Football fever has passed and Eat Well For Less? is back on our screens. Mini celebration!
It’s good entertainment, you know how it’s going to play out – the family eats too many takeaways, mum goes shopping 20 times a week and cooks four different meals an evening, dad reckons he can spot a mile off if they’ve swapped his usual brown sauce, the kids will turn their noses up at Chris’s veg-packed muffins and Greg is going to be way off with his guess of how much the family will save – but you might learn something along the way, even if it’s just however bad you think your spending habits are, there are likely to be people forking out more than you.
The premise of the show is great and, as you might expect given the services I offer, I fully support this kind of information going out to a mass audience, albeit in a light-hearted way. So many people are in the situation in which the families featured find themselves, and without education, it’s so easy to get stuck in bad habits and see no way out.
There are tips for cutting your food bills, storing food better, budget family recipes, taste tests on a range of products and much encouragement to eat together. The amount saved is possibly unrealistic – who, apart from a production crew, has time to do their shopping at six different supermarkets, the butcher and the greengrocer. I don’t think there’s enough emphasis on eating well – they’re usually still allowed their two litres of fizzy pop, five packets of crisps and multipack of chocolate bars a day; they just happen to be cheaper versions. And, they don’t talk about food planning nearly enough – presumably because that doesn’t make for entertaining television.
Well, I can’t promise Chris and Greg levels of entertainment, but I can work with you to reduce your food bills and make the most of the ingredients you’ve got, eat well without spending all evening in the kitchen, provide you with plenty of inspiration for new meal ideas and give you a confidence boost in the kitchen. If you would truly like to eat well for less, get in touch, I’d love to be able to support you achieve your goals.