All made from 100 grams of flour

Notes on the chart:

Water prices were not included, nor were oil prices for pancakes or French fries, which would up their price. 

For the pita, 1 teaspoon of bulk yeast was added, which cost less than a penny, so it wasn’t added to the price.

No other things were added to the foods, no salt, no sugar, no spices, no eggs, no butter, no oil unless noted.

All the foods were prepared how they’d usually be prepared- the noodles were regular, not mushy. Rice was prepared with a 2:1 ratio of water to rice, as it usually is. The barley was cooked until it was not chewy, but not mushy. The potatoes were boiled until soft, but not falling apart. The baked potatoes and sweet potatoes were baked until they were soft, but not burnt.

Applying the results to our life:
If everything cost the same amount per pound, it would be easy to see that the cheapest choice of starch would be mashed potatoes, then barley, followed by macaroni and then white rice and brown rice. However, each product in the store has a different price.
Where I live, stores sell 500 gram bags of pasta for $0.82. First, you need to figure out the cost per pound or kilogram. This pasta costs $0.74 per pound.
Rice, on the other hand, comes in 1 kilogram bags for $1.37, which is $0.62 per pound.
Pearl barley costs $1.68 for a 500 gram bag, which is $1.53 per pound.
Brown rice costs $2.88 per kilogram, or $1.31 per pound.
White flour costs $0.69 per kilogram, or $0.31 per pound.

Just from the initial price, you’d assume that white flour is the cheapest starch, followed by white rice, then pasta, then brown rice, then barley.
But before we can be sure if that really is the order of cheapest to most expensive, we have to apply the numbers in the chart above.

To figure out the true price of pasta, you need to divide $0.74 by 2.5. With this conversion, you’d discover that the true price of the pasta is $0.30 per pound.
White rice you’d divide by 2.4 and get a total of $0.26 per pound.
Pearl barley would be divided by 2.97 and get $0.52 per pound.
Brown rice would be divided by 2 and get $0.65 per pound.
White flour, depending on what you’re making, would either be $0.24 per pound (tortillas), $0.18 per pound (pancakes), or $0.21 (pitas).

It works out that the cheapest foods to make, in order, are pancakes, pitas, tortillas, white rice, pasta, pearl barley, then brown rice. While this is similar to the order if you hadn’t done the calculations, you’d discover that brown rice is more expensive than pearl barley, even though, when dry, the barley looks more expensive.
You also discover that the price of white flour and rice are not that different, so if rice is on sale for $0.50 a pound, and the price of white flour goes up to $0.38 per pound, the real rice price would be $0.25 a pound, making it cheaper than the flour’s $0.29 cents a pound tortillas, but still more expensive than the $0.22 cents a pound pancakes and just a tad cheaper than the $0.26 a pound pitas.

Mashed potatoes price comparisons would be as follows:
Assume that you bought the instant mashed potatoes, 400 grams for $2.65 at the local grocery store, or $3.01 per pound. Bought potatoes for $1.23 per kilogram, would be $0.55 per pound..
However, the real price of the mashed potatoes from fresh potatoes would be $0.43 per pound, and the instant mashed potatoes would be $0.53 per pound.
In such a case, the fresh mashed potatoes would be cheaper by a little.
However, I’m buying instant mashed potatoes in bulk for $1.42. The mashed potatoes made from the bulk bought stuff would be only $0.24 per pound, which is cheaper than the mashed potatoes made from the fresh stuff, as well as being cheaper than white rice, pasta, brown rice, and barley.

Of course, these numbers don’t necessarily apply to you, but I hope that by showing you this process, you’ll be able to figure out which starches are truly cheapest per pound where you live.

Water really makes the biggest difference in determining the final price of a food. Foods like barley and instant mashed potatoes that absorbed the most water during preparation end up being the most cost efficient. On the other end of the scale, foods like French fries and baked sweet potatoes that lose much of their water while cooking end up being the least cost efficient.

It may seem silly to factor water weight into figuring out the true cost of an item, but the fact of the matter is that water really makes our portions larger, which tricks us into thinking we’re getting more food, which makes us end up being satisfied with less food. Case in point- while you can probably eat a whole bag of dehydrated apple chips, you probably won’t find yourself eating more than one or two apples in one sitting.
Water both fools our minds and actually fills us up, so yes, water weight definitely is included when figuring out the true cost of a food.

Coming soon in this series:
Calculating the true price of beans
Calculating  the true price of proteins
Calculating the true price of cereals

Have you ever figured out the prices of different starches based on the finished product? Do you think calculating costs this way is accurate or not?
Would you use this chart to help you determine which starches are cheapest to buy where you live, or is it too complicated?