BBC "Eat Well for Less"

[RuthE]

Sorry if I've missed a thread on this elsewhere. The most recent programme in the series featured a woman who was RBS Upper School trained and is now a single parent with one daughter, running a dance school somewhere in Buckinghamshire.  She was enormously overspending on convenience food (I mean, HOW do people on normal incomes not notice when they're spending literally thousands more than they need to?) and was really receptive to the suggestions made about positive ways to change.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09dhf9l

 

I don't really want to comment a lot about this, because I genuinely don't wish to be judgemental about somebody's choices, and of course I've got no knowledge of how she got into pointless, expensive habits.  But I suppose I was a little surprised by someone who trained as an elite dancer being so disorganised about nutrition...

[AnneMarriott]

7 hours ago, RuthE said:

Sorry if I've missed a thread on this elsewhere. The most recent programme in the series featured a woman who was RBS Upper School trained and is now a single parent with one daughter, running a dance school somewhere in Buckinghamshire.  She was enormously overspending on convenience food (I mean, HOW do people on normal incomes not notice when they're spending literally thousands more than they need to?) and was really receptive to the suggestions made about positive ways to change.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09dhf9l

 

I don't really want to comment a lot about this, because I genuinely don't wish to be judgemental about somebody's choices, and of course I've got no knowledge of how she got into pointless, expensive habits.  But I suppose I was a little surprised by someone who trained as an elite dancer being so disorganised about nutrition...

I saw this programme too and share your surprise, both at this one example of a family's choices and at the enormous amounts of money people spend on food.  Does no-one now work out a rough week's menus, make a matching shopping list, checking what's already in the cupboard, and then go and buy what's on the list?  It's nice to see how the supermarket own-brand swaps are received by families who wouldn't normally consider anything but their favourite expensive brands, but I do wonder how many of them will subsequently be prepared to trail round several supermarkets in search of a single own-brand item they have agreed to swap.

 

[zxDaveM]

6 hours ago, AnneMarriott said:

I  do wonder how many of them will subsequently be prepared to trail round several supermarkets in search of a single own-brand item they have agreed to swap.

 

 

probably spend more in petrol than you'd save! I have 3 supermarkets in walking distance from my house (I don't drive) - unfortunately all in the opposite directions to each other. So comparing prices is just too much hassle. I just stick with my fave - though do find own brands sometimes better than the expensive brands, or you hardly notice the difference if not the main ingredient, for example. Plus you often get more, for less cash! Which works for me...

[RuthE]

7 hours ago, AnneMarriott said:

Does no-one now work out a rough week's menus, make a matching shopping list, checking what's already in the cupboard, and then go and buy what's on the list?

 

I do, though I realise this must come much more naturally if, as I did, you grew up in a household where this (and general budgeting) was the norm.  But the sheer numbers involved absolutely shocked me on this one. Let's say the average person is bringing in somewhere between £1,000 and £3,000 net per month; if you're spending up to £1,500 a month just on groceries, as this lady was, how on earth do you pay your mortgage/not notice/still manage to clothe yourself and buy petrol/not have bailiffs knocking on the door?  Even if she's getting a decent contribution from her daughter's father?

 

21 minutes ago, zxDaveM said:

 

probably spend more in petrol than you'd save! I have 3 supermarkets in walking distance from my house (I don't drive) - unfortunately all in the opposite directions to each other. So comparing prices is just too much hassle. I just stick with my fave - though do find own brands sometimes better than the expensive brands, or you hardly notice the difference if not the main ingredient, for example. Plus you often get more, for less cash! Which works for me...

I always do my main "weekly shop" at Lidl, which tends to work out cheapest for most things anyway, though there are certain items it simply doesn't stock. For most of my staple items I know where I can get them within the scope of my usual route home from work or my other regular haunts, and if I need an ingredient for something specific, I look on MySupermarket.com to see which of the available places on my way has it for the best price.  Living in a city suburb tends to mean things aren't that far apart (and I don't drive)...

[alison]

£1.5K on groceries a month?  How on earth does anyone do that - and for just 2 people?  Champagne, caviar and foie gras?

