"Eat Well For Less?" - thoughts?

otterspasm

I watched this programme yesterday after reading this thread and it left me spitting feathers. They saved them £75 a week off thier £260 a week shop. Most of us on here could have saved them double that without breaking into a sweat. Too much goofing around and not enough truly educational stuff for my liking. What a shame that tv producers feel they have to dumb things down in this way, or spend half the time being silly, just so that folk'll watch thier shows. I love it when the occassional programme comes along which just sensibly teaches me something. Rant over :-).

FZwanab

SailorSam wrote: »

Nothing wrong with that Polly, but just remember if i'm behind you at the checkout with my box of weetabix and bag of onions ............. It's nice to be nice.

I buy quite a few tins at one time, keep them in the trolley spread out and hand the cashier one tin and say I have x amount of these and it literally takes seconds to input amount times x amount of product. I hate to keep anyone waiting behind me. If I have a large shop I always let anyone who is behind me with a few items go ahead too.

xJOJOx_2

My sister shops around getting best price etc etc and adopts a lot of things in the program. However she still spends a stupid amount on food each week. They much throw away about 60% off their fresh food! Fridge always rammed so can't see what's in it. No wrapped open projects or know who's opened and when! I lived with then recently for a while and was shocked :-O I see them throw away so much food then go and buy exactly the same thing the next day? Process repeated again next week. Only thing I 'recycle' is peeling and even sometimes I'll fry up potatoe peelings with chesse as a naughty snack 😄

Horace

I saw this programme today because mum had been talking to me about it. It frustrated the hell out of me especially when they had roast chicken - I have a feeling that they chucked the carcass in the bin instead of turning it into soup.

Mum gave me the chicken carcass last Sunday and this week it went into a saucepan of water with some black pepper and chopped onion and a pinch of herbs - I fished the bones out and had a lovely soup which lasted me for a further two days. That one chicken made a roast dinner for 3, some sandwiches for mum (she had the other breast), I had the legs and I had one with salad and one with oven chips and veg plus the soup on top. Not bad from a chicken that cost £3.

As for teabags my favourite ones are from Aldi and are their gold label tea bags which are quite cheap and I have recently switched coffee to Aldi's dark roast fair trade coffee because I cannot really afford to buy Dowe Egberts Pure Gold (it is only ever bought on offer).

They seemed to concentrate on big supermarket brands and their value ranges and I think it would have been a fairer comparison had they used food from Aldi and Lidl too.

Anyway, my pantry is full of tins - recently had a bargain pack of Heinz baked beans so now I have 6 tins in the cupboard but they are used in a variety of ways and they don't need feeding lol. I usually keep tinned tomatoes, sometimes corned beef, tinned spuds, tinned fruit as well as some soup for when I cannot be bothered to cook and just fancy heating something. I also have plenty of flour, pasta, rice, sauces, herbs, sugar (some for baking).

My outside freezer is full of yellow stickered meat and the smaller freezer (part of the fridge) is full of veg and cooked ham.

I don't think that chap needed to buy more food when his fridge was packed to the gunnels.

happy35

Looking at what they were eating I cant see how they were possibly spending anything near £260 per week. If I was spending that I definitely wouldnt be eating cheap sausages and burgers !!!. Although like this house they did all seem to have healthy appetites so that will add to the bill

We eat really well and I spend nowhere near £260 for 3 adults, around the £50 - £60 mark depending on what I can pick up YS it can be less.

I didnt learn anything at all from the show and thought that they could have focused on cooking and stretching things to make the most of what you buy

I thought in the similar programme last year Angela Hartnett did really well with helping her family in comparison to the other chefs and think that she would have been a good addition to this programme. Not too frugal but can cook in the world that the rest of us live in and to a budget

Pollycat

FZwanab wrote: »

I buy quite a few tins at one time, keep them in the trolley spread out and hand the cashier one tin and say I have x amount of these and it literally takes seconds to input amount times x amount of product. I hate to keep anyone waiting behind me. If I have a large shop I always let anyone who is behind me with a few items go ahead too.

I think you may have taken Sailorsam's reply to my post out of context.

It was in reply to this post of mine which talked about buying stuff when on offer instead of when you actually need it:

Pollycat wrote: »

I'm lucky in that I have the space and disposable income to be able to keep that stock but I can't see that it's wrong.
It just means that I pay half price for a lot of things that many people would have to pay full price for (if they bought when they needed it instead of when it's on offer).

My shopping list often looks like this:
chopped toms IOO
plum toms IOO
Tuna IOO

My OH said 'Why do we need 100 tins of tuna, FHS?'

But it means 'if on offer' - my stock is getting low and I'll take advantage if it's half price/bogof but won't if it's full price.

So I don't actually buy 100 tins at a time, just 'If On Offer'.

Of course, I'd never do a massive shop in front of someone who only has a few items.
Our Tesco has 2 'basket only' checkouts plus 8 'self service' ones so usually the only people behind me in the queue are people with lots of shopping anyway.

115K

I saw it and agree with the others that I didn't realise that concentrate orange was as good as the more expensive kind.

I think some people do live like this and not make a budget and go shopping without checking the cupboards and freezer first so it may have been helpful to them.

I also think some people buy branded labels because they have been brainwashed into thinking they are superior through advertising. I have tried some of the value foods from supermarkets and they are fine. I mix and match but I won't buy cheap bread as I don't like the taste.

I can't believe how expensive the most expensive tea was, Teapigs I think they said.

Pollycat

115K wrote: »

I saw it and agree with the others that I didn't realise that concentrate orange was as good as the more expensive kind.

I think some people do live like this and not make a budget and go shopping without checking the cupboards and freezer first so it may have been helpful to them.

I also think some people buy branded labels because they have been brainwashed into thinking they are superior through advertising. I have tried some of the value foods from supermarkets and they are fine. I mix and match but I won't buy cheap bread as I don't like the taste.

I can't believe how expensive the most expensive tea was, Teapigs I think they said.

I don't know if they get the company's permission to use a product in a taste test.

But it certainly didn't come out well at all on the programme.

Maybe that was because people weren't used to the taste of a good quality tea.

I had to smile when Mrs Booth said the teabags they'd given her as a substitute tasted like dust, sweepings off the floor.

Because when we visited a tea planation in Sri Lanka, we were told that that is exactly what goes into teabags (OK, maybe not all teabags).
They even refer to it as 'dust' (or 'fannings').

115K

Pollycat wrote: »

I had to smile when Mrs Booth said the teabags they'd given her as a substitute tasted like dust, sweepings off the floor.

Because when we visited a tea planation in Sri Lanka, we were told that that is exactly what goes into teabags (OK, maybe not all teabags).
They even refer to it as 'dust' (or 'fannings').

Haha, that seems gross when you think about it.:D

wishus

OH is my Young MSE Padawan, so he learned some stuff about brand-downsizing when watching this programme.

... and has tried Asda Gold Mountain coffee instead of Nescafe Gold Blend and likes it! :j