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Daily Record

Lifestyle

Emma Gill & Rachel Williams

School lunchbox prices from Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Aldi and Lidl were compared - here's the cheapest

Asda Sainsbury Aldi Lidl Tesco Morrisons Morrison (Organization) Emma Gill

With the cost of living continuing to put pressure on families, many parents will be looking for ways they can cut back on costs and stick to a budget.

While being a parent can be a costly affair, most can agree that one of the simplest ways to cut back on the spending is on the school lunches.

For quite a few, a packed lunch is usually the cheaper option when compared to school dinners - unless your child qualifies for free school dinners.

The only downside to purchasing your children's school lunches is finding out how to keep things simple while finding out which is the cheapest supermarket to get the goods from.

That's why one reporter from The Manchester Evening News set out to find out as they compared everyday packed lunch items from six major supermarkets across the country.

Emma Gill kept it simple by looking to create packed lunch complete with a ham sandwich, a tube yoghurt, a packet of crisps and a Royal Gala apple for a little as possible using like-for-like products.

The reporter visited Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl, where they tried to pick up own-branded items as much as they possibly could.

The reporter made the same lunch with items from all different supermarkets (MEN)

Out of all the items picked up, Emma found that Aldi and Lidl were the only options for own-branded tube yogurts, with Sainsbury's only selling branded Frube Yogurts and Tesco, Asda and Morrisons selling the Wildlife Choobs.

The battle for the cheapest supermarket has been on-going for quite some time, with more and more supermarkets offering parents lower prices.

And, impressively enough, Emma found that none of the supermarkets came in at over £1 for the entire lot purchased.

The reporter found that, unsurprisingly, budget supermarkets Aldi and Lidl continue to reign supreme for offering parents the cheapest for school lunches.

Aldi (left) and Lidl (right) worked out cheapest at 62p for the entire lunch (MEN)

Emma said: "Overall - with two pieces of bread, 40g (four slices) of ham and 6g of margarine used for the comparison - it was those two budget retailers who came out as cheapest, at 62p for the entire lunchbox."

Asda, however, was found to be the dearest out of the six supermarkets, despite recently being named the cheapest online supermarket at the end of 2021.

She added: "The most expensive was Asda, at 92p - mostly because its own brand crisps (82p for a six-pack) weren't available, so we had to go for Walkers at £1.50. With its own brand of crisps, it would have reduced the lunchbox cost to 81p.

Had we taken advantage of the 2 for £2 mix and match offer on packs of fruit, it would have reduced even further and the retailer says it would have been cheaper to pick its Smart Price ham at £1.59 a pack and its Farm Store apples at 72p for 500g."

The same lunch was made from all supermarkets (MEN)

Morrisons worked out as slightly more than Asda's lowest price, at 85p, followed by Tesco at 79p and Sainsbury's at 75p.

Most of the items bought were similar, with the exception being Morrison's white loaf where only thick sliced loafs were left, compared to the normal white loafs from other supermarkets.

In addition, the pork content of the ham ranged from 77% at Sainsbury's up to 88% at both Aldi and Tesco.

She did find that, while most of the products were similar to each other, the main difference was in the apples as they differed in size depending on the supermarket they were purchased from.

"You can see from the photo just how much they differed in size - Sainsbury's, at £1.60 for a pack of six by far superior to the others - but Tesco and (also £1.60) and Lidl (who, along with Aldi were the cheapest at £1.19) gave them a run for their money in both quality and size", Emma said.

Most products were similar to each other, but the apples were notably different (MEN)

Following the reporters results, an Asda spokesperson told MEN: " ‘’This survey does not compare like-for-like products or include lower-priced options on bread, ham, apples or crisps.

"Asda is consistently the cheapest major supermarket - a position recognised by independent surveys such as The Grocer 33 and the Which? basket comparison, which recently found that Asda was the cheapest traditional grocer every month for the last two years.”

Here are all the supermarkets overall prices that Emma found...