Additive free shopping on a tiny budget?

AliPru

Hi all

This is my first post on these boards, so apologies if I've put it in the wrong place!

Is there anybody out there who manages to do additive free shopping on a very small budget??

I realise that probably the easiest way to do it is to cook from scratch, but as a mum of 3 young children I don't always have the time and energy to do that, so any pointers for good ready-made cheats would be fab.

We tend to eat a lot of stuff from the supermarket value ranges at the mo :embarasse - will have to check how much is free of the nasty old E-numbers, but I want it all to go in my aim to see if they are affecting the kids' behaviour!!

Thanks!!

Ali

Claire70_2

Hello and welcome.

I too am cutting out additives for the children

I make my own bread in a breadmaker - no additives

I bulk cook from scratch when I have some time - shepherds pies, lasagnes, pizzas, all freeze well.

I also give my two year old yogurt raisons and homemade cheese straws and homemade twinks (hob nobs) which are of course additive free.

You can do it on a small amount of time.

I run the admin side of our own business, have a 2yr old and a 15 yr old and I am chair of a car club which involves daily posting on our own forum and attending meetings and shows etc so it can be done :money:

Penelope_Penguin

I bulk cook, for instance bolognaise sauce. We eat one meal and I freeze another. We can then have a HM meal on a day when I'm working.

However, you may want to narrow down your definition of "additives". Do you mean sugar, trans fats, aspartame

Claire70 wrote: »

I also give my two year old yogurt raisons and homemade cheese straws and homemade twinks (hob nobs) which are of course additive free.

I don't really understand this

Ingredients for yogurt raisins: raisins, yogurt flavoured coating (sugar, vegetable fat, whey powder, skimmed milk solids, citric acid, soya lecithin, flavouring), shellac

There are at least 5 ingredients there that I don't have in my pantry. Aren't they "additives".

AliPru

Claire70 wrote: »

I run the admin side of our own business, have a 2yr old and a 15 yr old and I am chair of a car club which involves daily posting on our own forum and attending meetings and shows etc so it can be done :money:

Snap, sort of!

I also run the admin side of our own business, but have 3 kids (aged 5 and 3 (twins)), and help run a couple of forums too.

Thanks for those ideas above - I'll give them a shot and see what happens.

AliPru

Penelope_Penguin wrote: »

However, you may want to narrow down your definition of "additives". Do you mean sugar, trans fats, aspartame

Thanks PP - to narrow it down I want to start cutting out E-numbers to start with and then work from there, if that helps?

I will try to remember to cook in bulk so I can freeze some portions though!!

Farway

Not sure how small your budget is, but Asda say they have or are phasing out artificial stuff, like colouring and flavouring, plus low fat etc in their own ranges

I don't know if this includes their Smartprice range or strictly Asda own brand

angie_loves_veg

Penelope_Penguin wrote: »

Quote:
Originally Posted by Claire70
I also give my two year old yogurt raisons and homemade cheese straws and homemade twinks (hob nobs) which are of course additive free.


I don't really understand this

Ingredients for yogurt raisins: raisins, yogurt flavoured coating (sugar, vegetable fat, whey powder, skimmed milk solids, citric acid, soya lecithin, flavouring), shellac

There are at least 5 ingredients there that I don't have in my pantry. Aren't they "additives".

I read it as yogurt, raisins, cheese straws.....

I think we may have a simple case of a missing comma - also eliminates alot of those nasty extras!

shimmigirl

remember that not all e numbers are artificial and chemicals, some can be natural eg vitamin C - E300.

See Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number

& some things are not listed as E numbers on packs but given the actual product name.

Ben84

E-number is an often misunderstood term. A huge range of things have an E-number, and can be listed on packets by any of their common names, or the E-number.

Vinegar has several common names, and the E-number E260. Consumer responses to the different ways of listing the same ingredient vary. The E-number might create negative opinions that the common names don't. Further still, an item might advertise itself as E-number free despite containing ingredients like sodium bicarbonate and vinegar that do have an E-number. It's not untrue to call it E-number free, it's just very misleading.

The E-number is just that, a number assigned to something. There are no E-numbers in food, just compounds that can be listed by their E-number if the company who make them choose to list them that way.

I don't like E-numbers for the simple reason they're widely misunderstood and believed to all be synthetic compounds that might be bad for you, and that the numbers are not greatly helpful in understanding what the ingredient really is. How many people can, or will memorise all these numbers.

Unfortunately, unless you know what the E-number stands for, its presence on a packet means nothing useful about what it really contains. It could be synthetic, it could be natural. The opposite is also true, a packet with no E-numbers on it could be full of synthetic additives.

Pitlanepiglet

Ben84 makes good points and unless you are really clued up on what is what identifying what's in processed food can be really tricky. For instance I'm intolerant to corn, but I also need to avoid maize (ok quite obvious!) but glucose is a corn derivative and often other sugars dextrose etc. are manufactured rather than being naturally occurring sugars.

I try to make as much from scratch as possible, once you get in the swing of it it's not difficult or time consuming and it means you can buy Asda tinned tomatoes as a raw component and make your own meal without any worries.

Aspartame is the food of the devil, it amazes me how many people drink vast amounts of diet coke/pepsi etc. whilst having no idea about what is in it...I'd rather take my chances with a small amount of sugar rather than all that rubbish!
Luckily for me Aspartame makes me very sick so it's never been an option!

Penelope_Penguin

You definitley want to be careful of E948

Penny. x