‘I’ve saved £20k by basing my diet on yellow-label food’
Buying reduced-price and surplus food has helped Laura Gaga, 41, a civil servant from Uxbridge, boost her bank balance and the planet
Iwas about to leave the cinema when I spotted an almost full tub of popcorn abandoned on the seat in front of me. Tutting at the waste, I picked it up and – much to the dismay of my sister, Eugenia – happily polished it off on the way home. Another day, I was out with friends when I picked up an orange lying in the street and ate it. My friends couldn’t believe their eyes. I know these are extreme examples but it shows how much food goes to waste.
Since deciding to eat only reducedprice or surplus food 10 years ago,
I’ve saved more than £20,000. I never go without. I eat three meals a day, plus snacks, and I feel fitter and healthier than ever.
It was at work that I noticed a colleague would bring in lunch covered in yellow stickers. He told me he always bought his sandwiches from the reduced aisles at the supermarkets.
That evening after work, I called in at Sainsbury’s and was amazed at the bargains on offer. There was meat, fish, bread, fruit and vegetables. Some of the food had reached its sell-by date, others were end-of-line clearances or their packaging was damaged. All of it was a fraction of the full-price cost.
At the time, I was living alone and spending around £50 a week on food. I’d cook the same three dishes – spaghetti bolognese, shepherd’s pie and chilli – and eat some ready meals or takeaways. I started seeking out the reduced aisle every time I shopped, buying anything I found, even though it wasn’t what I’d usually eat. I got yoghurts, dented cans of pulses, bread – even a bottle of gin for £2.90. If there was a butternut squash for sale, I’d buy it and worry about what to do with it once I got home. I soon became more adventurous with my cooking.
I’d never eaten a radish but when I saw a bag for 10p, I bought it and discovered they are delicious in a salad.
I’d take my bargains home, google the ingredients, find a recipe and start cooking, freezing anything I couldn’t eat. Soon, my weekly shop had gone down to £10. There was always so much reduced fruit and veg that I gradually cut down on meat and fish and became vegan four years ago.
I also began using food waste apps, such as Olio, which connects you with people with surplus food they don’t want to throw away. The first time I used it, there was a listing from someone who was moving house and didn’t want to bin their food. I was thrilled with the lentils, beans and vegetables I collected.
Other apps, such as Too Good To Go, send you a notification and you can buy a“magic bag”of leftover food to collect. Karma offers surplus food from eateries at a reduced price that you buy through the app.
THE OCCASIONAL TREAT
For my 40th birthday, I found a bottle of champagne and some Pret sandwiches on
Olio and had a lovely lunch in the garden, all for free.
When I went on holiday to Copenhagen, we hadn’t booked breakfast. Instead, I used a food app and we ended up getting so much food from a nearby hotel that we were still eating it on the plane home.
Over NewYear I stayed in a cabin in Somerset with friends. I took the leftover curry my niece had made and stopped to shop for yellow-label items on the way there. We had a delicious buffet dinner and didn’t need to eat out.
I once went four months without buying any food at all, just using what I had available
or could collect using an app. With all the money I’ve saved, I’ve even been able to buy an electric car, go on more holidays and have a new kitchen installed.
It’s good to be financially independent, having spent my early twenties running up debts.
I don’t deny myself treats. There’s sometimes alcohol in the reduced aisles and if it’s an end-of-line product I always buy it.
I’m partial to a vino.
Friends and family give me food they don’t want and I often collect over-ripe bananas that would have been thrown away. They’re so useful for making bread or cakes. I even created a dish using the skins as a pulled pork replacement. And I served banana peel chutney to some friends recently and they had no idea they were eating banana skins! Shopping and cooking like this is a way of life for me now. I don’t really miss out on anything by being thrifty and it’s made me much more aware of the environment.
A third of the food that’s produced globally goes to waste and it’s estimated that we throw away around 9.5 million tonnes in the UK every year.
I’m not saying everyone should eat discarded popcorn but the amount of food waste out there is shocking.
At the very least, we can use the ingredients lurking at the back of our cupboards and make a real effort not to throw away perfectly good food.
‘I soon became adventurous with my cooking’