The biggest spend for the majority of consumers after their rent or mortgage will be their weekly food budget. Eating the right food can prevent you becoming ill and feeling ‘washed out’ and even help you with your emotions.
Living on a budget does not mean that you have to eat unhealthy junk food, as the following section will show. The site has put together articles showing you how to get the best for your money, how to cook and even what you should consider eating when you need to feed your brain.
Food Shopping
After rent the next big chunk of your budget will be dedicated to your food shopping. Food is an essential part of your budget but it is also likely to be the most flexible part of it. Trying to have a balanced diet while saving money is not easy, but it is possible to eat well as a student without having to rely solely on ready-made meals and junk food. Always use a basket even when you need a big shop, it will make you question what you do and don’t need.
You can live on much more than toasties and beans when with some careful planning – although the ToastaBag^ does allow you to cook many different weird food combinations in the toaster.
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Ethical Food
There are loads of online businesses which specialise in providing ethical alternatives to ‘traditional’ food products.
Follow the same method which you would for conventional products, when shopping online – i.e. use a comparison website. Try the regular sites or make use of an ethical comparison site such as gooshing.co.uk which compares different ethical brands firstly, and the companies behind the products and their ethical corporate responsibility secondly. The site rates companies on a range of different attributes including animal testing, genetic modifications and fair-trade recognition.
The alternative is to use farmers markets – check out farmersmarkets.net, bigbarn.co.uk, localfood.org.uk or scottishfarmersmarkets.co.uk for information of farmers markets located near to you. To be able to sell at a farmers market, the seller must be have been involved in the production of the product or have made the food themselves – it may not be organic but the sellers will know everything about their products, more than you could find out from reading supermarket labels. This is a good alternative for students to try especially when the price of organic produce remains high. If you do want to eat organic on a budget then only switch to organic for the products you eat frequently – bread, fruit and veg.
If you simply want to choose ethical products alongside their conventional counterparts the supermarkets now have good organic ranges. Some of them even have organic clothing and toiletries available under their own brand.
Supermarkets are becoming more ethical and eco-friendly and this has been confirmed with the Prime Minister backing a campaign to eradicate the overuse of plastic bags in the UK. The first supermarket to sign up and join the PM's pledge was Marks and Spencer’s who have introduced a five pence levy on all plastic bagsin 2008.
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