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Having a sustainable approach to food could help you save money, live healthier and help the environment in the long run. It doesn’t have to be complicated – often a small change in your routine is enough to make a difference. From how you shop to what you eat, here’s some sustainable food tips to get you started.
1. Make your own food
Making your own food can be cheaper and healthier than buying a ready meal. The price of ready meals is often more expensive due to the additional costs of being pre-made. There are environmental benefits too. By avoiding processed foods, you can avoid the extra packaging that ends up in landfills and have the option to choose items that don’t contain ingredients known to have negative environmental impacts, such as palm oil.
How you cook could make a big difference. Batch cooking and freezing for example can be time and cost effective. Instead of cooking every night, you could make a big batch in one go, divide it into portions and freeze it – saving you valuable time when it comes to prepping, cooking, and washing up.
With a tasty meal ready to go, you might be less tempted to order a costly takeaway or grab an off-the-shelf product from the supermarket, when you’re short of time or are feeling too tired to cook. At the end of 2020, the average weekly household spend on takeaway meals was £5.60. This is likely to have changed due to inflation but cutting down to just one a month in favour of home-cooking, could save you over £220 a year.1
And if you use a microwave to reheat your pre-prepared meal, it could be more energy efficient compared to a hob or the oven.
2. Buy in bulk
Buying things in bulk could save you money as items are usually cheaper per gram or per litre. A current supermarket search online for penne pasta shows a 500g bag that costs 70p would be £1.40 per kg, while purchasing a 3kg bag for £3.30 – even though it costs more upfront – is only £1.10 per kg.2
Bulk buying can also help the environment in a small way, as there’s usually less packaging. New zero-waste and packaging-free food shops are opening across the country, giving you an option to bulk-buy goods like pasta, pulses and more – completely package-free.
Although you might associate bulk buying with items being on offer in supermarkets – you could use this approach to take advantage of lower prices on fresh ingredients when they’re in season. Just make sure you have enough room to store everything and to use it before it goes out of date.
3. Plan ahead to reduce food waste
The average family could save £720 a year by reducing their food waste.3 Meal planning can be a good way to achieve this. By knowing what you’re going to cook ahead of time, you can shop for the right amount of ingredients you need, and not lose money by buying unnecessary items or throwing away food you haven’t used.
Continue reading the full and original article from: Aegon
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