We Priced Four Everyday Staples From the Same Federal Data and Did the Math on the Plate
Credit: Daily Vitality
Stand in the grocery aisle with a bag of potatoes in one hand and a box of spaghetti in the other, and the price tag seems to settle things fast. Potatoes are the cheapest of the everyday starches by the pound. It feels like the obvious budget pick.
But you are not really buying pounds. You are buying what ends up on the plate: the calories that fill you up, the protein, the fiber. A pound of potatoes is mostly water, a pound of dry pasta swells to more than twice its weight in the pot, and a pound of bread goes straight from bag to plate unchanged. Once you follow each staple from the shelf to the fork, the price ranking turns almost upside down.
So for National Pasta Day on October 17, we did the math. We took one set of national average prices, one set of USDA nutrition records and the official conversion factors from dry to cooked, and built a worksheet you can check line by line. The short version: the cheapest staple depends on what you are trying to buy.
Every price in this piece comes from the average price series published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the U.S. city average. The BLS itself describes these as estimates of national price levels, as distinct from the Consumer Price Index, which tracks price change. That matters: these are not the numbers on your local receipt, and your store may be higher or lower. What they give you is a fair, dated, like-for-like comparison.
We used August 2026, the latest month available, for four of the five rows:
All nutrition values come from USDA FoodData Central's Standard Reference records, and we list each record ID in the table notes so you can look them up. The BLS pasta series title does not say "dry," but it is priced per pound as sold, which on a typical shelf means boxed dry pasta. Refrigerated fresh pasta would cost considerably more.
The key step most comparisons skip is the yield factor, which is the number that turns a pound as sold into a pound as eaten. Pasta and rice absorb water and get heavier. Potatoes lose moisture in the oven and, if you peel them, lose weight to the peeler too. Bread does not change at all.
To pin down each factor, we checked it more than one way:
One honest wrinkle: when we ran the same check using protein alone, both pasta and rice came out about 5% lower. USDA's dry and cooked records are measured separately and do not balance perfectly, and some starch escapes into the cooking water. We used the solids and calorie figures, which agree with each other and with the Food Buying Guide, and flag the gap here so you know it exists.
Enriched and unenriched versions of pasta and rice carry identical calories, protein and fiber in USDA's records. Only iron and some B vitamins differ, so enrichment does not change any of the math below.
Here is every step in one place. Prices are per pound as sold; everything after the yield column is per 100 grams as eaten.
Prices: BLS U.S. city average, August 2026 (whole wheat, May 2026). Nutrition: USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy records 169737 (pasta, cooked), 168878 (rice, cooked), 170093 (potato baked with skin), 170033 (potato baked, flesh only), 174924 (white bread), 172688 (whole-wheat bread). Winner per metric in bold.
If you would rather think in dollars, flip the last three columns around. One dollar buys roughly:
White rice delivers the cheapest calories of the set at 6.7 cents per 100 calories, with pasta close behind at 8.1 cents. That part is not a shock. Both are dry goods that soak up free water in the pot, so every pound you buy multiplies on the plate.
The surprise is at the other end. Potatoes, the cheapest staple on the shelf at under a dollar a pound, cost 28.2 cents per 100 calories when baked with the skin on. That is about four times the cost of rice and more expensive than both breads.
The reason is simple once you see it. A raw potato is about 79% water, according to USDA's record for raw potatoes with flesh and skin. You pay for that water at the register, and much of it cooks off in the oven. Dry pasta, by contrast, is only about 10% water when you buy it, and rice about 12%. Per pound, you are buying far more of the food itself.
This is not a price blip, either. At their lowest point in the past 12 months, 84.7 cents a pound, potatoes still cost about 24 cents per 100 calories. For potatoes to match pasta on calories, they would need to fall to roughly 28 cents a pound, less than a third of today's price.
Peeling adds to the cost. Taking the skin off turns 1 pound of potatoes into 0.74 pound of baked flesh instead of 0.82, which raises the cost per 100 calories from 28.2 to 31.3 cents.
Pasta is the clear protein winner at 2.2 cents per gram, about a third cheaper than rice at 3.3 cents and roughly half the cost of either bread. Dry enriched pasta carries 13 grams of protein per 100 grams, according to USDA's dry pasta record, close to double the 7.1 grams in dry white rice.
That may be the most useful number in this piece for a budget-minded kitchen. Pasta is rarely thought of as a protein food, and it is not a complete one on its own. But when the question is simply how many grams of protein a dollar can buy from the starch on your plate, pasta beats the other three comfortably, and it does so on August 2026 prices and May 2026 prices alike.
Bread lands in the middle. White bread costs 4.5 cents per gram of protein and whole-wheat bread 5.0 cents. Whole-wheat bread packs more protein per slice, but its higher price per pound almost exactly cancels that advantage out.
Potatoes trail far behind at 10.5 cents per gram with the skin and 14.8 cents peeled, for the same reason they lose on calories: most of what you are paying for is water.
For a wider view of where these staples sit against beans, eggs and meat, our ranking of the best protein per dollar across 25 foods runs the same kind of math across the whole grocery store.
On the as-eaten worksheet, pasta wins fiber too, at 7.1 cents per gram. Whole-wheat bread comes second at 10.3 cents, skin-on potatoes third at 11.9 cents and white bread fourth at 14.9 cents. White rice, with just 0.4 grams of fiber per 100 grams cooked, is by far the most expensive fiber at 21.9 cents per gram.
Here is the asterisk. USDA's cooked pasta record implies about 4.3 grams of fiber per 100 grams of dry pasta, while its dry pasta record lists 3.2 grams. If you run the math from the dry record instead, pasta's cost rises to 9.5 cents per gram, and the top three bunch up within about a cent: pasta at 9.5, skin-on potatoes at 10.3 and whole-wheat bread at 10.3. On May 2026 prices, measured that way, skin-on potatoes edge ahead by a hair.
