To think cooking from scratch is not always cheaper?

[IonaNE]

A few posts on another thread (not primarily about this) have got me thinking.

In my local ASDA Weight Watchers ready meals are £2 each. If I buy one for each night of the week (to make life easier for when I get home from work), that's £10 for a hot meal on every evening of the week. For this I get a balanced meal that, over the whole week, contains chicken, beef, prawns, pasta, rice and potatoes, vegetables and a variety of sauces. On top of that it's exactly as much as I need to eat, there are no leftovers, I am not using energy by cooling unnecessary stuff in the fridge. I don't need to keep a host of jars of sauces, oils and spices which would otherwise be needed to cook all this from scratch either. And finally, I am not using energy to cook all that from scratch, and then to wash up all that was used in the process. (I do use energy to microwave the meals, 5 mins each; and the microwave is very cheap to run.)

I can cook from scratch all that is in those meals. I don't enjoy cooking but I can do it if necessary. But I don't think that I would get that variety of hot food for just £10 a week. Furthermore, if I bought all the ingredients, they would be in portions much bigger than what I need for one supper. Then I would either need to freeze them; but also: does everyone who cooks from scratch only eat a WW meal-portion of everything before they freeze the rest? I find I eat larger portions if I cook. And while I'm not overweight, I really don't need to put on weight.

So I think eating ready meals is actually cheaper than cooking from scratch. It is also less time consuming (=more time for other things) and provided you choose the right ones and read the labels, not necessarily less healthy either.

Oh a YABU for eating WW meals. They take out the fat and put in sugar. You are far better eating high fat low carb meals, its carbs that make you fat.

I was flicking channels and found 'it doesn't get any tougher than this' bald cookery guy Greg whatshisface showing a woman how to make veggie chilli on Fri. He proudly announced it cost £3.99. It's always in the reduced cabinet where I shop come 6pm - at £1.50 & there is usually a meat chilli, a curry or a nice carbonara around that price too, it's why I shop later for a weekend readymeal 'treat'. Rest of week its snacky type stuff as i get main meals at subsidised work restaurant for £2 a meal.

She wants to eat WW meals for whatever reason - why keep having a go at her for this

But is the veggie chilli from the reduced cabinet for £1.50 going to be of a similar quality and quantity to the chilli that Greg made, Sazzle?

"I think the initial outlay is expensive but you just keep using the remaining ingredients over and over."

So you have to eat the same thing all the time?

"A full stock of dried herbs and spices lasts a long while, same with frozen veggies. I think it's an excuse that cooking from scratch is more expensive. You can always make a bit of extra for the freezer."

They don't last years and years, I've had to throw things out as I don't cook often.

CARBS DON'T MAKE YOU FAT!

Eating too much makes you fat. I really wish people would stop with this carb hating nonsense.

"I cook from scratch and the average cost of a meal per person is less than £1.50 so cheaper."

You can get ready meals much cheaper than that.

^"I cook from scratch and the average cost of a meal per person is less than £1.50 so cheaper."

You can get ready meals much cheaper than that.^

Yes you can, but the quality (taste and nutrition) will be shit. They will also need vegetables adding to make into a decent meal.

I don't know if it is this thread or one of the 'Eat Well for Less' threads but someone summed it up perfectly - crap processed food can be cheaper than cooking from scratch, but if you compare quality, cooking from scratch will be much cheaper overall.

Anyone who is a half decent home cook (and it's not hard to learn) will be producing food that is at least equal in quality to the most expensive ready meals (Cook etc, Charlie Bigham) at about a third or half of the cost.

Same with baking - Anything bought, unless from somewhere high end like a naice bakery or the fresh counters in Waitrose or M&S, is simply inedible to anyone used to decent home baking. Yes you can get 6 Mr Kipling cakes for a pound, but they taste crap and are full of crap.

