With food costs spiralling out of control, one woman who works in the food industry has discovered a sneaky hack that she says will cut your supermarket bill in half – without having to compromise on taste
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Woman shares trick that cuts her food shopping bill in half
With rising food costs crippling cash-strapped Brits, one woman has found a genius way to slash your shopping bill.
According to the Office for National Statistics, prices of food and non-alcholic beverages rose by seven per cent in the year to January 2024. Big names like Cadbury and Lindt garnered global media attention for their prices this Easter, as the brands blamed rising costs of ingredients like sugar and cocoa.
But Maneet Kaur, from Leicester, has found a way to save cash without compromising on taste – and it’s all down to a little known code printed on our food.
Maneet, who posts on social media as @minsmeals revealed last year how you can use supplier codes to find out if food sold for difference prices – pasta, for instance – is actually all from the same supplier. The idea came to her after she watched a video on how medication is marketed. She decided to look into the same thing in the food industry and was shocked by what she found.
In a clip, the process technologist compares a 500g packet of penne pasta from Tesco, which costs 53p, with a 29p packet by Hearty Food Co – also owned by Tesco – and shows how these appear to have identical supplier codes. Maneet suggests this means the products are from the same place and that shoppers are spending 24p more – nearly double – for the packaging alone.
“I work in the food industry so know that whatever product we make will have a supplier code on it for traceability,” she said. I went into a supermarket and looked at staple foods like beans, pasta and bread and looked at the codes.
“It didn’t surprise me but essentially it’s all about how these brands market it to the consumer. The only thing I can do is make people more aware that buying branded is not always the best option and we need to be more conscious about the tricks supermarkets use.”
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But this isn’t her only top tip, she also has another one for shoppers to keep in mind. According to Maneet, branded food “will most likely” be placed at eye-level on shelves, while the cheaper, unbranded items will “be either on the top or bottom shelves”.
So, don’t forget to check all the shelves before picking your food, so you don’t end up spending more money unnecessarily. If you’re curious to start checking your food for supplier and batch codes, Tesco have previously shared a post on X (formerly Twitter) explaining where to find them.
They said: “The supplier code (SC) should be found at the back of the packaging, at the end of our address.” They added that the batch code is “the little code below the food standards stamp”.
A version of this article was first published on July 13, 2023.
Have you tried the hack? Let us know if it slashed your food bill in the comments section below
