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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to wonder if home cooked food is really cheaper than ready meals?

75 replies

Northeastgirl · 22/03/2011 22:37

Current wisdom seems to be that home cooked food is far cheaper than ready meals.

I enjoy cooking so most of our meals are prepared from scratch. I can well believe that if you prepare your own food / batch cook / buy food when it's on special / stick to what is in season etc, then you are getting better value for money, but I don't think it can actually be cheaper than buying ready meals?

My cousin lives on his own and doesn't like to cook, so all his food is ready meals. There is no waste and I think it must be cheaper than our food bill. This evening I spent £5 just on 2 ingredients for a risotto, on top of the other ingredients that were already in the fridge. We do eat meat, but not every day and very little food is wasted as any random vegetables go into a stir fry or pasta sauce.

OP posts:

NinkyNonker · 23/03/2011 07:30

Depends how much of what you buy goes into the cupboard for another use.

DilysPrice · 23/03/2011 07:47

Depends on the veg as much as anything. Buying veg from a normal supermarket can be shockingly expensive, but at the market/Lidl it hacks the price down noticeably.

exoticfruits · 23/03/2011 07:50

You have to shop in the right place. I go to the market and stock up on fruit and veg, Lidl is cheap and if I go to my regular supermarket at the right time, fruit and veg are marked down. If you eat more vegetarian meals it is cheaper. You also save a lot because you have a stock cupboard with flour, oil etc. You at least know what goes into it when you cook from scratch.

ConstanceFelicity · 23/03/2011 08:01

I agree with you OP. I love cooking, but when I was broke one week I did our shopping at Iceland and saved just under half my usual budget.
I'm not a posh cook either- Things like home-made pizza, shepard's pie, fish and veg, bread- All are cheaper for me if I buy ready made.

I never, ever do buy them ready-made though, other than pizza on the occasional Friday!

Morloth · 23/03/2011 08:02

I think you are not exactly comparing like for like.

If a ready meal is cheap then it probably isn't very good.

Lasagne is one of the few meals I buy ready made, but I tend to buy real lasagne made with meat and wine and actual egg pasta etc, so they cost a bomb - probably more than a home made one. But if I was to buy a cheaper lasagne, with lots of fillers (i.e. corn starch and crap meat and extra salt to try to make it taste better), then it would be cheaper than homemade.

So comparing a good homemade lasagne with a good pre-made one the ready one is going to cost more.

BaroqueAroundTheClock · 23/03/2011 08:07

but constance - because you were broke did you leave out any other extras you may have bought for during the week? I know when I'm broke I spend a lot less then when I'm not, yet the actual meal cost is usually around the same.

I just can't see how ever the 75p ready meals work out cheaper - they're tiny and while you may spend less on the meals you'll end up paying out extra for people to "top up" on

kreecherlivesupstairs · 23/03/2011 08:44

Whether they are cheaper or not, ready meals do tend to be crap. My FiL existed on them and looked grey. He recently met and married a widow woman who cooks everything from scratch. He is not only happy, he is pink now.

Chil1234 · 23/03/2011 08:56

I think home-made food, made with ingredients you can recognise, may occasionally be more expensive than ready-meals but it's, more often than not, a lot cheaper as well as healthier. Out of the typical ready-meal price about 40% is profit, another 30-40% is covered by packaging, factory costs and transport, and the remaining pennies get you very poor quality ingredients, enhanced with salt, colours and flavours to disguise the lack of nutrition. Prisoners get better meals.

Your single person can knock up a simple plate of beans on wholegrain toast and not only would it be cheaper but it would also do them far more good than a cheap ready-meal.

lesley33 · 23/03/2011 08:59

I agree with some posters that some ready meals are tasty and healthy. They tend to be expensive but I do eat them sometimes. But I always try and buy the ones that only have ingredients that you would use in a kitchen.

lesley33 · 23/03/2011 09:02

Frozen veg - especially out of season - is usually cheaper than fresh. But frozen veg is usually better for you than fresh as it is frozen so soon after picking.

ConstanceFelicity · 23/03/2011 09:12

No Baroque, meal for meal it was cheaper. We are big eaters and Iceland's fare filled us up and was tasty, but I can't imagine it being very good for you, so I only buy frozen veg there now, occasionally fish. I find he frozen broccoli brilliant, as are the peas and sweetcorn, and we use a lot of quorn too.

BaroqueAroundTheClock · 23/03/2011 09:14

but they're tiny - I have shopped at Iceland once or twice and their ready meals would hardly have filled me up with their size let alone DS1 and 2!

itisnotgoingwelltoday · 23/03/2011 09:22

I cook everything pretty much from scratch apart from once a fortnight when we do the BOGOF deal on a Tuesday from the local pizza place and get 2 pizzas for £4.20.

I think ready meals might seem cheaper, but you would be eating crap and the portions would be small - even my DD's would be topping up and that would mean more crisps and biscuits. Which aren't good for you either.

And your cupboards are full and there's more stuff for the emergency dinner when your child brings home 2 friends kind of thing.

girlywhirly · 23/03/2011 09:22

kreecher, my Fil (very elderly and v. poor sight) used to buy ready meals from M&S as cooking from scratch had become too difficult. I started to make meals for him which went in his freezer, and unsurprisingly they all got eaten before the ready meals, although couldn't do regularly as we lived too far away.