 

Our Lidl is rubbish, I'm afraid, so I rarely bother to shop there, which is a shame.  I have got rather good at shopping tactically at Waitrose (you *can* get some very good bargains, especially with the Waitrose Card), but only when I'm heading in that direction anyway, as it requires a minimum of 2 buses or one train in each direction, so the fares offset any saving otherwise.  I usually do keep an eye on prices of things I buy regularly, so I tend to know when I should be buying them from specific supermarkets, too.  (e.g. currently Sainsbury's have porridge sachets on at half price, so I don't use someone else's "buy 2 for £4" offer).

[taxi4ballet]

There are definitely bargains to be had out there. The other day I bought a frozen turkey crown in Aldi for £9.99 and the following day I happened to be in Morrisons - where one the same weight would have cost me £17 

[Anna C]

I haven't seen this episode yet, but out of physical necessity I shop online so know precisely how much I spend each week.  When the groceries arrive, I enter the amount in a spreadsheet.  How do the people in the programme not know precisely how much they spend each shop? In the episodes I've seen, they traipse round a supermarket, someone pays at the till, and the family in question is always horrified at the amount.  Do they usually pay with earplugs and a blindfold, handing over their card willy-nilly? 

[RuthE]

I know a lot of people aren't as organised as you or I, Anna C, and I don't expect them to be (I'm a project planner by trade; there's a reason I'm particularly suited to this career...) but there has to come a point, surely, when you notice that you're racking up credit card debt because you're living beyond your means, or consistently hitting your overdraft.  I was talking to my best friend about this yesterday; she thinks I'm unusually organised, and claims she "doesn't budget", but the fact is you can get away with not budgeting if your general habits leave you well within your means.  She has quite a modest income by London standards but is in the habit of not having large outgoings, so she can easily get away without detailed budgeting.  I on the other hand consider that I live a bit of a champagne lifestyle on, if not a lemonade budget, then certainly a prosecco budget! So I rely absolutely on budgeting in order to make my money stretch as far as I need it to, or I'd be in debt.  And if I were in debt, I'd sure as hell notice myself getting there.

Edited November 12, 2017 by RuthE

[RuthE]

18 hours ago, alison said:

£1.5K on groceries a month?  How on earth does anyone do that - and for just 2 people?  Champagne, caviar and foie gras?

 

Our Lidl is rubbish, I'm afraid, so I rarely bother to shop there, which is a shame.  I have got rather good at shopping tactically at Waitrose (you *can* get some very good bargains, especially with the Waitrose Card)

 

Yes, I genuinely can't see how I *could* spend that much. For me as a single person that might be £750... basically more than £20 a day. Even if I had a takeaway breakfast EVERY day, I just don't know how that's possible.

 

My local Lidl has recently significantly improved - first they put in self-service checkouts, which aren't perfect but they're a great improvement on having to wait with my £20 basketful behind 7 heavily-laden trolleys, and now they've refurbished the store to add a huge amount of extra vertical display space. I'm a fan.

 

I agree Waitrose can be exceptional value, as can Ocado, under the right circumstances.  And I sometimes get extremely lucky at Waitrose on end-of-day reductions in a way that never seems to happen any more at other supermarkets. I have fortnightly (ish) singing lessons on Edgware Road, finishing at 7pm, and occasionally I can do very well at that Waitrose (where Woolworth's used to be) for fresh meat for my freezer for as little as a fifth of the original price 

 

But all of this is missing the point, which is... how hard can shopping with a *bit* of common sense be? Even if you, through necessity or preference, always shop at the same major supermarket and don't have the inclination to make ninja manoeuvres in the yellow-sticker section.

