British families that go on these BBC save money shows can't be real

[Rufusgy]

Eat well for less.

A mum sends three children to school with shop bought microwaved pancakes laced with nuttela everyday

They spend 5 mins explaining how to use a bit of left over chicken in a stir fry, basically just chop up eveything and stir fry it. As if stir fry and woks are some newfangled invention

They can't afford a house deposit and have zero savings, but won't even consider not buying a brand

Slicing chease is 'too much work"

Seriously is any British family actually like this? Who the fuck is stupid enough that they need a prime time BBC show to tell them proccessed food is expensive and its cheaper to make it yourself.

Fuzzy that just isn't right. 500g of 5% fat mince is 680 calories.

Tesco British Beef Mince is 1260kcals for 500g.

yy bullshit. We're a lentil lasagne / bolognese / shepherds pie house. Can be prep heavy takes about 3 days to get the kitchen straight again but I make loads in one go and portion it off in the freezer.

But fuzzy it depends on which one it is, that's the point. The lean ones are lower.

Even the "lean" tesco mince is 940kcals for 500g.

I buy grated cheese because I can't be arsed to wash up the grater

I am a pitiful human being

I make my own bread and butter though, does that redeem me?

And the costings for meat on here show that most people are pricing up based on the cheaper mince not the 5% fat stuff which is more expensive.

Yy fuzzy many have no idea how the portions that they eat relate to calories and their own personal requirements. This is in part felling the growing obesity in the UK.

Boringly neurotic and extreme to some of my overweight family and friends I measure and account for the calories in the food I cook. I am on the light end of the mince portions (75g ish) discussed . We are not starving because the mince makes up a small part of a meal like spag bol and the bulk is the vegetable and tomato sauce.

Not a dietician but hcp and we recommend the plate that I hope is on this post.

As for the programme I find it difficult to watch - it seems so contrived.

I watched the episode this morning and they did not need to save money anymore than most of us would like to spend less if we can and the personal cost is not too high. The savings they made were also not because they were cooking more from scratch but because they cut out snacks - we could all save money by buying fewer bags of crisps and packets of biscuits.

they cut out convenience foods too (e.g pre-sliced cheese) - and wasted less by meal planning.

So they were eating well for less money

Goblinhat - true you can make my recipe much cheaper, I was trying to show that if your time poor that it's quick and easy to make a nice lasagne from 'scratch' without extra salt and additives without the time investment.

Puntastic - it's a fav in our house, cremefraiche instead of making the cheese sauce is great and if you use half fat version healthier too.

Meal planning definitely saves money but it can also save money if you are planning in advance to eat frozen pies and burgers.

I thought it was the first show in which they cut out sliced cheese.

Lasagne is not a quick meal to cook from scratch though, all that fiddling with different sauces and pasta.

I can't eat shop bought or restaurant lasagnes now - they taste disgusting compared to my own homemade version. We do the creme fraiche thing too, but I do add some cheese, sometimes ready sliced .

Reason I buy ready sliced is that DS has pack lunches sometimes, rather than school meals. Ready sliced cheese just makes it a lot quicker to get his wrap ready. To me the lazy cheap option is to pay £2.50 for a school roll instead, therefore even with my spendthrift cheese habits I'm still quids in.

I buy ready sliced and grated cheese, I am quite lazy though, No shame in not wanting to do something if you don't have to.

It isn't, the one I just bought from Tesco is 135 cal per 100g. Agreed its not in the spirit of value for money but neither is eating 250g of mince in one sitting whatever type

It is a question of food culture as well as money, isn't it?

Plus expectations, like always wanting a full cooked meal once or twice a day when it wouldn't hurt to have something lighter on some days.

I don't think cooking from scratch is cheaper generally, but if you plan meals and shopping carefully (so there are no leftover ingredients, as you use them for more than one meal) it is not as much more as some have suggested. The key thing is not eating meat every day.

Ready meals every day would be very unhealthy.

Indeed. I don't think it changes the fact that 125g of minced beef in bolognese sauce is a generous portion.

I'm more concenred about the fact that BBC went to a nutritionist Estell Gaudier about the relative merits of spreads vs butter. At no point did they tell you that this nutritionist works for Unilever which just happens to make I Can't Believe its Not Butter, Stork and Flora.

hmmmmmm

Cooking from scratch is cheaper for some things - but to be honest about the cost you should also factor in an hourly salary for prep time and for some dishes the additional fuel cost if they are going to need more energy. If I factor in £8 an hour for my time a jar of pasta sauce is way cheaper than making it myself.

They did say she works for Unilever on screen actually
.

Still that bit was shit, trying to sell spreads even though they are far more processed than butter.

and I'm pretty sure they're on a kick-back from the rape-seed oil producers

oh did it?? i'll have to check again!

I had that lasagne from aldi. The mince was really weird and I found a big chewy bit of artery or something in it. Put me right off! Back to making my own...

I bought steak cubes from Aldi last week and I threw the lot out after cooking then tasting. What a waste, every piece was so chewy and stringy it was inedible. . I was trying to batch cook so wasted two portions.