Tesco Value, Sainsburys Economy Ect Ect

they're not *worse* than the full-price versions, they're just, y'know, nice in a different way.

59p for 20, choice of champs.

Bacon Sandwiches for the Masses are best made with Safeway Saver smoked bacon which is about £2 for 400g (12 rashers at least). It is a bit hydrated but the flavour itself is good.

I really don't like other Saver products though.

(I've never shopped at Kwik save since)

The No Frills spiral bound notepads are great too.

The following are staples of my shopping trolley.

Usually I buy Tesco Value, but sometimes end up with Asda Smart Price, Somerfield Savers or Sainsbury's Basics versions instead, which are pretty much the same. All of the following are fine in my opinion.

Pasta
Tinned Tomatoes (Chopped & Plum varieties)
UHT Skimmed Milk
Muesli
Bran Flakes
Wheat Biscuits (Weetabix equivalent)
Rice (usually the long grain as it's cheaper than the basmati)
Salt
Mixed Herbs

How about the tinned tuna, has anyone tried the value etc. versions of that? I'm a little wary of meat/fish that's so cheap, so haven't tried it yet, but the price is tempting.

Asda Smart Price Weetabix is shite. What I've had of the rest is A-OK though.

cheapo chickpeas in sainbury's now 34p, up a whopping 8p in one go. (the 42p ones are sometimes 3 for a pound so...)

also need to mention sainsbury basics chocolate. 100g of white, milk or plain for 25p (ish, it varies). and the plain isn't the really dark kind that tastes like dirt.

(local tesco mini metro has the divine stuff for 50p or so and that's fairtrade which is normally more expensive.)

I tried the Tesco value tinned tuna in the end, and wouldn't recommend it. It wasn't dreadful, but it did have an unappetising oily & grainy consistency, even after being thoroughly drained. I'm sticking with bulk buying the brand name versions whenever there's an offer on.

Oily tuna is the worst :(

Yeah. It's especially bad because it's actually Tuna in brine, not oil, yet it still managed to be oily.

I got some Anya potatoes for 1p a bag (and Get One Free!) in Sainsbury's - a "Managers Special". Presumably a Manager Fucked Up The Ordering Special. Also loads of the fruit is half price and cherries were cheap (and delicious). I can make a potato fruit salad.

Somerfield cheap chocolate is 23p (or something) but is not good, just tastes like sugar.

Best way to save money is buying fresh ingredients and making your own stuff, convenience foods are a rip-off. I think you do get what you pay for, most of the own/budget brands I've tried have either been bland or horrible.

I know food prices are going up ... but how poor does one have to be to feel the urge to buy Value?

I write as one who used to have that urge, and has had it conquered by regular employment.

^^In no way does this make you a condescending prat. In no way.

Somerfield cheap chocolate is 23p (or something) but is not good, just tastes like sugar
Co-op's stuff is really nicer and just as cheap. ALSO why not grow your own produce if possible? Anything you can't buy you just grow, cheaper and supposedly 'food tastes better when you've worked for it'.

PLeaSe ALL GO to Farmfoods. It has changed my life. Name products lo lo prices.

yep, although if you rely on it too much the lack of variety starts to kinda eat yr soul. And when they stop the really long-running offers, withdrawal symptoms are inevitable. Where have my Goodfellas Delicia two for £2 gone??

Iceland is also good in a similar way. Although I know I'd save so so much money if I could be bothered to make the trek to Tesco non-Metro more often.

Somerfield diet coke, two for 90p: better than Diet Coke™! Not better than Pepsi Max. :'(

I like to save pennies on my food shopping, it helps me psychologically, as well as practically, to spend obscene amounts on music and other hobbies.

We'll have to see what happens when I get a "proper job" that pays real money. I suspect that by then the habit will be so ingrained as to stick regardless.

I know food prices are going up ... but how poor does one have to be to feel the urge to buy Value?

I buy 'Basic' flour as it seems to make no difference when making brownies or cookies. Or playdough. There's a pound shop near us that sells breakfast cereals for...er...£1. But you have to take what they've get. Weetabix one week, sugar puffs the next. I'd much rather spend less on stuff like that and then have enough to pay £8 for a decent chicken.

