Living Below the Line 02: Day One: Shopping and First Foods

I had planned to do research; I did none.  I had planned to make a shopping list; I did not.  I had planned to shop on Sunday so I would be ready; I was not.  I woke up this morning on Day One of my Living Below the Line and remembered that I could not consume anything except tap water until I had been to the Supermarket to spend my fiver.

The first decision was which supermarket to go to.  Tesco and Asda are the cheapest but I have ethical and quality reservations about them; Waitrose is far more ethical but my £5 would not go very far.  I settled on Morrisons – it has a family-business feel to it, always has good quality fresh produce and is cheap enough to give me hope that I will not starve.

The first realisation was that I could not have chosen to go to Morrisons if I did not have a car sitting outside my house with expensive petrol in the tank.  I would have had to go to Waitrose, which is only a five-minute walk away or spend half of my daily budget taking the bus to and from Tesco.  Even the ability to make a choice about where I buy my food is a privilege of wealth!

I spent £5 and one and a half hours in Morrisons!  It took that long to walk backwards and forwards, carefully weighing up the various budget options and considering the nutritional balance of each meal, and come up with a £5 trolley full of food that would last me five days.  It was an eye-opening experience that really demonstrated how hard it is to eat enough, never mind healthily, on such a low budget.  And I did not even have to consider soap, washing-up liquid or toilet paper!

I was determined to make some effort to get enough proper nutrition and to include some basic fruit and vegetables in my diet.  It is very hard though to justify spending 65p on a reduced cabbage when that money could buy you five days-worth of budget spaghetti (19p), ten days-worth of budget cornflakes (31p) and a tin of budget baked beans (15p).  I saw products I had never noticed before as a scoured the budget brands, that seem to all be placed on the bottom shelf.

Luckily, I managed to spot some bargains!  A packet of four tea cakes that went out of date yesterday, reduced to 9p; a carton of long-life brandy sauce reduced to 5p; and a bag of 8 frozen Quorn sausages on better-than-half-price offer at 91p.  This helped ensure that I would have some protein in my diet this week and also freed up some money to pay for the much-desired fruit and veg, including half-price oranges at 50p for a four-pack.

Coming in at exactly £5, I was able to buy enough food to eat cereal every morning, something processed plus an orange for every lunch, Quorn sausages, rice and veg for most dinners and the odd treat of toasted tea cake with brandy sauce!  Not exactly a varied diet but not completely tasteless either.  I am interested to find out how many calories this limited and highly refined selection will provide each day, as well as how much each meal will cost and how much useful nutrition it will provide.

Day One Tally:

Breakfast:

80g cornflakes with 113ml whole milk, watered down. 

Cost: 15p. 

Calories: 381.

Lunch: Ginsters Chicken Slice. 
Cost: reduced to 59p. 
Calories: 492.

Dinner: 100g rice, 3g soup mix, 100g carrots, 100g cabbage. 
Cost: 27p. 
Calories: 421.

Snack: Toasted tea cake with 100ml brandy sauce. 
Cost: 3p (reduced). 
Calories: 280.

DAY ONE TOTALS: Cost: £1.03. 

Calories: 1,574 (79% of RDA). 

Five-A-Day: 3 (60% of RDA).