Shopping around

Following on from last week, I’m still ruminating on how I can organise the store cupboards stock and shopping to achieve a better balance. There’s no doubt that less trips to the shops would mean more time for other things, and would perhaps lead to better balance in time spent. I was intrigued by a forum debate I followed recently about the cost of living in France versus the UK. I think the general consensus was that the cost of food has increased in France over recent years, although other costs such as utility bills and taxes are lower. There does not seem to be same level of competition between the supermarkets here, and not the proliferation of the ‘yellow sticker’ bargains and buy-one-get-one-free offers as people may have been used to when living in the UK. This perception of higher prices is interesting though, as food inflation in the UK was reported to have decreased by 2% in November 2016 (ONS, 2017), with similar figures reported for the EU overall at minus 1% and France, specifically, at  minus 1.5%. The most recent worldwide statistics from the World Bank stated that global food prices had hit a five-year low in 2015.

I wonder if some of my forum friends’ anecdotal evidence is related to the exchange rate fluctuations rather than price rises. Certainly we are getting less euros per pound compared to six months ago, which can mean that there is more month left at the end of the money. It’s difficult to compare individual cases as much depends on your own personal lifestyle and eating habits. I’ve noticed that eating a vegetarian or vegan diet certainly does not save any money. I often have to travel further and pay more to obtain the particular ingredients that I need. But I think this is a common issue if you want to eat a diet that is different to that of your country of residence – the prices of things like PG Tips and Heinz Baked Beans in the ‘ex-pat’ shops and the supermarket English aisles are a good example. If you want to save money, you need to eat like a local.

Many people buy goods online from the main UK supermarkets and arrange for them to be delivered by companies specialising in this service. I’ve never tried this myself, preferring to spend our hard-earned euros in France, and locally if possible. However, I decided to do a little research and see if it was possible to save money by shopping around, including the option of buying from the UK. Vegetarian and vegan food hasn’t reached the mainstream in France, unlike the UK and Germany where you can buy most common ingredients at any supermarket. Certainly, a delivery of these tricky ingredients would go a long way to helping my ‘improving organisation’ project.

 

One particularly difficult thing to track down is good peanut butter, something that I eat every day. I can sometimes get ‘Skippy’ peanut butter in the English aisle of our local Intermarche, but this contains additives and sugar; for the bio version I prefer I have to drive 25 km to the next big town. I also get through a lot of dates in breakfast bars and refined sugar-free homemade treats. Pine nuts I perceive to be expensive here but apparently according to food industry news the price increase over recent years is due to poor harvests, high cost of production and deforestation. I decided to compare the cost of buying these three ingredients locally, from the UK, and from Amazon.

The table below shows the price per kilo/100g of each of these products, based on an exchange rate of .853 and an allowance for the UK delivery costs.

	Holland & Barrett	SuperU	Amazon
Peanut butter per 1 kg	€8.81	€12.15 (Skippy)	€11.83 (bio)
Dates – pitted per 500g	€3.23	€3.95	€5.98
Pinenuts ­– 200g	€9.71	€10.20	€8.32
	€21.75	€26.30	€26.13

*prices as at January, 2017

The results were interesting, and not what I was expecting. Even taking into account the exchange rate issue, which in fact would not affect my purchase as I can pay with a sterling credit card, and the delivery cost of £6.95 per order, there is a saving of almost €5 when ordering a delivery from the UK. What’s more, the benefit of purchasing from a specialist such as Holland & Barrett who have been catering to the needs of vegetarians, vegans and other health freaks since 1870, is that none of the products are compromises ­– there’s no Skippy peanut butter, it’s genuine organic peanut butter from a well-known organic brand. I could also take advantage of some ‘penny offers’ (buy one item, get the second for a penny) and 50% off the second purchase for other vegan staples like almonds and stock up on large bags of coriander, hot cayenne pepper and chilli flakes. So yes, I did subsequently put in an order to Holland & Barrett.