Meat is the most expensive item in your grocery cart, but you can slash your weekly spending by identifying where not to buy meat. Many supermarket chains pump beef and chicken full of saltwater solutions to artificially inflate the weight; this forces you to pay premium prices for added liquid.

Other retailers rely on clever marketing to charge astronomical markups for the exact cuts you can find at local butchers for much less. Stop throwing your hard-earned cash away on tough steaks, expiring ground chuck, and shrinking chicken breasts.

Here is the ultimate breakdown of the worst grocery stores for meat to protect your wallet and ensure you get exactly what you pay for.

Tip #1: Avoid Walmart for Fresh Steaks and Poultry

Walmart dominates the retail landscape by driving down prices on consumer goods, but their fresh meat department operates on a business model that actively works against your wallet. The retail giant relies on heavily centralized processing facilities. Your steaks and chicken breasts are cut, packaged, and pumped with preserving gases hundreds of miles away before they ever reach the store. You will not find a real butcher behind a counter at a standard Walmart.

The real financial drain happens through a process called plumping. Walmart frequently stocks chicken and pork injected with a saltwater and broth solution. The label will quietly admit the meat contains up to fifteen percent added liquid. You are literally paying meat prices for tap water. When you throw those chicken breasts into a hot skillet, that injected water immediately evaporates. Your generously sized chicken breast quickly shrinks into a tough, rubbery medallion.

Walmart beef presents another major issue for smart shoppers. They heavily stock Select-grade beef, which sits at the bottom of the USDA quality grading scale for retail supermarkets. Select beef lacks the internal fat marbling required for flavor and tenderness. You end up chewing through tough, flavorless steaks that still cost a premium. If you do a grocery comparison, meat prices at Walmart routinely fall behind the value offered by regional grocers or wholesale clubs that employ on-site butchers and sell Choice-grade or Prime-grade beef.

Walmart also frequently slaps highly visible Rollback stickers on massive family packs of ground beef to create the illusion of a massive bargain. However, that bulk ground beef often comes packaged in opaque tubes known as chubs. You cannot inspect the meat inside the tube. Shoppers frequently slice open these tubes only to find gray, oxidized meat hidden beneath the bright red exterior. Protect your grocery budget by purchasing meat you can actually see and inspect.