[AnneMarriott]

Isn't it all part of the social history phenomenon that has seen the decline in domestic knowledge and skills?  It seems we no longer have domestic science (or cookery as it was called in my school days) but "food technology" or some such - designing a takeaway pizza box being so much more educationally valid than learning how to cook a meal for a family.  And without a family background in which such skills are passed on we now have parents raising families, and therefore being responsible for shopping and catering, lacking  the skills which were once part and parcel of growing up.  Add to that the contemporary view that children are incapable of eating smaller portions of what the adults are eating and must have their own choice of meals which seem to consist of chicken nuggets, fish fingers, chips and fizzy drinks.  Add into this toxic mix the need for both parents, or increasingly the single parent, to work long hours just to earn enough to afford mortgage/rent, utilities and so on and the "time poor"  generation can be forgiven for relying on expensive convenience food and takeaways.  Heaven knows, even as a vegetarian retired person I don't actually enjoy  the time spent every day peeling and chopping vegetables and I'm pretty sure if I still worked full time I'd be grateful to perforate the clingfilm on a microwaveable ready-meal once in a while.   But the fact remains that it doesn't take an age to compile a week's shopping list and take note of how much it costs when you've done the shopping.

[RuthE]

I didn’t think this happened so long ago, though. I missed how old Gabrielle, who was featured on the programme, was, but I’d have thought about my age (nearly 40), perhaps a bit older. While we didn’t have absolutely comprehensive Home Economics education, it wasn’t totally absent, and I wouldn’t have thought we were quite of the generation for which this could have been totally missed.

 

Meanwhile, there’s been a real trend among popular TV chefs encouraging non-cooks to cook, which never used to be the case in my youth... for example I always felt the likes of Delia Smith and Keith Floyd in the 90s assumed a level of basic skill in a way that, for example, Jamie Oliver and the Hairy Bikers have tried to start afresh from.

[RuthE]

And by the way, I’m sure you’ll already have thought of this strategy, but in terms of not always fancying cooking: my general process is that I aim to batch-cook between once or three times a week. Portions then live in the freezer for microwaving when necessary, which means not only do I always have something to have for lunch at work, or to eat before going from my office to a theatre in the evening, but also that I don’t have to spend my every free evening cooking.

[Melody]

The thing that surprises me when I shop is how few people are buying fresh fruit and vegetables in significant amounts. I know people are short of time, but it really doesn't take that long to cook fairly simple meat-and-two-veg meals. I'm part of a group that's "adopting" a couple of families for Thanksgiving, and we're putting together food baskets for them. We were told by the lady in charge, who's done this several times before,  not to donate fresh vegetables because "the families won't know what to do with them."

 

When my dad died about 10 years ago and the estate agent went to his house to look it over, he was quite surprised to see vegetables growing in the garden. Apparently this is terminally old-fashioned, yet I remember, growing up, that everyone with a garden larger than a postage stamp had a bit of grass and a few flowers out back and then a vegetable garden and fruit trees behind them. No longer, it seems. Mind you, places seem to be being built with much smaller gardens these days - not sure if that's because people don't have the time or interest or if it's just for developer profits and they're telling people they won't have time to look after a garden.

Edited November 12, 2017 by Melody

[MAB]

I grew up with a garden filled with fruit and flowers and a greenhouse full of salad plants.  We had a lot of asparagus too but oddly it was never eaten as in those days it was encouraged to grow into a fern.  Fashions change though and you never see asparagus fern today: quite right, it belongs on a plate.

[LinMM]

Hmm sad to say we have had asparagus fern on our allotment this year!! I love asparagus but on occasions nature can take over and then you get this lovely fern!  I like it so much I would be tempted to let some overgrow even if I was more organised!! 

[alison]

2 hours ago, Melody said:

When my dad died about 10 years ago and the estate agent went to his house to look it over, he was quite surprised to see vegetables growing in the garden. Apparently this is terminally old-fashioned, yet I remember, growing up, that everyone with a garden larger than a postage stamp had a bit of grass and a few flowers out back and then a vegetable garden and fruit trees behind them. No longer, it seems.

 

Oh yes, didn't you know, Melody?  Gardens are only for socialising in now.  You need a smart patio with some of those mock-wicker chairs they have on the ROH balcony, plus a bit of grass (preferably artificial - never mind the poor earthworms who can't come to the surface through it), and that's it.  Oh, and preferably bi-fold doors, to make things look more up-market.

[Melody]

oh lordy...

 

Honestly, no wonder kids these days actually seem to believe that food grows in supermarkets.