Making stuff and growing stuff is all very well. I do do both to a small degree but it really cuts into your online time.

I agree with that. I buy Value items for basic foodstuffs, where it doesn't seem to make an appreciable difference in quality, and use these to make my own meals (e.g. Value pasta and rice with various sauces constructed from Value tomatoes and other tinned goods such as kidney beans and so on), rather than buying ready meals.

The money saved by doing so helps offset the high prices for fresh fruit and vegetables (mainly fruit, as it's pretty pricey) that I buy.

I live in a small city flat and though there is a communal garden area, so growing my own food on any useful scale wouldn't really be practical, and I don't have the time or skills to do so.

you're right, krakow (x-post), there are such trade-offs, I can see. I retained a puritanical undergraduate mentality for years, in which I would only buy Value orange juice and the like (and convinced myself I preferred it to the standard OJ); I guess I have gradually shed that, though perhaps not totally.

all the same there is something odd about comparing the amount we are all apt to shell out on a round in a boozer, and the amounts one saves in buying arguably inferior biscuits. but there is something very crazy about prices in general, as I am often found to observe. Koogs and I have discussed this before, in fact. I wonder what Koogs spends his earnings on, what with no alcohol, no mobile phone, and Economy biscuits. Perhaps he is secretly amassing a pile of gold.

the other thing about these ranges: they include non-food / drink items, which are a different matter. I think it makes sense to buy a Value mop, bog brush or set of J-cloths (and I have done). Even my potato peeler is Sainsbury's Economy, and it works OK; and I still veer towards Value kitchen roll. I think I feel differently, though, about stuff I am going to put inside me, vs this very functional hardware.

The psychology of packaging for value products is interesting. Its also interesting that for certain foodstuffs -- fruit juice and perhaps surprisingly tomatoes -- the value price can often be as little as 10% lower than the standard price.

Some beauty products the value product is identical to some brand name products. How true is this of food?

A significant reduction in meat consumption can reduce cost at same time as improving health - more so than use of value products that often aren't significantly cheaper

i am wallpapering my flat with £100 pound notes.

> but how poor does one have to be to feel the urge to buy Value?

that's not the point, the point of this thread is to point out those places where the cheaper stuff isn't a quality compromise.

don't think i've ever bought economy biscuits - there's always a decent alternative. or go without. i did buy some of the 19p lemon squash the other week to keep in the cupboard for those times when i run out of the good stuff. is ok, and shines the sink up a treat...

i loved the No Frills logo

was at tesco the other day - you can get a pack of 3 green peppers for £1.49 or a pack of 6 Value green peppers for £1.49.. the peppers were like identical.

got the 6 pack

(but was v. tempted by the luxury of the 3 pack)

only available it seems in big tesco and asdas = 8p instant noodles, which are pretty much identical to their own brand 24p equvalent! (i.e. not demae ramen standard, but feeds you ok!)

also used to stock up 8p tins of peeled tomato. it's gone up now to like 18p or something. ;_; inflation

ken, those are the peppers de la bourgeoisie

Peter Piper picked a peck of prole peppers

how do you know these products are, as you say, pretty much identical?

OJ is not identical.

Kondriateff is right, the price differences don't seem to me that big, compared to other savings that one could make.

it is true of course that these value products serve a certain relative function, making the ordinary products look better?

Koogs, I am not clear that the point of the thread is as you say, because if you look at the opening post it says nothing about that; it merely asks what products we buy.

i did a blind taste testing using both kinds.

they let kenneth go blind

he met another blind Ken at a Sainsbury's - it was the best taste he ever had

A significant reduction in meat consumption...

This is very true and actually pretty easy. One decent chicken and some good sausages (cookable choirozo in Sainsburys now!) keep me for a week.

Best way to save money is buying fresh ingredients and making your own stuff, convenience foods are a rip-off. I think you do get what you pay for, most of the own/budget brands I've tried have either been bland or horrible.

