"Eat Well For Less?" - thoughts?

gayleygoo · 4 February 2015 at 11:27AM

I'm going to have to look out for this program now, didn't see it first time round. Will have to make OH watch so he can see that our £60-£70 weekly food budget isn't all that much! Our family of four eats very well on that.

No idea how they could have spent £270 a week - that is more than my monthly budget! I'd expect to be eating fillet steak, salmon and chicken fillets, fancy frozen chips and Tenderstem broccoli every night of the week

Actually I think we could afford to eat out for dinner every night and still have enough left over for breakfasts, lunches and snacks. For the program they have probably taken the highest food bill the family have ever had (including alcohol, lots of treats and ready meals, takeaways and probably a lot of food that got thrown out) and attempted to show drastic savings.

At least it is a start - sure, there is a lot that family could do to get the bill down even further, but it is difficult to cut your food bill in half in one week. It takes much more time, learning, practice and commitment to achieve huge savings. I'm guessing both parents work, because that £270 isn't much less than OH's take-home pay... and as a SAHM I have more time to shop around for food, cook cheap and healthy meals, and (with a groan) deal with the washing up that from-scratch cooking entails! I even have time to brew alcohol and bake bread and treats, and appreciate that I may not have that time if I worked for a wage. For many people, trade-offs are part of it.

I guess there are a lot of people though, who this program could help. Not that long ago my MIL was groaning about the £100+ cost of her weekly shopping for her household of two people. The main reason may have been that supermarkets encourage a style of shopping whereby you just walk around with a huge trolley and fling stuff into it until you end up at a till!

PenguinOfDeath · 4 February 2015 at 11:51AM

Pollycat wrote: »

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').

To be fair, taste is pretty subjective and just because the majority of one group prefer one taste over doesn't necessarily mean it's the' best' but it doesn't highlight it's worth trying different brand to find our own perfect balance of taste preference & price.

I even know people who prefer chocolate at fridge temperature :eek:

dizzytina · 4 February 2015 at 2:29PM

ooooo missed this show completely. When is it on guys? i will try and find it on catch up :-)

Bigjenny · 4 February 2015 at 2:47PM

Thursday 8.00pm BBC 1

owl_fan · 4 February 2015 at 5:46PM

There were useful things in it. The OJ test was good but I am convinced that non-concentrated juice tastes better and I can afford it. I did think it was a good idea to teach a family to do what Martin Lewis has advocated for years (ie. go down a brand level and see if it is as good or you can notice the difference).
In this type of programme they always seem to choose people who are very extravagant at the start, then it's easy to show big savings. Own brands were our staples as a family when I was brought up so I already do this.

I will keep watching it though. Greg Wallace can be annoying but I think there is value in it, especially for people who are not already MSE converts.