Eating well, cheaply
When the horsemeat scandal was all over the papers showing that lots of readymade and fast food is really nasty, I said to some friends that I was glad that my family always buys real meat, and fresh vegetables and prepare them ourselves (we don’t do it to save money, we just hate junk food). Some of my friends told me that’s because I’m comparatively well-off and that many poorer people can’t afford to do that.
I decided to cost up a favourite meal of ours: free-range roast chicken with all the trimmings: roast potatos, roast pumpkin, carrots, parsnips and frozen peas (life’s too short to shell peas). We also had Yorkshire pudding, even though this shocks traditionalists who clam they exclusively accompany beef.
This easily serves five (including two ravenous teenagers) so that generally we don’t need an evening meal if we eat this at lunchtime.
- Free range chicken, £4.99 (1.5 kgs)
- Yorkshire Puddings, 55p for 15 (we used 7, so 26p)
- 1kg Potatos (90p at our local shop)
- roast pumpkin, 79p (we used half, so 40p)
- 1 bag Aldi baby carrots, 49p (put them raw around the chicken so they slowly absorb the chicken juice and cook that way)
- 3 Parsnips (half a 79p bag, so 40p)
- Sainsbury’s Sage & Onion Stuffing, Basics 85g, 15p (we’ve tried the posher stuff but the kids like this best)
- broccoli, 79p
- frozen peas, 99p/ kg. approx 250g, so 25p.
- Small amount of sunflower oil – say 25p
- 1 Knorr chicken stock pot to mix with veg water to make gravy (8 for£2.40, so 40p)
The sum total of the ingredients was£9.67.
Running a gas cooker costs £7.24 a month to cook for a family of 4, so let’s divide that by 30 days and estimate that it cost 25p in fuel to cook this meal.
To go with the meal, we had a £3.59 bottle of Toro Loco Tempranillo 2011 (which won a silver medal at the International Wine and Spirit Competition).
This makes the ingredients, fuel and wine cost£13.51, or£2.70 a head. I can’t find the pre-recall price of Findus “beef” lasagne ready meals, but a search on Tesco website for “ready meal” suggests that the cheapest are about£1 for about 300g of food, which wouldn’t satisfy me let alone growing kids. My meal was at least double that size – each person had 200g of roast spuds as well as all the other stuff – and included a large glass of wine each for the three adults (and a good glug into the gravy).
Therefore, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that it certainly isn’t more expensive to eat properly, and is much better for you (although it took me about an hour of prep time rather than 5 minutes to microwave).
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11 Responses to “ Eating well, cheaply ”
Spot on. It helps where you do your shopping as well.
This week my wife and I have spent a total of £20 on food. We’ve had (from my shopping list):
1 free-range chicken,
1 kilo of stewed pork belly
1 kilo of tiger prawns
1 mackerel
1/2 kilo pig liver
2 sweet potatoes
2 cobs of sweetcorn
garlic, ginger, onion, chilli
1 massive bag of lettuce
1/2 kilo cherry tomatoes
4 leeks
2 kilos garlic shoots
1 bag of rice noodles
2 bunches of spinach
2 carrots
6 eggs
1 head of brocolli
1 pineapple
1 papaya
1/2 kilo strawberries
Say throw in 20p for oil and gas.
This has served us both 3 meals a day and, personally, I’m feeling quite bloated. I love living in China. :p
2.4/8=0.3
Take 1 tin of soup, I tin of beans (proper beans not baked), heat together and serve with pasta or rice. I lived through Uni on that, and still do when times are hard.
The economics of junk food are self evident, it can’t possibly be cheaper, what you pay for is convenience and not havin to wash up.
Though personally I don’t mind eating horse. Anyone who’s eaten sausages has eaten ears, feet, brain, you name it!
Fast-food and convenience food are another tax on the poor, viz. the legal action in America against McDonalds not only for their advertising but their whole pricing and location policy and the idea of “food deserts”.
AFAIK three reasons have been identified for people not eating fresh food: time to source and prepare fresh ingredients; available money when shopping; actually knowing how to cook anything not out of a tin or packet.
Thanks, Bruce, for sharing, and all the other commenters, too! I know the post is primarily to dispel the myth that you have to be “well-off” to eat healthy food, but I’d just like to add that the food we make for ourselves also tastes better than convenience food or fast food.
I used to think this sort of thing as well. But then I read on Slashdot that actually for many poorer people, working two jobs, there just isn’t enough time to cook, or even necessarily shop properly. Of course, this was discussing the USA, rather than a country with a strong welfare tradition.
But yes, generally speaking, it is cheaper to eat fresh cooked food than the equivalent ready meal. And with a bit of practice you’ll get a better meal at the end as well.
My tips generally include:
Lentils (dried are cheaper and not much harder than canned) or beans (canned is much easier, but not as cheap as dried) can be added to mince meat (if you must eat meat), thus enhancing the nutritional profile, and costing less.
Add powdered milk to everything where it can make sense (e.g. bread, cake, and other baked goods), esp. if the recipe calls for milk anyway.
* Use a microwave to cook food that you would normally steam or boil. It’ll (probably) save energy, and if you do it correctly, you’ll have a better product at the end (as the nutrients are not thrown away with the water).
Also, wouldn’t making your own Yorkshire pudding mean better tasting, better for you, and generally better puddings than the ones you buy? And if you are putting things next to the roasting chicken anyway…
I never have either. Then again, I’ve never cooked a roast dinner, so I don’t know how hard they are. However, I have fond memories of eating very nice homemade ones when young, and then eating some ready-made ones recently and being disappointed. I’ll have to have a go at making some I think… (Though I’m not sure how I’ll do it properly without the roast meat to go with it.)
Good post, Bruce, although eating cheaply gets a lot more difficult if you cook for fewer people. As I solely cook for myself (despite currently having three housemates) the costs of buying perishable ingredients like meat and vegetables are much higher due to not being able to benefit as much from bulk-buying discounts from supermarkets. Freezers only get you so far, especially if you only have a drawer or two.
That being said, I cook almost all of my meals from scratch despite living on my own. Not because it’s cheaper (it’d be a lot cheaper for me to persist on junk food like most of my fellow students), but because I can largely control what goes in my meals and it tastes about twenty times better than ready meals.