[Jan McNulty]

Not everyone is a natural cook.  My Mum, who would have been 87 last Saturday could not cook for toffee.  We lived in the same road as my Nan and Granddad and I spent my childhood running one way with full pans and the other with empty pans!  After my Nan died my Mum had to ring her sister and ask if you had to take the bag of giblets out of the chicken before you cooked it!  I used to have to have all my food burnt because that is the way I was used to eating it.  Now I only have to have eggs and toast incinerated!

 

My sister was a brilliant cook from about the age of 8.  She never used recipes, she just used to throw things together and they were fabulous.  I'm afraid I tend to take after my Mum.  I do give in and have the odd ready meal!

 

 

[trog]

I saw this article over the weekend How to get by on just £1 a day near payday with these meals - which are OK if you like bacon and lard!

[2dancersmum]

I have to say I have found the experiences of my children going through school quite different to what has been described here. I agree that 'food tech' is not the best of subjects. But that is studying at GCSE and none of mine took that. They did, however, start with baking right from reception class and had a term a year of 'cooking' - making everything from traditional biscuits, sponge cakes, shortbread, fruit crumbles through to shepherd's pie, curry, homemade pizza. In addition, the local sixth form offers cooking classes as a 'preparation for university' course, extra curricular.

Most of the primary schools around here also have a vegetable patch and the children help with the planting, weeding, harvesting and of course eating the produce. I'm not sure if that is unusual for elsewhere in the country. I do live in the countryside and not in a city.

[Colman]

Self-employed single parent, especially one who must work when school is out? I can tell you exactly how she got into those habits: no time and no brain space. Something has to give, especially when the child is younger and needs lots of direct attention. I'm a very good, very knowledgable  cook, but we're both self-employed and we've used a lot of pre-cooked meals over the last decade. Now the boys are a bit older it's a lot easier to find the time and space to plan and cook. I might even be able to find the time to make some proper patisserie again soon. 

[RuthE]

1 hour ago, Colman said:

Self-employed single parent, especially one who must work when school is out? I can tell you exactly how she got into those habits: no time and no brain space.

 

I can see that. But I still have no comprehension of how it's even possible to spend the sort of sums of money on it that Gabrielle was.

[Colman]

It makes sense in the short term at the beginning - I didn't see the piece - and then it never gets revisited because you're too busy changing nappies or doing school runs and it becomes normal. Easy enough. (Also, TV show likely to exaggerate for effect.)

Edited November 13, 2017 by Colman

[RuthE]

4 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

I used to have to have all my food burnt because that is the way I was used to eating it.  Now I only have to have eggs and toast incinerated!

 

I grew up thinking I didn't like beef because we never had it at home (chicken, pork or lamb were generally cheaper for Sunday roasts; I guess we had mince but I don't suppose I thought of that as being beef) and my only experiences of it were (a) sliced and overcooked for school dinners, or (b) stewed to oblivion by my paternal grandmother.  I don't know how old I was, probably in my early twenties even, when I first had a decent steak or a nice rare cut off a roast rib, and realised what it ought to taste like!

[RuthE]

35 minutes ago, Colman said:

It makes sense in the short term at the beginning - I didn't see the piece - and then it never gets revisited because you're too busy changing nappies or doing school runs and it becomes normal. Easy enough. (Also, TV show likely to exaggerate for effect.)

 

I'm not sure it was exaggerated - the numbers involved were vast.  I've watched the other programmes in the series and in all the other cases I could (a) see exactly how the bad habits had started, and (b) relate to the sort of numbers involved by thinking "yeah, if you were disorganised, always bought premium brands, and probably threw a fair bit away, I can see how that's what feeding that number of people COULD cost"...  But the numbers in this one just had me asking (a) how is it physically possible to spend that much on three meals a day for one adult and one child, and (b) how do they still have a roof over their head if that's what's being spent?

[Fonty]

I haven't seen this particular one, but I have seen others in the series.  It always amazes me that people buy the most expensive cuts of meat and pre prepared vegetables.  Is life really so busy that people cannot peel and chop an onion, carrot or whatever?   And none of the people in the programme seem to have heard of one pot casseroles, which have to be the easiest of meals to cook, not to mention nutritious.