-- Bodrick III, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 23:35 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

I'm starting to doubt this, especially when cooking only for oneself. I've always been a big fan of buying the seperate ingredients and never buying ready-made sauces or processed meals. That said, my shopping bill seems a lot steeper than my housemates' who tend to survive on chicken kievs and rice, pasta and Dolmio etc.. MAybe I just can't stand to eat the same things day in day out.

ooh, chorizo

from the deli counter do you mean?

je l'adore, or whatever the spanish version of that is

even with food prices going up (like I said before), surely food is still a relatively small part of our expenditure, vs rent, council tax, other bills, maybe even transport - and, again, alcohol, which is way dearer than other comparable things, and way dearer again if you're in a boozer? or again, eating out is miles dearer than the home-cooked equivalent. ... all of which is to say, I suppose, that grocery bills seem to me not something to worry about that much, compared to the other items. does it matter so much if a pepper costs you 35p or 70p?

Best way to save money is buying fresh ingredients and making your own stuff, convenience foods are a rip-off. I think you do get what you pay for, most of the own/budget brands I've tried have either been bland or horrible.

-- Bodrick III, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 23:35 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

I've found that this just isn't true. It may be truer if you have a proper family, and can work the economies of scale better, but for two people (without a car to hop from market to market searching out the best deals, or indeed the will to do this) it is actually cheaper to eat shit than good, well-rounded healthy meals.

Also, pinefox, I would say that the more 35ps you save, then the less guilty you'll feel about buying that extra pint. Seems reasonable to me.

Food is a relatively small part of expenditure compared to the past. It has not always been that way and it would be a mistake to assume it will continue to comprise such a small percentage in perpetuity

Interesting point re alcohol in pubs. At moment it is around 3x as expensive to drink a pint as it is to buy a can. Has this ratio always been the same?

^^ and also, how come I've been able to buy 6x'premium' lager for £5 for as long as I can remember?

I've found that this just isn't true. It may be truer if you have a proper family, and can work the economies of scale better, but for two people (without a car to hop from market to market searching out the best deals, or indeed the will to do this) it is actually cheaper to eat shit than good, well-rounded healthy meals.

yes indeed - i try to always cook my own food when i can, to save money (to fund my pub habit) but really i only cut cost if i buy in bulk and cook about 4 meals at once, and then eat the same thing for dinner + lunch for the next 2 days. A bit dull, perhaps, but i guess the main savings is the lunch that can otherwise easily cost you £3.50 or something for something remotely filling and nice tasting.

(unless you have stocked up on instant noodles in the office, obv)

problem with getting fresh ingredient is if you have the discipline to shop carefully and plan your meals you will end up just throwing half of it away and basically wasting money and food. it still pains me when i have to throw away a whole pack of chicken that my fridge isn't good enough to keep fresh to its use by date.

gedda freezah

my rent only allows me to have room for a crap tiny fridge with a frozen freezer compartment :(

but i'm moving house this weekend!! this place has a proper freezer - but then i'm paying £200 more a month for it, so i will need the freezer :( :( but then i'll probably go out less cos i have a better home to stay in, and so save money that way..

Kondriateff is theorizing a Long Wave

though surely it would only 'be a mistake to assume' if the assumption turns out to be incorrect, which it might or might not do?

you might say it is a mistake to make assumptions because it is complacent. but if one makes an assumption and it is fulfilled or verified, then one has not really made a mistake.

perhaps what K means is, we just do not know how large a proportion of expenditure food will be.

I suppose he / she is also saying: large processes are at work that make it LIKELY that food will become comparatively dearer on a large scale, in decades to come?

OK, perhaps that is true, though I suppose it could yet be falsified too.

round my way you can get 6 cans of Stella for £5.50. this seems good value to me.

the downside, some might say, is that you have to live round my way.

But then you can drink 6 cans of Stella and that would negate the problem a bit?

emily and ken - this is all very depressing that you're affirming my suspicions. I really like cooking and using ingredients, as well as starting from scratch - it's healthier, more interesting and more versatile. But I can't help feeling I'm duping myself as a single person where maybe buying up a few jars of pasta/curry sauce or even god forbid some ready meals on offer could be saving me more money than this.

