Shoppers are finding their food budgets increasingly squeezed as the UK's cost of living crunch deepens.
Inflation has risen at the fastest rate in three decades and experts are warning that cheap food is to become a thing of the past. The combination of the coronavirus pandemic, Brexit, the war in Ukraine and other factors are limiting supplies and causing shopping prices to soar.
Writing in The Times, deputy food editor Hannah Evans has shared her recommendations for saving money while trying not to compromise on quality. Here are four of her top tips:
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Ask about yellow sticker times
Find out what time your local supermarket displays reduced food, Evans advises. Simply by asking a cashier, she learned that her local Tesco puts out yellow stickers at 4pm on Monday to Thursday and then knocks down the prices again at 6pm. "If you can time your shopping trips, you’ll bag a few bargains", she says.
Head to Lidl first thing in the morning
Evans says swapping a daily trip to Pret A Manger for Lidl can help save money on morning pastry without compromising on quality. She found that a fresh pain au chocolat, for example, costs 49p at Lidl compared with £2.30 at Pret. Every Lidl store in the UK has an instore bakery churning out up to 45 different items each day.
Forget fresh fruit and veg
Frozen fruit and veg are nutritionally similar to fresh alternatives but they are much cheaper and available almost the entire year, Evans says. As an example, she recommends switching out Tesco's £3 punnet of fresh raspberries (250g) for Co-op 's £2 bag of frozen summer fruits (450g), which she has bought "every week" since discovering it.
Consider different meat cuts
For meat-eaters, Evans advises reconsidering which cuts to buy. Although chicken thighs are bonier, fattier and trickier to portion than breasts, they are less than half the price at Tesco, for example. She found that the supermarket sells thighs at £2.40 per kilogram compared with breasts for £6.31 per kilogram.