 

I shall have to watch it now, I am intrigued to know what this woman was buying that led to such expensive food bills.  Was she throwing a lot out?  Again, why do people throw out perfectly good food just because it is past its sell by date?  The newspapers are always full of how people buy those two-for-one or buy-one-get-another-two-half-price offers, and then never use the spare ones.  They never seem to think about freezing the spare ones, although their freezer often seems to be chock full of other frozen items.  

 

.

[RuthE]

Well, that was another thing that puzzled me - there didn't seem to be much waste contributing to the overspend.  I think because she never had much in the cupboards at all, and basically went shopping for one meal at a time, so it wasn't the lack of waste that puzzled me, just the fact that it seemed to be pure food spend that was the issue.

[RuthE]

There were a *few* non-grocery items included in the overall total - for example a pizza takeaway once a fortnight, and a daily muffin from a local coffee shop.

[bangorballetboy]

1 hour ago, Fonty said:

It always amazes me that people buy the most expensive cuts of meat and pre prepared vegetables.  Is life really so busy that people cannot peel and chop an onion, carrot or whatever?  .

 

Forgive me for having a full time job (that is much more than 9-5) and a busy social life.  Sometimes I'd rather use the time prepping for, and clearing up after, a meal doing something else.

[RuthE]

2 hours ago, Fonty said:

Is life really so busy that people cannot peel and chop an onion, carrot or whatever?

 

I agree with what BBB has said above - I happen to choose to chop most things from scratch, but all of us make certain concessions to convenience and that just happens not to be one of mine.  There are also mitigating factors in more people's lives than we might think - for example, even a relatively minor disability like slightly arthritic hands or carpal tunnel syndrome can mean buying things pre-chopped or grated is the difference between cooking more or less "from scratch" and living constantly on ready meals.  I've got an inflamed tendon in my right hand at the moment, and if I didn't have a full freezer, I might be looking at such convenience ingredients.

 

The two families I really felt for in the series so far were the single parent with the severely disabled twins, and the single parent of five who was shopping for two coeliacs and a diabetic.  I'm not sure I'd even know where to start giving them advice because they had so much on their respective plates, figuratively speaking.  But neither of these families even came close to the per-person spend in Gabrielle's episode.

[zxDaveM]

you can't beat those pre-prepared mix veggies for stir fry though. If you bought the veg separate (and limited yourself somehow to the same value if possible), and laboriously chopped and cut, you'd probably have 5 times the volume at least - and end up throwing 80% of it away (unless you had stir fry 5 times in a week). You save yourself loads of time too!

[Pas de Quatre]

I must admit I usually buy the ready prepared stir fry veg, but if there is too much (or if you have prepared from scratch) all you have to do is blanch the excess in boiling water for a minute or two, rinse in cold and then freeze.  Coming in late from teaching I often need something that I have prepared earlier and can just heat through, or is left in the oven and my husband turns it on at the right moment.  However, I rarely eat bought prepared meals as they have so much sugar and salt - even savoury ones!  Haven't watched the programme yet - with a tight timetable something has to give and in our household it is TV.  

[RuthE]

25 minutes ago, zxDaveM said:

you can't beat those pre-prepared mix veggies for stir fry though. If you bought the veg separate (and limited yourself somehow to the same value if possible), and laboriously chopped and cut, you'd probably have 5 times the volume at least - and end up throwing 80% of it away (unless you had stir fry 5 times in a week). You save yourself loads of time too!

 

I buy bags of pre-mixed salad for this reason.  As a one-person household there's absolutely no way I could get through a whole head of each of the leafy greens I'd need to make a mixed salad from scratch before it started to spoil.

 

I also often see Jamie Oliver recommending buying frozen ingredients where things are perishable and used frequently in small quantities.  While I don't think I've ever bought a bag of fresh chopped onion in my life, I can absolutely see the merits of buying frozen chopped onion: use exactly as much as you need, with no waste.  One thing I do generally buy for the freezer is frozen soft fruit, e.g. ready-hulled strawberries and cubed mango.  They aren't good enough for a fruit salad, but can be thrown in a smoothie with no prep and no waste, and work out much cheaper than fresh.