Laura Gaga spends seven days on a budget

Food is in abundance and in this digital age it can be all too easy to meet cravings at the touch of a button – buying meals via apps, getting takeaways delivered to our doors and online shopping.It’s easy to spend a small fortune on our three daily meals, let alone snacks, coffee meetings, dinner dates, treats, celebratory or commiseration meals. Ironically, food is wasted in abundance and according to research by Gousto (gousto.co.uk), we throw away £494 million pounds worth of food a week. So, by keeping to a £1-a-day food budget I’ve tried to raise awareness of our spending habits, putting the onus on using what we already have and wasting less. Here goes nothing!

Tuesday

I got offto a great start, beginning my day with a breakfast of overnight oats made with vanilla soya yoghurt, stewed rhubarb and strawberries – this came to a total of 1p. The only ingredient that I paid for was the pack of oats for 19p – they were reduced and marked with a yellow sticker because the packaging was damaged. My mum had given me the yoghurt and the fruit came from my colleague’s allotment. I snacked on a few squares of dark vegan chocolate which a work friend had brought back to the office from her trip to Berlin, as well as some mango chunks and grapefruit slices which I’d prepped coming in at 31p. The fruit was also yellow sticker but, even when reduced, fruit costs more pre-cut, so it pays to chop your own. Lunch was a couple of bread rolls, vegan cheese with peppercorns, iceberg lettuce and peppers. All of these items were reduced as they had reached their best before dates, but this simply refers to food quality, not safety. I also had olives and cherry tomatoes which a house guest had left behind saying it was that or he’d bin the food – lunch equalled 39p.