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.

 Yeah, cheap stuff….

Wednesday 16th July, 2008 - £8,850.98 in debt…

So, apparently inflation is at an 11-year high, Gordon Brown’s telling everyone not to chuck out their food (maybe he wants it for himself…?), and anyone who’s anyone is trying to save money on groceries. It’s the nearest I’ll get to being fashionable while I’m on a budget, so I thought I’d join in.

Last week I was busy getting geared up for a weekend away with the girls, so I thought I’d use www.mysupermarket.com to check whether my favourite wine was on offer anywhere. 

MySupermarket is a nifty little site that compares prices from four major UK supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Ocado) and tells you where you could save the most money. You can give it a list of your usual shopping and ask it to compare the whole lot, or just have a browse for a particular thing - toothbrush, minted peas, whatever.

The wine I was after always seems to be £5.49 whenever and wherever I buy it, without fail, so I wasn’t hopeful. But, according to the site, it was available for £3.89 at Sainsbury’s - what a result! Hooray! And by the time I got there, it was £5.49.

Is this because it only compares online prices? Was I too slow? Is the universe punishing me for something?

Anyway, four days later I overcame this setback and decided to try again, giving it the details of all my usual monthly shopping and asking it to find the cheapest deals. Obviously it’s impossible to do this properly, as you’ll always end up getting impulse purchases and seeing different deals as you browse through a shop, but it’s good to know which one will be cheapest for the bare essentials.

As it turned out, Asda was the best of the best. As a lifelong Tesco shopper, I was a bit wary, but desperate times call for desperate grocery shopping. Unfortunately, the rest of the world and all its shaven-headed children had clearly had the same idea.

The savings we made included:

* £1 for four pints of milk (some kind of special 1% fat milk though - where will I get my fat from now, eh?)

* Various bready things from 10p because we shopped near the end of the day.

* Lemon drizzle cake for £1.79 (near its use-by date but I’m sure that won’t be a problem, and it solves the issue of where my next chunk of fat is coming from).

* Asda own-brand tinned cat food at £3.68 for nine tins.

An hour and a half later, and we’d spent £78.76 - not bad for a month’s shopping for two people, and a saving of about £10 compared to Tesco. But we spent at least half an hour longer in Asda than we normally do at Tesco, had to navigate a hellish assault course of screaming children and squinting old people, and were served by the winner of Grumpiest Till Person 2008. Was it worth it?

The jury’s out on that one, but if I have to clear up one more pile of Asda own-brand meaty-chunk cat puke, I might have to say no.

 Think cake, think insurance….

Now, I love my food. I’m creative with my recipes and while most of my concoctions taste just as good with own-brand ingredients, I do guiltily splash out on the occasional treat.

Every now and then a girl just needs her “Finest” Parma ham and “Extra Special” goat’s cheese - I swear you really can “Taste the Difference” in those vine ripened tomatoes. However, I should add that I’m also addicted to “Value” chocolate mousse.

“But what’s this got to do with insurance?” I hear you ask.

On June 22 Tesco is launching three new home insurance offers, which are being presented in the style of its food ranges – Value, Standard and Finest.

Jim Bruce, head of Tesco Home Insurance explains the move:

“Customers have told us they understand Value, Standard and Finest, and in the current economic climate, we want to do everything we can to help them get exactly what they want to pay for. We’ve brought this range to the home insurance market to offer even greater choice, clarity and value”

Well, that makes things nice and simple doesn’t it? Those who pride themselves on shopping only from the Finest range will now be able to boast of their Finest policy whilst those who enjoy munching on Value custard creams will be able to save themselves some pennies with the Value insurance. Genius! No?

Well, no. The thing is… insurance isn’t that simple. The best insurance policy for you depends very much on your individual circumstances and the actual “value for money” you get depends on exactly what your policy offers that will benefit you.

While I can live on 19p noodles, this does not mean I can do without potentially vital cover, but similarly, just because I enjoy the occasional glass of Finest orange juice does not mean I want to pay a ridiculously high premium for services I will probably never use!

While the re-branding of their insurance policies is a great marketing ploy, it does not provide immediate “clarity and value”, rather it oversimplifies a choice which really should take more thought.

It really is essential when looking for an insurance policy that you focus on how it suits your individual needs. Otherwise, you could end up with a policy which is about as much use as a Value cheesecake.

Mmm… cheesecake.

What would you rebrand, if you had the chance?