He used to say that, while convenient, the ready meals got a bit same-y and boring. I don't doubt that they were cheaper for him, because he didn't need to buy loads of ingredients and have unused stuff go off, which would have been a waste of money.

missorinoco · 23/03/2011 09:28

You are right, but it's because one tends to compare standard or cheap ready meal prices against the cost of one's food as opposed to the finest/taste the difference etc range.

I agree re the chocolate biscuit analogy - I used to make "luxury" shortbread, but then worked out how much they were costing me and was shocked. Taste mush nicer than el-cheapo shortbread biscuits though.

MackerelOfFact · 23/03/2011 10:59

I haven't eaten ready meals with any regularity since I was a student, but I remember being able to buy 5 frozen meals for £4, things like thai prawn curry and rice, fishermans pie, lasagne, chilli with wedges, stuff like that. They weren't discernably worse than cheap pub meals, and definitely cheaper than buying prawns, fish, spices, potatoes, mince, etc and cooking from scratch.

Ingredients these days cost so much - butter is rarely less than £1, one pepper can set you back the best part of a quid, a tin of coconut milk more than £2 in some shops. Even a small pot of spice costs £1.75 in Sainsburys, and fresh herbs are about £1 for a small bunch. I do cook from scratch these days but absolutely agree that it's expensive to do so. Most of our meat and fruit are purchased from reduced aisles, vegetables are all supermarket value ranges, and it takes a lot of time and effort not only to cook the meals but to source cheaper ingredients. I can see why people don't bother. One ready meal doesn't cause lasting damage.

LizzieMint73 · 23/03/2011 11:42

Mackerel

I too am shocked at the price of tinned coconut milk lately, but asda (and probably most of the other supermarkets and certainly any 'ethnic' shops) sell creamed coconut for about 50p or less. This is equivalent to 2 tins of coconut milk and you just break off the amount you need (I use quarter of a packet in about half pint of boiling water).

Once you have a good store cupboard, cooking from scratch is cheaper and healthier than ready meals as long as you plan well and don't waste anything. I feed me and DP on about £40 per week and we eat very well (currently have a freezer stuffed full of meat M&S and waitrose as make careful use of special offers etc)

Laquitar · 23/03/2011 12:09

Asda has ready meals for £1 but God knows whats in them.

Jars with ready sauces are more expensive.

Quiques and frozen pizzas are usually very cheap and often buy one get one free but again the quality.

I am wondering about Oven chips. They are cheap especially when on offer, and what can be wrong with them?

catwhiskers10 · 23/03/2011 12:22

I don't think so. Most of the food we eat is cooked from scratch as I like to know exactly what's going into it and occasionally we eat the kind of stuff you just put in the oven (breaded chicken for eg) but I think it would be a lot cheaper for us to live on ready meals and frozen food than cooking from scratch by the time you add up all the major ingredients and the seasoning etc.

LaWeasel · 23/03/2011 12:25

As a single person, with repetative tastes ready meals would probably be much the same.

There are certain things that cost the same either way, like pesto.

Cooking from scratch but only cheap meals (jacket potatoes with cheese and beans type) is definately still cheaper than ready meals when there is more than one person though since you can make better use of fresh stuff and bulking out with cheap ingredients.

Laquitar · 23/03/2011 12:29

Ah yes pesto! I have finally found the best one: tesco red pesto 98p, it gots pieces of sun dried tomato in it!

BadPoet · 23/03/2011 12:35

I find cooking meals from scratch cheaper. But I have decided that baking (with the possible exception of flapjack) isn't worth it, even if using value butter etc.

mrsscoob · 23/03/2011 12:36

As a single person it would be I suppose, but a half decent ready meal is going to cost at least £3.50 and multiply that by a family of 5 then it really would work out much more expensive.

Ephiny · 23/03/2011 13:02

I suppose it depends what foods you're talking about. I haven't bought a ready meal as such for many years - but as an example, we eat a lot of soup as it's an easy dinner with some bread. I often make a bit pot of soup for literally a few pennies per (generous) portion, or occasionally we buy a carton of ready-made soup which is £2 for 2 (small) portions. So clearly the home-made soup saves us a lot since we have it so often, and it's much nicer IMO and healthier as there's more veg in it and less salt.

A lot of the meals I cook are vegetarian/vegan stews and curries with rice, which can work out very cheap as well. I think it's important as someone mentioned earlier to compare like with like, i.e. are the quality and freshness of the ingredients in a ready meal as good as you'd use to cook with?

I don't bother with baking cakes or bread or anything though, doesn't seem worth the time and effort and though I haven't worked it out, I doubt it would save much/any money. Similarly wouldn't bother making my own chips (not much wrong with oven chips IMO), pizza etc.

fedupandfifty · 23/03/2011 13:16

Probably cheaper if you stick to basics from the cupboard, such as stews etc. However, once you factor in the cost of gas and electricity, electric dishwashing etc it is probably less cost-effective than it is made out to be.

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