I haven’t much of an appetite anymore…

With the credit crunch eating away at us, and our purses, you really should forget about watching your waistline. The only diet you need to be on is one that’s going to save you pennies, not lose you pounds.

Living in the digital age, we’ll often spend ages on the internet trying to find the best deal on anything from car insurance to better broadband. But when it comes to our weekly groceries, old habits die hard.

Whether we like it or not, one of our biggest expenditures is food shopping. According to a recent price comparison by MySupermarket.co.uk of a basket of 24 staple items, the cost of our weekly grocery shop has gone up by 14% over the past year. This equates to a hefty £743.60 annual price increase on the average family’s food costs.

Seven hundred and forty three pounds and sixty pence!

So, what is the best credit crunch grub to get you through the hard times? And how can you dodge the price hikes without leaving your rumbling tummy?

Well in short, if you want to live off items that are going to save you pennies, you should be buying bananas, tomatoes and oranges. A diet rich in vitamin C that is as good for your body as it is for your purse; bananas saw the biggest decrease from £0.85 to £0.77 - a 9% reduction.

With these goodies already in your trolley, you’ll need to have a think about what you can cook up with them. The first answer is obvious: add the tomatoes to a jar of Dolmio (which hasn’t risen in price), so you’ll have a pasta sauce that actually tastes of tomatoes. As meat has gone up in price by nearly 30% (even Bernard Matthew’s turkey ham has gone up in price, although why anyone would want to buy the processed meat after it was subjected to the wrath of Jamie Oliver is beyond me…) this will have to be a meat-free dish. As will most of your meals I’m afraid.

Unfortunately, you’ll undo all of your budgeting if you pour your sauce over pasta, and sprinkle on some grated cheese. The cost of a bag of fusilli pasta has nearly doubled over the year, and cheese has gone up in price by an average of 32%; neither can you have it with bread, as a medium white sliced loaf will now set you back almost a £1. You should think of this as a kind of vegetarian Bolognese, à la Atkins diet.

The figures also show that Basmati rice is up by 101% in 12 months, from £0.90 for 1kg to £1.82, while garden peas have gone up in price everywhere except Tesco.

Us girls can’t even enjoy a homemade skinny latte now, as semi-skimmed milk has also gone up. Six pints will now set us back £2.25.

All this talk of price increases is enough to put anyone off their food, but there is one way you can avoid paying over the odds when you reach the checkout:

Start using MySupermarket.co.uk.

Comparing products from Tesco, Ocado (Waitrose), ASDA and Sainsbury’s, the site is worth checking out just to find out how much you could save simply by buying your shopping from different supermarkets. You can then either head on down to your finance-favourable retailer and buy your food in store; or ‘proceed to checkout’ and avoid the hassle of shopping entirely by ordering your goods online, having them delivered straight to your door.

Quite literally, a piece of cake.

My other top money saving tip is to avoid the penne, and if you want to eat like its still 2007, you’ll have to essentially think like a vegan.

A vegan that doesn’t eat many vegetables I might add.