Get Even More Visitors To Your Blog, Upgrade To A Business Listing >>

Food Glorious Food!

Tags: food
As I mentioned in my blog during Real Nappy Week, saving money often goes hand in hand with saving the environment. Food waste is a huge issue for the UK. We produce 10 million tonnes of food waste each year, that is food that could have been eaten but we missed the opportunity. But this does give us an opportunity, both as a nation and as individual households, we can save a pretty penny using some simple steps.
Meal planning
One of the main reasons we throw food away is because it sits in our fridge for too long and we can’t think of anything to do with it. The irony is that less than a week earlier we spent good money buying it, and then waiting for it to turn not perfectly good and ending up as a waste of time and money.  According to Love Food Hate Waste “If you are a family of four, you could be saving as much as £60 each month.” Just by not buying food that you don’t actually need. The way to do this is to think a little more before your weekly shop, take a look at what’s already in your fridge and what's in your cupboard, and write down what your family is going to eat over the next week built around what you already have. Then when you go to the supermarket you know what you’ll need and you can also check the use-by dates (more on this later) as you go so that you know it will be fine when you want it.   
The other big benefit of the humble shopping list is that it helps you avoid the perils of temptation, supermarkets are designed to encourage you to spend money, and as much of it as possible. But armed with a list of ingredients you know what you need and what you don't.
Love Food Hate waste also have a great App to help with meal planning, portion control and many other hints for reducing the cost of food for your household.
When is it safe to eat past-dated food?
Food labels are confusing, they may be getting better but still there are an array of different terms used, but some of the most important terms are the numerous dates that appear on our foods: Use-By, Sell-By and Best Before. More information on food labelling can be found on NHS Choices but essentially, the most important is Use-By, which states when it is safe to eat food until. If its got a Use-By date take note and consume it before that date. The others are more flexible Sell-By (and Display until) are relevant only to the supermarket, which tell them when to sell the food by, rather than when you should eat it by, so for us shoppers they are fairly meaningless.
Best Before, (but just fine after)
Where it gets interesting is the Best Before label. All this label means is that the food will be in perfect condition until that date, but it remains perfectly edible for long after that date. Buy it within the best before date and you should expect the best, but buy it after and it will most probably be just as good. 
However, once a food has passed its best before date it will no longer be found in the supermarket, instead you have to go on-line to “Best Before” re-sellers, who buy up this food and sell it at a fraction of a price. I’ve managed to get 12 cans of Irn-Bru for 50p, and when I wrote this article they had a box of Malteasers for a single 1p.  Ultimately most of the food is snack food and drinks, but you’ll get staples like rice and pasta too, just don’t expect to make a full nutritious meal from this source alone.
I’ve used 2 sites before http://www.approvedfood.co.uk/ and http://www.clearancexl.co.uk/ both work the same way, you fill up a massive box full of food and a couple of days later it arrives on your doorstep. No 5p bag charge, but a big box as a new toy for any Toddlers in the household.
Money Advice Hub Tip
For advice on creating a healthy, balanced meal plan, please visit our Eatwell Guide page. You can also visit our Food Budgeting page for further tips to save costs on your food bill.


This post first appeared on Debt Advice Journey, please read the originial post: here

Share the post

Food Glorious Food!

×

Subscribe to Debt Advice Journey

Get updates delivered right to your inbox!

Thank you for your subscription

×