The Best Diet!

Cute_Mouse

Deleted by owner

Home_Alone_2

Yes I have. Also and I am more careful with money I am eating healthier and less rubbish now and I now do all my food shopping online as I impulse buy less and am saving more by shopping online. If I am tempted to buy some junk I equate the amount of cost with how many minutes it would take me to slog away earning the money, and when I think is that really worth 30 minutes of work to pay for it, I don't order it.

[Deleted User]

Junk food is far cheaper than healthy food, which is one reason why the poor tend to have worse diets.

maman

I agree. It makes me so cross when almost all special offers are for rubbish or treats. Also shops like Iceland and Farmfoods are full of that sort of thing. That being said there are usually weekly specials on some fruit and veg so if you plan around them you can eat healthily and relatively cheaply.

S_Wales_Saver

I agree all round. Since I started planning and doing the grocery challenge I've lost two stone quite painlessly :j:j:j

However I too get annoyed when all the specials are for sugary cereal, various cakes, squash and crisps. Maman is right though, buying carefully allows good bargains on fresh, untampered-with meat (I like to do my own tampering :rotfl:) and fresh fruit and veg in season.

It often seems as if junk food is cheap, but a diet of crisps and chicken dippers does not satisfy for long, and most ready meals can be made cheaper from scratch.

earthmother

We found the same thing a few years ago when we went organic - it meant cutting out all the junk and ready-made cakes etc, and yet even though I was baking regularly, and we had more 'proper' sugar in our diet than before, we all still lost weight for the first few months (it levelled out again then).

We've slipped a bit these past months, and we've noticed it.

daveyjp

jack_pott wrote: »

Junk food is far cheaper than healthy food, which is one reason why the poor tend to have worse diets.

Wrong.

We all have worse diets because as a country our cooking skills have been reduced to opening a plastic meal and putting it in the microwave.

When I see on TV a 20 something year living on their own old not having a clue how to peel and chop an onion I despair.

Healthy food can be very cheap if you know how to cook.

[Deleted User]

daveyjp wrote: »

Healthy food can be very cheap if you know how to cook.

One reason DIY cooking is so expensive is that either you can't buy the ingredients in the quantity they're used and end up throwing food away, or if you can buy small quantities you don't get the economies of scale. It's hardly surprising 30% of all the food sold goes into the bin. The less wasteful you want to be, the more it turns eating into a major logistical exercise planning a menu in advance and then sticking to it so that food doesn't go to waste.

I recently priced up a few recipes in a curry book and found they were barely cheaper than using a jar of sauce before any allowance for wastage. The reason I chose curry is that herbs and spices are non perishable, but I still would have had to eat curry every day of the week to get through the two or three dozen jars of spices before their best by dates. At 70p or more a jar they're definitley not cheap.

Cookery is like any other hobby, the people who do it are apt to find all sorts of reasons (it's healthier, cheaper etc.) in order to justify a pastime that they are doing simply because they enjoy it.

daveyjp

So your single example means it's impossible to cook for yourself cheaply?

There are single curry dry spice mixes available for a couple of quid, so there's no need to buy lots of expensive jars of spices.

http://www.kitchenguru.co.uk/products

Barneysmom

Use by dates? What are they :cool:

I keep my herbs and spices till they're used up, I never bin them when the date is up, if they're kept in the dark they'll last for ever.


I haven't lost any weight, if anything I've put weight on, but I eat better...

[Deleted User]

Why would I spend two quid on a packet of spices, plus the cost of the other ingredients when I can buy a jar of sauce for 75p?