Convenience is costing us more than we realise.

1. The Price Tag Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

Let’s think about something as simple as spaghetti bolognaise.
You might buy four individual ready meals at £3.75 each, costing £15 to feed a family of four.
Alternatively you could make a big pan of bolognaise using minced beef, chopped tomatoes, onions, carrots, pasta and a few herbs which comes to under £10 at todays prices.  Use less meat and add more vegetables or lentils and it will be an awful lot cheaper.  If you shop at a discount supermarket it will be even cheaper. Depending on where you shop and what ingredients you choose, you could make enough for four generous portions, possibly with leftovers for another day, for less than the cost of those four ready meals.

To me the £10 is still expensive.  We usually put a bolognaise in the slow cooker using a lot less than 500g of meat and it does the two of us 3 or even 4 meals for half that. That’s where the real savings begin. When we cook from scratch, we’re not just paying for one meal. We’re often buying ingredients that can stretch across several meals. A bag of carrots can go into a bolognaise, a soup, and a casserole. A packet of pasta can feed the family more than once. The trick isn’t always spending less at the checkout today. It’s getting more meals for the money we spend.

Of course, cooking from scratch isn’t automatically cheaper every time. Ingredients, energy costs, portion sizes and food waste all matter.  However, planning meals and using ingredients wisely can make a significant difference.

2. Are We Paying More for Less Food?

Have you ever opened a ready meal and thought, “Is that it?”.  Some ready meals look generous in their packaging, but once they’re on the plate, the portions can be surprisingly small. A meal might contain plenty of sauce but relatively little meat or vegetables.  Check out the amount of meat in the pasta meal pictured below.  When we cook at home, we have more control over what goes into the pan and how much ends up on our plates. We can bulk out a chilli with kidney beans, add lentils to a bolognaise, or pack a casserole with seasonal vegetables.

These simple additions can make meals more filling without dramatically increasing the cost.
Everyone is satisfied after dinner, we’re less likely to go searching through the cupboards for something else to snack on.  Often the ingredients found in ready meals actually make our body crave more food.

3. What About the Cost to Our Health?

This is where things become particularly interesting. Not all ready meals are unhealthy. There are some perfectly reasonable options available, especially those containing plenty of vegetables, fibre and protein. However, some ready meals can be high in salt, saturated fat and calories, while offering fewer vegetables or less fibre than we’d ideally like.

I looked at the 400g bolognaise ready meal in Tesco and it had 2.11g of salt (35% of an adult daily recommended amount).  There was also 26% of the adult amount of daily recommended fat and 647 calories a pack.  Although it doesn’t automatically make it a bad meal as there is protein and fibre in it, is is using up a lot of your daily allowance when you still have two other meals and snacks to eat.

Too much salt can lead to health problems.  When we are not preparing the food ourselves, we may not realise exactly how much salt or fat we’re eating. Cooking from scratch gives us the opportunity to make simple changes. We can use less or better salt, choose leaner meat, add extra vegetables and decide how much oil or sauce goes into our meals. We don’t need to become professional chefs or spend hours cooking elaborate recipes. Even simple homemade meals can help us build healthier eating habits.

Eating a ready meal now and again isn’t going to ruin our health,  as what we eat regularly matters far more than what we eat occasionally. Over time, a balanced diet can help reduce the risk of health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. That doesn’t mean every homemade meal is automatically healthy. A homemade dish can still contain too much salt, sugar or saturated fat. What matters is the ingredients, portions and overall balance of our diet.

4. The Hidden Cost of Convenience

There’s something else we often overlook when comparing ready meals with home cooking.
We’re paying someone else to prepare the ingredients, cook the food, package it, transport it and put it on a supermarket shelf. All those costs have to be covered somewhere. When we cook at home, we’re doing some of that work ourselves. Yes, our time is valuable, and for some households a ready meal can be the most practical choice.  However, cooking doesn’t always have to mean spending an hour in the kitchen every evening.

Meals like fajitas, a homemade vegetable soup, jacket potato with beans, or quick pasta dish can be inexpensive, nutritious and relatively simple to prepare. With a little planning, we can make our time in the kitchen work harder for us.  We often will take 10 minutes to make a slow cooker meal that will be hot and ready when we get home. It takes less time than visiting the supermarket and uses little energy to cook it.