I guess the secret is to buy versatile ingredients that you can use to cook many different meals with, but it's easier said than done. Right now since I don't drive and I am in a houseshare, food shopping actually IS one of my highest out goings (the closest proper supermarket is a medium-sized Sainsburys which proves very expensive compared to Tesco/Asda). I'd really like to cut down on my bills.

problem with getting fresh ingredient is if you have the discipline to shop carefully and plan your meals you will end up just throwing half of it away and basically wasting money and food. it still pains me when i have to throw away a whole pack of chicken that my fridge isn't good enough to keep fresh to its use by date

This too - I buy a pepper but only use half of it. The rest festers in my fridge and eventually gets chucked. Chicken is also a nightmare to keep - I'm never sure about what I can/can't freeze and the best way of defrosting (is microwave defrosting THAT bad really?)

on the plus side, i have found having a freezer to be ESSENTIAL. I now buy packs of frozen veg from Iceland, hopefully they are as good or nearly as good for you as fresh veg. I no longer have to chop onions cos I just buy a £1 pack of diced frozen ones. Same with peppers which are expensive fresh (why is everyone suddenly using the pepper as the benchmark for rising food prices all of a surgeon? or am i the only one who's noticed this?).

My missus is a big fan of going to the reduced rack and freezing whatever she can - I find this to be a bit of a lottery really, but it depends where you shop. She also tends to buy a whole roast chicken for near to £2 rather than chicken breast (also pricey) and trims bits off it throughout the week. I generally prefer to get turkey breast as it's less fatty than chicken and significantly cheaper (although less tender), that way i can use it in curries and pasta dishes..

you're only using half a pepper, what are you making? if it's e.g. pasta sauce then use a whole onion - plus whole onion, tin of tomatoes, whatever - make enoough for two, and freeze half of it.

i don't know how much pasta sauces cost but they can't be cheaper than 1 pepper + 1 onion + 1 tin toms + garlic + whatever herbs are lying around, surely.

wait a minute, as a single person vs My missus ... ?!

If you put half peppers or half onions in ziploc bags they'll stay good for another three or four days. You can find a way to use them in that time.

Basic rule of freezing: don't freeze and thaw the same thing twice. Otherwise it's all good. You can freeze bananas, nuts, chicken, whatever. (Don't freeze rice though, that would be mental)

Buying whole chickens is definitely awesome - you can get at least two REALLY good soups out of the carcass

Sorry that last post is (c) every article about food since 1066

Well, "Tracer Hand", you'd be keen to talk about 1066, seeing as aren't you like FRENCH or something??

wait a minute, as a single person vs My missus ... ?!

"Missus" as in g/f.

1 pepper + 1 onion + 1 tin toms + garlic + whatever herbs

roughly speaking (from Sainsbo)

1 pepper = 89p
1 onion = 40p
1 tin toms = 30p
1 garlic = 33p
Herbs = let's call it about 15p

= about £2 altogether, not far off from bulk buying some pasta sauces, especially if I want something like ssay mushrooms in there too. For the record, and as I mentioned, I do generally buy fresh ingredients. But a lot of these sauces are just fine - is it worth going to the trouble of chopping up all these veggies when using a sauce is practically the same price?

Basic rule of freezing: don't freeze and thaw the same thing twice. Otherwise it's all good. You can freeze bananas, nuts, chicken, whatever. (Don't freeze rice though, that would be mental)

It's not the freezing, it's the thawing. I don't have the foresight to get things out the freezer and thaw in the fridge overnight, and when I do something inevitably else crops up and I don't get round to eating the thawed meat in time. Is it safe to defrost chicken in the microwave?

it is actually cheaper to eat shit than good, well-rounded healthy meals

i posted something about this somewhere else -- fucked if i can find the thread (it was something like "what's your weekly shopping bill?") and need to go to work -- but yeh, there's something in this. that said: mrs F and i (well: mrs F, really) have got well into the idea of planning a week's worth of dinners and shopping around that menu, which works awesomely well from all different angles and does keep the prices right down. not as cheap as if we were living off £1 special-offer lasagne every night, but hey.

Is it safe to defrost chicken in the microwave?

of course! just make sure it's properly thawed throughout, that's all.

cheap bulk pasta sauces in the jar don't taste as good! and as long as you're comparing with bulk, make the pasta sauce in bulk, freeze it, then no fannydangle, just zap it and you're good.

