Eat Well for Less?

Last night we watched “Eat Well for Less?” on BBC1 at 8pm.

We’ve seen a few of these programmes. The way to cut food costs keep coming back to the same things.

1.     At least try shop own brands. They are a lot cheaper & often taste just as good. The most expensive is not always the best nutritionally or tastewise.

2.     Prepare your own fresh vegetables. It’s amazing how much is put on the price to have them ready peeled & chopped. What is more they don’t last as well & so often end up in the bin.

3.     Ignore sell buy dates. Use your eyes & nose instead. It’s easy to tell if veg has gone off. It becomes soft & slimy. Bread goes green. Eggs float.

4.     Grate your own cheese. It only takes minutes to grate, but the cheese keeps better & it’s a lot cheaper.

5.     Do your own cooking from scratch. Takeaways are for convenience/treats, not every day.

6.     Shop with a list & stick to it. Decide what you are going to cook the week ahead & buy just those ingredients you are going to need for those meals.

7.     Tinned & frozen foods are just as good for you as fresh. Indeed often they are fresher than the “fresh” as they are tinned/frozen within hours of harvesting rather than the days it takes to get into the shops. What is more it often means less waste as you can just take out what you need from a packet of frozen veg/fruit, not buy for example a whole cauli/broccoli & then throw out the rest as it’s gone off.

8.     Eat together as a family. That way you use one lot of fuel to cook & the person doing the cooking can put all that love & effort  into one really good meal instead of feeling they’re on a culinary treadmill.

9.     Crisps, chocolate, cakes etc. are for treats, not every day. To eat too much of them is bad for your health, not to mention your waistline.

I have to say my mind boggles how some of these people food shop. Maybe they’ve never known what it is to shop on a small budget. You have to be inventive & canny with prices if you are going to eat well then. Some people end up saving over £100 a week. I can’t even imagine spending that much on a week’s food to save that much.

Maybe part of this reaction is due to the fact, we last night had a Sardine & Tomato Flan for dinner. This old favourite was discovered in the days when money was really tight for us. One full size flan, using one 120g tin of sardines, one tomato, a little milk & egg, makes a satisfying meal for four hungry people when accompanied by some veg.

Admittedly some people do have some excuse for being extravagant. On one show, the parents had a young child who had been in & out of hospital all her life & so tended to indulge her when she was home, to compensate for what the child has had to endure. Yesterday’s mother had had a childhood where food was always running out before the end of the week with the result they had sugar sandwiches as there was nothing else left in the house to eat. As a result she doesn’t feel safe unless she does a big shop & her cupboards are groaning with food. However, there does come a position in between, where all have an adequate amount to eat, love can be shown in the preparation, without the adverse health effects of overindulgence, often with foods that are nutritional bad or there being large amounts ending up being thrown out to feed the rubbish bin.