So the fair reading is this: pasta, skin-on potatoes and whole-wheat bread are all reasonable fiber buys among the staples, and pasta usually comes out slightly ahead. Rice and peeled potatoes are the weak spots. Keeping the potato skin on makes the biggest single difference, because the peel carries a meaningful share of the fiber.
For readers building a pantry around fiber specifically, our list of the best fiber per calorie across 50 foods puts these staples in context with beans, bran cereals and vegetables.
Per-100-gram math is precise, but nobody serves themselves exactly 100 grams of rice. So here is a second view, using typical portions and the portion weights in USDA's records.
Portion weights from USDA FoodData Central: 1 cup spaghetti not packed (124 g), 1 cup cooked rice (158 g), 1 slice white bread (25 g), 1 slice whole-wheat bread (32 g), 1 medium baked potato (173 g).
A cup of rice and a cup of pasta cost about the same, roughly 14 to 16 cents, and deliver nearly identical calories. The pasta brings two-thirds more protein and nearly four times the fiber for about two cents more.
A medium baked potato, at about 45 cents, costs roughly three times as much as a cup of either grain, and it delivers fewer calories. It matches whole-wheat bread on fiber, though, and it brings its own things to the plate that this worksheet does not measure, such as potassium and vitamin C.
If you are curious how starches like these fit into a full day of eating on a tight budget, our look at whether you can hit 100 grams of protein a day on $5 builds complete meal plans with the same cost-per-gram approach.
Whole-wheat bread costs roughly 54% more per pound than white bread at BLS prices (May against August figures). What that premium buys is fiber and protein: 6.0 grams of fiber and 12.5 grams of protein per 100 grams, against 2.7 and 8.9 grams in white bread, according to USDA's whole-wheat bread record. On cost per gram of fiber, whole wheat is the better buy of the two breads, 10.3 cents against 14.9. On calories, white bread is cheaper.
Whole-wheat pasta is a similar story, though here we can only share the nutrition side. BLS does not publish a national price for it, and we did not want to guess. Per 56-gram dry serving, the standard 2-ounce portion on most boxes, USDA's records put whole-wheat pasta at about 7.8 grams of protein and 5.2 grams of fiber, compared with 7.3 grams of protein and 1.8 grams of fiber for regular enriched pasta. That is nearly three times the fiber for a similar calorie count.
The same gap applies to newer pastas made from chickpeas, lentils or added protein. They sit outside this worksheet because there is no free, national price series for them to compare fairly. If you buy them, the math in this article works the same way: divide your shelf price per pound by the grams of protein or fiber per pound on the label.
For a priced look at whole grains more broadly, our breakdown of 12 ways to reach the whole-grain sweet spot costs out oats, brown rice, whole-wheat bread and more.
These figures are national averages, so your own prices will differ. Store brands, bulk bags and sales can move any single row a long way. A 20-pound bag of rice or a 10-pound bag of potatoes will almost always beat the average per-pound price, and a boutique loaf of bread will not. The ranking between staples is sturdier than any single number, because the big gaps come from water content and cooking yield, not from pennies on the price tag.
The comparison also stops at the plain staple. Butter on the potato, sauce on the pasta and oil in the rice all change the final bill and the calorie count. And this is a cost worksheet, not a verdict on which starch is better for you. Each of the four brings nutrients the table does not measure, and the right choice depends on what else is on the plate and what you enjoy eating.
If you want to apply the same method to other foods, the formula is short. Take the price per pound, divide by 453.6 to get the price per gram, then divide by the grams of protein or fiber per gram of the food as you buy it. The same approach drives our cottage cheese, Greek yogurt and skyr price showdown and much of our food-comparison coverage.
About the Author
Ryan May is a digital publishing leader with more than 25 years of experience turning complex information into clear, useful editorial work. At Daily Vitality, he focuses on evidence-led reporting about nutrition, fitness, healthy aging, and long-term wellbeing, informed by his own interests in cooking, yoga, cycling, and sustainable healthy habits.
White rice, at about 6.7 cents per 100 calories on August 2026 national average prices. Pasta is close behind at 8.1 cents, white bread costs 15.1 cents, and baked potatoes with skin cost about 28 cents.
A raw potato is about 79% water, so each pound delivers only about 350 calories. Dry pasta and rice are only 10% to 12% water and deliver more than 1,600 calories per pound before cooking.
Among these four staples, yes. At 2.2 cents per gram, pasta is the cheapest protein of the group, about a third cheaper than rice and roughly half the cost of bread. It is not a complete protein on its own, and it is usually paired with other foods.
About 2.37 pounds of al dente spaghetti, according to USDA's Food Buying Guide, or roughly 5-1/4 cups. That is why the price per cooked serving is far lower than the price per pound suggests.
USDA's records imply about 2.8 pounds of cooked long-grain white rice per pound dry. USDA's Food Buying Guide puts it at about 7-1/2 cups cooked.
About 19% of the weight. USDA's Food Buying Guide says 1 pound of whole white or russet potatoes yields 0.81 pound of peeled, ready-to-cook potato, and 0.74 pound once peeled and baked, compared with 0.82 pound baked with the skin on.
Not for this math. USDA's enriched and unenriched records for pasta and rice list the same calories, protein and fiber. Enrichment adds iron and certain B vitamins.
The BLS whole-wheat bread series currently ends in May 2026, three months behind the other four staples. When we reran the other staples at May 2026 prices, every ranking on the as-eaten worksheet stayed the same.
There is no free national average price for them, so they cannot be compared fairly on cost. To check them yourself, divide your shelf price per pound by the grams of protein or fiber per pound listed on the label.