There's a fruit and veg shop about three minutes' walk from my house that sells big bags of varying produce for 50p a bag. Basically I get some of these and spend the next week making meals that use them in one combo or another. They're cheap cos they're close to becoming inedible, but even if you end up having to throw some away it still works out better than buying one pepper at a time or whatever. Some items in fruit and veg places are more expensive than Tesco, in my experience, but most aren't

ooh, chorizo

from the deli counter do you mean?

No - In handy packs! And on special offer, buy 3 save £2 (or similar) - I think it's new range of tapas/deli type stuff.

Not really 'basic' or 'economy' though...

i wonder if it would be worth buying a git load of onion, garlic and tomato sauce, freezing it and then using it in combination to make curries, pasta sauces, chilis, that kind of thing whenever I like? Don't know if that would really save much money but it's the basis of pretty much any one pot meal I guess.

I buy the value packs of peppers in Tesco (they taste the same as ordinary ones, but are just not perfect uniform shapes), and will bulk buy packs of chilli peppers etc when reduced down to half price. Saturday morning is often 'kitchen prep' time for me, where I potter around watching Saturday Kitchen on the telly while bulk cooking curries/chillis/bolognese/pies etc and slicing/dicing/grating the following week's supply of vegetables and bagging them up into smaller portions for the freezer. I use cheap food bags (about 1,000 bags for a quid from Poundland) or cheap foil freezer trays which I'll usually wash and re-use each time.

I do this mostly because it saves me heaps of time during the week, when I have to cook meals from scratch after a hard day at work (often more than one different meal per night, as I have a combination of shift workers, vegetarians and non-vegetarians in my family), but also because it almost completely eliminates any waste.

I buy those plain (value!) pizza bases and it's so easy to grab one of those out of the freezer, top with tomato paste and then a whole assortment of whatever veg I have previously diced and frozen - red and green peppers, chillis, onions, mushrooms etc (all of which would otherwise previously have gone to waste, probably), sprinkle over a handful of frozen grated cheddar and bung it in the oven. It's almost like getting an extra meal for free.

needed a new toothbrush. all the ones in the supermarkets looked like they'd been designed by people who'd rather be designing trainers, all contours and stripes and odd shapes. except the sainsbury's basics toothbrushes that were were plain white, contoured slightly, nice looking.

and 11p. for two.

(in use they do feel a bit odd - the handle is a lot flatter than my current one)

turns out the cheese i've been buying for years without thinking about it is sainsbury's basics red leicester.

sainsburys do bags of smoked salmon offcuts for £1 and once put through a scambled egg no girlfriend can tell. ditto for huge bags of bacon ends/carbonara

and 11p. for two.

Yep, they certainly clean the teeth!

(I got some, one time I was away. Just as good as the high-tech multicoloured/bristled w/ Tongue scraper (who does this?) ones.)

tesco ginger nuts

I'm struggling to summon the courage to do a £60 online order with Tesco that consists entirely of 'Value' products. It's pretty much all I eat, but I'm afraid that the shame upon delivery of such a vast bulk of economy products might be overwhelming.

the first meal i cooked for my first girlfriend was chips w/saino's basics curry sauce when it was 8p a jar when I was in my first year at uni. Unsurprisingly she ended up dumping me on the way to a club on my birthday shortly after.

Morrisons Savers muesli is dreadful stuff, noticeably worse than Tesco's equivalent offering.

62p soup in Sainsbury's is fine

but this morning the local Sainsbury's was cash-only for some reason and my emergency tenner turned out to be an emergency fiver. not normally a problem because the bank is only 1 minute away. but they closed it down last year and i can't remember if my card works in other banks' machines.

as an aside, i was in Christie's yesterday (get me) and they had Banksy's Tesco Value soup can print in there, which made me smile. his best joke.

slightly off topic, but there should be a law about having the "Co-Op member" price etc 4x larger than the normal everyday price. (maybe there is, something about vision-impaired people)

also, sainsbury's, if the special offer has an end-date on it then you've got to take the label that *only* shows the special offer price off the shelf when the end-date arrives. (to be fair i did get the discount when i complained, but how many people don't notice when they are scanning?)

(and why did it take so long and 3 different people to refund me?)