Yes it can seem expensive if you add up the ingredients cost and buy brands, but if you shop around, and build your store cupboard up over time, it's not expensive and then you only have to buy the fresh stuff, because you already have oil, spices, flour etc in.

Many large supermarkets sell Asian branded spices where a large packet will cost far less than a Schwartz jar. You could buy a wide selection of spices that can be used to make a wide variety of Asian/Middle Eastern/Mexican etc meals several times over for between £5 and 10. Or you can order it on the internet if not available locally.

Yes, not everyone can get to a supermarket, not everyone has basic cooking kit or can cook, or has time to, but most people do so it's a bit silly presenting someone who for whatever reason isn't near a supermarket, can't cook or doesn't have kit and using them as evidence that cooking from scratch is impossible for the majority.

Most people could do it if they wanted to, but plenty of those don't for no other reason than they can't be arsed and are happy to eat ready made food instead.

OP- nothing wrong in principle, but ready meals are rank.

Gwenhwyfar I doubt this will include a dessert, fruits, vegetables like a gree salad with dressing on or a cup of tea though...
This £1.50 is a very quick calculation based on my weekly shopping which will include all the above.

Try and find a ready meal at about £1.00 and eat only that everyday. I suspect you will quickly be ill from lack of vitamins/mineral/fiber as a start.
And that's wo talking about the taste, the amount of meat in them etc etc.

Again, if you want to compare things, you need at least to compare the same thing. A meal is never just a main course, aka a ready meal.

I just find the whole premise of this thread completely joyless. In that the only aim when eating is to get the required nutrition at minimum cost.

In any case it is not comparing like with like. For a start ready meals generally don't have the same quantities of expensive ingredients (i.e. meat). If you only used the amount of meat per portion they do then cooking would be cheaper. You also don't know any of the providence of the food. I guess lots of people don't care about that sort of stuff, but I don't really fancy eating chicken that's made at industrial facilities in Thailand and shipped half way around the world. If I buy chicken I can choose British (supporting the farming industry, and reducing food miles), and get higher welfare if I like. You just don't have that option in most ready meals, unless you go to the likes of M&S which certainly won't be any cheaper. The stuff about energy costs is rubbish. Unless you have the oven on for hours and hours the energy costs for cooking are a matter of pence per portion. You don't need masses of stuff in a store cupboard. A jar of mixed herbs, curry powder, Thai mixed spices, all for under a quid each and that covers a massive variety of meals.

There are so many ideas for eating cheaply these days. With very few exceptions it is simply laziness that means people resort to ready meals. I do myself sometimes when I really can't be bothered cooking. Trying to justify it through cost is just kidding yourself.

Bobbing in to point anyone who's interested in the direction of these features in our Food section:

10 batch cooking recipes

and

Budget recipe collection

If ease and budgeting are the main issues then I fondly recall eating very well at university and for not much money at all by using the "grub on a grant" book which obviously isn't quite so up to date now what with the abolishment of grants, but the principles are excellent and particularly if just cooking for one or two people the majority of the time.

I can feed us (family of 5) cheaply if we don't mind spaghetti with tomato, onions and chilli sauce every night. Some things are cheap, some things are not.

It's the snack stuff that isn't. Box of 40 packs of Walkers is about £6 in Farm Foods. 6 apples are £1.25. I know I know, we shouldn't snack - but the reality is, we do. Especially the children who are growing and running around all afternoon.

It's tricky.

The thing is yes, it is possible to live on the bare minimum. Should we do this for ourselves and our families if we can possibly avoid it? Obviously not. I think ready meals have their place and it doesn't matter if you eat one on occasion, but I think it is absurd to think that over a long period of time they can provide everything your body needs to stay healthy. Plus, food cooked from scratch is not remotely comparable to the processed generic mush used to make a ready meal. Being able to cook properly is a massive life skill and IMO should be taught as a mandatory part of the school curriculum from a young age.

You eat what you like, surely? It's entirely up to you op.

