §32.6.

17. b) Cutting waste. ⚠️ Roughly $108/hour of effort, an order of magnitude above anything else on the list, and it involves buying nothing. Soaking beans to save $1.50 runs at about $6/hour — worth doing if you enjoy it, and not the thing to start with. §32.6.

18. b) Range. ⚠️ The corner shop does not stock dried lentils, a 10 lb sack of rice, or own-brand frozen vegetables — so the cheap-and-excellent list from §32.3 is simply unavailable. It is the part that does most damage and the part least visible in a price comparison. §32.7.

19. b) Less than predicted. ⚠️ Not zero — small. The straightforward reading is that access was a real constraint but not the binding one; money was. Which is why the chapter concludes that the strongest evidence points at financial rather than educational interventions. §32.10.

20. b) The competence assumption · the pantry-assuming recipe · the moral frame. ⚠️ Households under financial pressure are usually optimizing HARDER than the person advising them, on more constraints, with less slack — Denisha was running six of nine slots and nobody had asked. §32.11.

Scoring

Three items worth checking regardless of score.

Question 2. ⚠️ If cash flow versus income hasn't landed, nothing else in this chapter will.

Question 11. ⚠️ The 33% premium is the largest number in the chapter and the one most people have never calculated.

Question 20. ⚠️ §32.11 is the section I would most want a reader who advises others to have read.