Dispatches: The Truth About Food Prices

[TwoIfBySea]

So it is all down to speculators, like every other financial squeeze we are experiencing. They make lots of money, we pay the price.

Anyone else think that dozy mare isn't suffering much if she can't be bothered checking out the price of things as she does her shopping? And that comment about how her £700 per annum saving would pay for her shoes for a year - idiot.

Why so odd that she thought butter was about a £1. It is about a £1 where I shop is that massively expensive then?

i use the heels to make breadcrumbs.

nkf, i do that, deffo (although it's more wipe the mould off the sides of the pesto jar, hem hem). but i'm not good at meal planning so i think i do waste stuff, mostly bloody salad leaves that dh buys. i even chop up stale bread and freeze it as breadcrumbs. it's not a question of virtue, if i want toasted cheese then i want it, esp if it's a heel of bread and not bothered if i've cut the mould off the cheese.

Lol Flum. No, it was Lurpak spreadable which retails at £2.36, not £1.

I am feeling very smug. I was within 4p for the Lurpak and within 1p for the bread.

Totally agree the end of the bread is the best bit - why on earth wouldn't you eat it? I have definitely been known to cut the mouldy end off cheese. Not that cheese in our house stays around long enough to go mouldy.

I am guilty of throwing out bagged salad, I have recently started to make an effort to serve it though (instead of just leaving it there in the bottom of the fridge, staring at me, making me feel guilty until t is liquid)

Am ashamed to admit I bought what we fancied and loads of it. Not any more though. Today was the first shop I have ever done where I actually considered prices etc. Little individual packs of ham so half the packet doesn't get wasted, spread that was 2 for £1.50 rather than Olivio at feckin' £4 a tub (!), no bread as we still have half a loaf (I normally chuck out bread that's a few days old, now it's toast). All small things but a trolley full of slightly different, slightly cheaper than normal and it's eye opening what the difference was.

We're at a real crossroads. I'm at the end of my fully paid mat leave and trying to work out what to do. Too poor to not work, not worth working after childcare. Either way we're going from eating out to beans on toast.

Oh Lurpak spreadable. sounds a bit minging. butter is tasty and clearly much cheaper, I economise without realising it.

la la la must tell hedgefund hubby when I see him in August for holidays...

little gem lettuces are nicer imo and last well for ages in those crazy lakeland bags. if only i could persuade dh of this...

Yes Aitch I have just discovered the fabulousness of Little gems, they do last for ages and taste lovely

Don't keep butter in the fridge so it always spreads easily...

I set out an exact item by item estimated budget for my weekly shop this week. I knocked off items until it came down to what I wanted to spend. Then I went around the shop with my list, a pen and lots of mental arithmetic, working out the difference between my estimate and the actual price. Almost everything was lower so I could afford a couple of "treats". Still spent less than my estimate. I was well impressed - I'll be doing it again next time, even if I do get strange looks.

what i want, what i really really want, is for tesco or some supermarket to offer a way of copying your friend's shopping lists onto yours and then tweaking from there. i do want to start internet shopping and food planning etc but i find myself getting bored quickly and unconvinced by the cheapness of things. but then i don't go to supermarkets so i'm not familiar with entire ranges.

food planning definately keeps your bills down and you don't need to think 'what shall i have for dinner tonight' because you already know...

i've tried... i'm so AWFUL at it. the shopping isn't there...

The only problem I have with food planning is when I've had a hard day at work, got home late, DS won't go to bed and I really can't face cooking what I planned. So what I tend to do is buy a range of stuff which will make various different meals and do what I feel like doing. I always make sure it gets used by the end of the week though.

My one top tip is only buy what you can eat in a week. It's amazing how many people seem to buy enough to have their own mini supermarket in their fridge and then chuck out what they don't want. Incredible.

Aitch - is it that you can't get to/don't have near by a tesco/sainsbury etc or just not organsied. FWIW i keep a notebook on the fridge, when i run out of an item it goes on the list of what to buy next week. Do you have five minutes where you can sit down and think about meal planning?

Because I used to live in London and could buy every day, I still tend to buy food as I need it.

I'm really not very good at menu planning and stuff gets thrown away if I try to so if I get home from work and there's 'nothing' to eat, it's pasta and pesto (with maybe tinned tuna, pine nuts, some finely chopped fresh tomato) or something (egg, beans) on toast or a cheese toastie. It can mean we're a bit light on fruit and veg though.

Our Co-op closed in the centre of town and a woman wrote to the local paper saying she refused to shop at the big supermarket alternatives - Asda and Tesco, both in the town centre. Instead she had gone back to using butcher/baker and the market.

She was saving a fortune and had lost weight because she no longer picked up chocolate, biscuits, etc she didn't need and was walking around town to visit the shops.

I buy veg from the farm shop and meat from the local shop (delivered by the best butcher in the area). It's great. It means I can buy apples grown in Scotland instead of flown in from South Africa or Brazil. And sausages that don't shrink by half under the grill.

I boiled up my leftover chicken carrass today, got loads of meat off, kept the water, added rice and veg, and some stock cubes, very filling dinner for 6 of us!!

I'm growing little gem lettuce.

It's FAB, but it is rather attractive to pests so you have to really keep it protected.

I think it's easier to food or meal plan if you don't have shops near you.

Aitch, if you do online shopping, it's only the first time that's a pain. You do one big shop and then those things are in your favourites. It's really fast after a while.

I know I know it's greener to buy local but my local shops are not very good compared with the supermarkets. Or rather some are very good and very expensive and some are cheap and poor quality.

i've tried, nkf, i really have. but the one time i got right to the end of my 'list' i nearly fell off my seat at how much it was going to cost so i gave up. i'm just not a good supermarket shopper, i really hate going there. quite like lidl, but anything i have to take the car out for i deeply resent. whereas if i could just copy across someone's list it might somehow be better, iykwim? asda do a good thing where you can go for a big shop then type in the code from the receipt and it puts it into your faves list, i hear. but their website is pretty awful i think, and i can't be arsed going there for a big shop.

there is a somerfield quite near here, which i loathe, and veggie shops, a nice (expensive) butcher and fishmonger and cheesemonger lol, delis aplenty and a sodding M&S Simply FOod across the road. you can see how it goes wrong, can't you?

Come and live here Aitch. Only decent supermarket for 100 miles is a Tesco (I don't count Morrisons). Nearest shop is 8 miles away. Kind of forces you to plan.

i will NOT.