Grocery Savings – Milk $1.25 Per Gallon!

I have been trying an experiment.  We go through a lot of milk at our house and at the average cost of $2.50 per gallon it really adds up.  We cook and bake with it, put it on our cereal and drink it.  My girls drink a lot of milk! 

Awhile ago I was watching the Today Show.  I always zero in on the pieces they do about saving money and the families that come on the show to share how they do things.  I am always looking for new ideas and ways to improve the things that I do and make it better. 

They featured a family that discovered they were spending way too much on everything and decided to have a No Spend month.  What intrigued me was that as they were preparing for this challenge the father, quite by accident, discovered a way to double their milk savings right away. 

One morning he saw that there wasn’t enough milk in the house for his family to have breakfast.  Apparently they always buy whole milk so he took the milk jug and filled it with the same amount of cold tap water as the remaining milk.  He gave it a shake, put it on the table and the family ate breakfast.  He stated no one said anything and didn’t even seem to notice that anything was different.  I was skeptical.  Quite frankly, the thought of watered down milk sounded disgusting. 

I usually buy 2% milk for the girls and skim for myself.  Drinking powdered milk is not an option.  Even in a 50/50 ratio with fresh milk I can’t get past the taste and it smells too.  I also did the math awhile back and found I wouldn’t save enough to warrant the effort anyway.  Powdered milk has become really expensive. 

Okay, back to the watered down milk.  Curiosity got the better of me so I bought a gallon of whole milk; I needed it for homemade yogurt anyway.  I watered some down and gave it a try and guess what? 

It tastes really good! 

Getting it past my girls would be the biggest test.  My youngest didn’t notice and my oldest thought I was serving her whole milk.  No, actually it is half milk. J  After a couple of weeks I let them in on my little experiment.  At first their eyes got big but then they just shrugged and admitted the milk tastes fine. 

We’ve been doing this for three weeks now.  I really like it on my cereal because it is creamier than skim milk.  I don’t mind the lower calorie intake either.  Now is it as nutritional as drinking it straight from the bottle? 

Well no, it is only half the nutrients but when you consider all the other dairy items we consume – yogurt (lots of that), cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, ice cream - I don’t think we are really missing anything. 

A serving size of milk is 8oz. and I can tell you right now the glasses we drink from hold more than that so we were drinking more than a serving size to begin with.  Most of the time, my girls have more than one glass of milk with dinner.  I also send an 8oz. bottle of milk in their lunch and quite often a container of yogurt or cottage cheese too. 

Honestly, we probably have been drinking way too much milk.  This may help us cut back on our milk consumption without feeling like we are cutting back at all. 

What are your thoughts?  Would you consider giving this a try?  Do you think your family would notice?