My Food Shopping Habits.

When I moved out my accommodation a few weeks ago I found all my food shopping receipts from the first half of the year at uni and my gosh it was horrendous what I was eating! ranging from buying big packets of crisps to 3 packets of biscuits and numerous ready meals and fizzy drinks. yikes what was I thinking?!

So I now do a food shop for all my long lasting foods every 3/4 weeks. e.g. sweet potatoes, tins of tuna, rice, quinoa, pasta and so on... which would be an online shop because being at uni without a car makes it difficult to get 3/4 weeks of shopping in 2 hands whilst walking home, so that's done online and then every 2 weeks ill do a fresh food shop that I do myself in the supermarket (im super picky on the state of my veggies and fruits when I buy them). A lot of people think doing 2 types of separate food shops would amount to a lot of spending, when if you do it properly it definitely doesn't amount to a lot of spending.

Before I started my huge lifestyle change I made myself cut a lot of shit out of my diet which then led to me spending less money on food shops, and it was easier that I thought it would be, not having the rubbish foods in my cupboard because I cut them completely out of my shopping lists made it a lot easier to just forget about them and not be tempted by them.
The main foods that I have cut out my regular diet are:
Bread/doughy type products.
Chocolate
Sweets/sugary treats
Crisps
Fizzy drinks.

So how do I make my fresh food last 2 weeks?
Your freezer is your new best friend.
I know buying frozen vegetables wont be as fresh and as fabulous as fresh vegetables but we are students paying £9000+ a year for Uni so buying frozen veg will be a lot cheaper and will last longer in your freezer than buying a ton of fresh veg that will probably go out of date before you can eat all of it! So most of my veg is frozen, apart from spinach and the odd salad veg that I buy. I buy fresh spinach because I love spinach cooked and uncooked, however I do eat spinach like there is no tomorrow so I don't have much of a problem with it going out of date quickly.

Another tip: if you're buying fresh veg, look at the back of the product section. Whilst working in Tesco for a bit as an online shopper I HAD to pick from the back because that is where the product with the furthest away used by date is, meaning you'll most of the time get a product with a longer used by date. Don't grab from the front they are normally nearing the end of their used by date.

My fruit that I buy varies from frozen to fresh, I buy frozen fruit for my smoothies and breakfast, like blueberries and other berries because they last for agessss! and then fresh fruit for eating on a daily basis, I do keep a lot of my fruit in the fridge as I find that normally keeps it fresh for quite a while I mainly get fruits such as apples and bananas because I find they last longer than maybe a mango would.

Top Tip On Fruit: Buying un-ripe fruits, like slightly green bananas, these will slowly ripen over time meaning they will generally last longer than buying ripe or over ripe bananas which will go squashy and gross in a shorter time!

When I am fresh food shopping I often go for the supermarkets own brand purely because of money and it is often cheaper, it may seem like an effort at the time but spending more time on comparing prices of fruit and looking for longer used by dates of the fruit will definitely be worth it in the long run.

Happy Shopping!