5. Batch Cooking: Where the Savings Really Add Up

One of the best ways to save money on food is to cook once and eat more than once.  We make a large slow cooker full of chilli. We have it with rice , serve one night,  over jacket potatoes another time, and freeze other portions.  The food is then defrosted another time and we make potato nachos, or chilli cottage pie,  or maybe chilli on toast if we are in a rush, or make it into pasties.  Batch cooking doesn’t need to mean that you are eating the same thing all of the time.

That is a few different meals from one cooking session. The same principle works with soups, curries, casseroles, bolognaise and many other family favourites. Batch cooking can help reduce food waste, save on energy, make better use of ingredients and save time on those evenings when we’re tempted to reach for something convenient. Just remember to cool leftovers promptly, refrigerate or freeze them safely, and reheat thoroughly.

6. Healthy Eating Doesn’t Have to Mean Expensive Eating

One of the biggest misconceptions about healthy eating is that it costs a fortune. We see expensive protein products, trendy health foods and fancy ingredients advertised everywhere. However healthy eating doesn’t have to look like that. Some of the most useful foods to keep in the kitchen are also among the simplest.

An example is oats for porridge and breakfast and maybe to make a flapjack with. Eggs also make a  quick, filling meals, and omelettes are a great way to use up those bit of things that I call fridge gravel like some odd mushrooms, or pepper that are lurking in the fridge. Beans and lentils add protein and fibre.  One of our favourite meals is a sweet potato and lentil curry that is an easy, cheap meal to make in the slow cooker. Buy frozen vegetables that last longer and help reduce waste if you can’t grow your own. Tinned tomatoes for soups, sauces and casseroles are always useful to have in and don’t break the bank.  Things like potatoes, rice and pasta make affordable bases for meal and so are useful to have in your pantry

You really don’t need a cupboard full of expensive ingredients to put together a balanced meal.  We don’t.  Sometimes the simplest meals are the ones that offer the best value.

7. Let’s Be Realistic: Not Everyone Has Time to Cook

I can hear people shouting at me saying that they do not have time to cook. It’s easy for me to tell people to cook everything from scratch, but real life isn’t always that straightforward. People work long hours.  I did as a single parent. People are exhausted when they get home. Others live alone, have disabilities, struggle with energy costs, or simply don’t have the facilities to cook every day.  Therefore for some, ready meals are genuinely helpful, and there’s no shame in using them.

I am not writing this blog to make people feel guilty about choosing convenience. It’s about helping people recognise that there are alternatives which can sometimes save money and offer better nutritional value. Even replacing two or three ready meals a week with simple homemade options could make a difference to the household budget and health.  Maybe when ready meals are the practical choice, comparing the price per portion and checking the nutritional information can help us choose wisely.

8. What Are We Really Paying For?

When we pick up a ready meal, we’re not simply paying for food. We’re paying for convenience.
There are times when convenience is worth every penny.  I love a fishfinger sandwich if I need a quick lunch and so am no saint and don’t cook absolutely every thing from scratch. However, if we’re relying on ready meals regularly because we believe they’re always cheaper than cooking, it might be time to look again.

By planning meals, using affordable ingredients, cooking larger portions and making the most of leftovers, we can often feed ourselves and our families for less. We can also have greater control over the nutritional quality of what we’re eating. Perhaps that’s the most important point of all. Saving money on food shouldn’t just be about finding the cheapest thing to put on our plates. It should be about getting the best possible value for our money, while looking after our health at the same time.

Final Thoughts

The next time you’re standing in the supermarket looking at a £3.75 ready meal, ask yourself a simple question:Am I really getting the best value for my money, or am I just paying for convenience?
Sometimes, spending a little more time preparing our food can mean spending less money overall. The benefits might last a lot longer than the meal itself.  I know that places like Iceland stores do offer meals at £1.  This can be really helpful if your money is tight, but the ingredients can’t be very good at that price.  I know I grow my own vegetables and fruit, and forage, but still my yearly grocery bill this year should be about £500. This is despite the fact that we cook about 95% of our meals from scratch and never buy the ready meals. It  does show that it is possible to cook from scratch within a small budget.

What do you think? Have you found cooking from scratch saves you money, or do ready meals work better for your household? I’d love to hear your thoughts.