JOANNA BLYTHMAN
As we all know, the cost of living is spiralling. Here, we look at the causes and how you can reduce your energy and food bills
A look at why we’re paying more at the supermarket
It was the porridge oats that did it. Last time I looked, they’d cost me 69p a kilo, this time the price had gone up to £1.39.
At first I thought this steep hike was because I buy organic oats from a refill shop. Then I price-checked them against supermarkets and found that large retailers charge anything between £1.30 and £2.40 a kilo for nonorganic oats, depending on how swanky the packaging is.
While I’d clocked the steadily increasing cost of fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy and fish, and adjusted my shopping list accordingly, I used to see oats as a cheap staple that wouldn’t break the bank. Now, for the first time, even the humble oat is a price consideration.
We’re in the midst of a major cost of living crisis. It feels as if a hammer blow arrives most days in the post, pinching our budgets from all directions. Disturbing letters warn of doubling fuel bills and increased council tax. The horrible realisation of how little petrol £30 buys you sinks in at the pump.
You don’t need to be poor for this financial crisis to aect you. Many people who previously felt
You don't need to be poor for this financial crisis to affect you
comfortably o are now feeling the pinch. Only the ultra-rich can aord to brush o this steep change in financial circumstances.
How did we get here? The war in Ukraine has certainly ushered in crippling price rises. Food production has been hit on a number of fronts, with soaring gas taris pushing up the cost of running farm equipment, heating glasshouses (for growing crops like peppers and cucumber), and driving ever higher the farmer’s fertiliser bill.
Ukraine and Russia produce 30 per cent of the world’s wheat, which means that foods, such as flour and pasta, now command new highs at the till. Animal feed prices are spiking, too, which inevitably means more expensive pork, poultry and eggs.
But, as money-saving expert Martin Lewis has pointed out, many of the measures that triggered this inflation predate the war. Rises in energy, heating oil, water, council tax, broadband and mobiles, food and National Insurance were all in the pipeline before Ukraine.
Two years of Covid restrictions on travel have encouraged more European workers, from countries such as Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic, to return home, but many of them were stalwarts of food production, stang everything from abattoirs through to food factories and fruit farms.
Whichever way you look at it, many more of us will need to make our depleted resources go further. Good Food, always budgetconscious, will be helping readers with money-stretching ideas. In this issue, food writer Claire Thomson lists 21 ways she saves money on food (see opposite).
And when the spiralling cost of feeding ourselves is down to macro-factors beyond our individual control, here’s one practical thing worth considering:
Why not invest in a slow cooker, which costs as little as £12, and use it to make thick soups and stews? You need no cooking skills, just a list of ingredients that turn themselves into something delicious. Switch it on as you leave for work and enjoy warm, homecooked food as you return.
Slow cookers use little energy and only need an electric socket, so they’re a godsend for people in temporary accommodation and bedsits. If you’re working two jobs, so you’re short on time as well as hard-up, a slow cooker is a modest but eective stratagem that can help you eat better for less.