Easy food swaps to save you money - my studentbeans article

Yup, I've got another article up on the fab student website, studentbeans.com. Yay! I've learnt a lot about how to be a savvy supermarket shopper, and with a bit of research, found out the best ways to cut back on your food shopping costs without compromising too much on quality. It's an essential skill, not just for students. Here's a taster of my article, but for the full list of TEN simple swaps, click through to my article here. Please.

"We all know that beans doesn't actually always means Heinz (Sainsbury's Basics will do just fine, thanks), but if you want to be really thrifty, there's more to savvy supermarket shopping than just choosing budget brands.

These food swaps will help you save a little bit here and there and it really will all add up, leaving you more money for the important things in student life. Like textbooks, of course.

1. Swap fresh fruit for tinned

Granted, it’s much easier to grab an apple than a tin of fruit to munch on your way to a lecture, but tinned fruit is a lot cheaper than fresh. What’s more, you don’t have to worry about finding a mouldy tin of peach slices at the back of your cupboard like you may do with a sad, forgotten banana.

Tinned fruit keeps for ages and is really delicious with custard or yoghurt. If you like making smoothies, it’s definitely not worth wasting expensive fresh fruit, so use tinned, frozen or even dried instead. All cheaper, with just as much nutritional goodness. Now you have no excuse not to get your five a day!

A punnet of four fresh peaches (about 440g) costs £3 in Sainsbury’s, whereas a 213g tin of peach slices in fruit juice is 38p, or £1.78 per kg.

2. Swap refrigerated pizzas for frozen

Freezer food is nearly always cheaper than their refrigerated equivalents, so if you can get from the supermarket to your freezer without your food defrosting, it’s definitely worth hitting up the freezer section. You may be surprised by what you find as well – frozen broccoli, anyone? There’s more to freezers than ice cream.

A Sainsbury’s cheese & tomato thin & crispy pizza from the fridge sections costs £2.19, whereas their thin & crispy margherita pizza from the freezer costs £1.60.

3. Swap snack packs and buy in bulk

The bigger the packet, the cheaper the price. Simple. So why spend more than you need to if you can manage to carry heavier shopping bags back home? Snack-sized products are ridiculously over-priced, so it’s best to buy large quantities and then decant into a little Tupperware for when you’re on the go.

A 1kg bag of Sainsbury’s Californian seedless raisins cost £2.85, whereas Whitworths 35g snack packs of juicy raisins cost 45p each or £12.86/kg."

So What are you waiting for? Reading the full article could just save you enough money for that green velvet skater skirt from ASOS that you've had your eye on for so long (just me?)