In the op's instance though, she presumably has some cooking implements as she mentions cooking on weekends. I'd assume she has knives etc given that these ready meals.only account for 5 meals a week. So in her case, she probably could cook from scratch for the same cost
cost.

Personally I'm fussy about meat quality and I quite enjoy cooking, in fact am having a cook off today, so it's easier for me to cook mostly from.scratch although I have no qualms in using pesto etc and have nothing against the odd takeaway or ready meal if I want one.

I think the initial outlay is expensive but you just keep using the remaining ingredients over and over."

So you have to eat the same thing all the time?

Gwen er no. With a little imagination you can use herbs and spices for countless dishes. Most staple ingredients can be used to cover a variety of meals.

Agree that sometimes cooking from scratch is not cheaper, especially if you have to buy specialist ingredients. As someone else said a lot of cakes and similar are cheaper to buy. I wanted to make bakewell tart, and discovered that to buy the ground almonds alone was going to cost twice as much as buying a bakewell tart off the shelf.

But as far as ready meals are concerned, the amount of meat/fish etc in them is tiny. 13% beef in a lasagne, I'm sure a homemade one would be like 50% or so. Fish pie similarly, you get a tiny amount of fish compared to if you made it yourself. I stopped buying tinned mushroom soup (which I had mentally been counting as eating a portion of veg) when I read that it contained about 5% mushroom. Now I buy a packet of basics mushrooms and whizz them up with garlic and milk instead.

I think for family meals cooking from scratch is definitely cheeper, but if I'm just worrying about food for me there are ready meals in the freezer, I can't cook something then save the leftovers because I will eat everything I've cooked, my portion sizing is awful!

You need to apply the same logic to cakes as you do to savoury food Vicki.

The ready made bakewell tart will be nowhere near the quality of the home made one.

There will be hardly any ground almonds in it and more cheap fats and loads of sugar. Yes home made might cost more, but you aren't really comparing like with like. A home made one will have more ground almonds, quality jam, butter in the pastry and sponge not palm oil and will be a totally different offering.

If you want to find an equivalent ready made, you need to be looking at a proper bakery, Cook, or perhaps the cake counters at M&S or Waitrose, not Mr Kipling. Then the cost and quality will be much more comparable.

Jack Monroe did a piece on recreating ready meals and 9 out of 10 were cheaper for home made.

Sometimes ready meals are cheaper, particularly for one person, and if you factor in the energy needed to cook them. We had a card meter years ago and I remember wincing at the cost whenever we roasted a chicken.

If DH is away I sometimes get myself a ready meal but they are always so disappointing. They never taste very nice and I don't find them filling. I always end up wishing I'd just had beans on toast instead.

DH is gluten intolerant so ready meals and jar sauces aren't an option for us anyway. I don't have any food intolerances, that I know of, but I've had enough incidents over the years of jar sauces going straight through me, in the most painful and embarrassing way, that I've learned to avoid them now.

There's more to nutrition than carbs, fat and protein. Processed food is low in minerals and vitamins - they get destroyed by the processing...eat ready meals and stay thin but you are not feeding your body a nutrient rich meal.
Steak portion for us is 250g - kids get half that - served with salad. We're all thin too!

There's more to nutrition than carbs, fat and protein.

indeed. there is the processing process in addition to the processing ingredients.

if a meal costs 2 pounds, I have to wonder what's in it. however, having looked at the asda meals, they seem like they aren't bad at all. At least the ingredients list is low on preservatives. I have no idea how they taste thought.

I wouldn't be surprised that if it's just one person the cost and effort of cooking from scratch may not be worth it. we are a family of four, so one of those meals now costs 8 pounds, so cooking from scratch is better value.

I agree that in some situations ready meals can be cheaper, but if you look at cheap and healthy, then cooking from scratch wins hands down.

Ready meals are usually very high in salt, as well as often fat/sugar.

When our kitchen was being redone, and we had to have ready meals, I really missed good home cooked food. It is far better tasting too!