Back to basics: 7 grocery heroes that will save money, your health - and the planet

Keep it simple. 

That’s the message if you want to save money, and care for your health - and the planet.

Basic unprocessed items are the best value for money, our new survey shows.

These include food price heroes – flour, oats, carrots, potatoes and plain old salt - that fed our ancestors for thousands of years.

And, as the table shows, you can get these great value groceries at all supermarkets – not just Aldi and Lidl – from just 59c per kilo.

And the price of these ‘basics’ seems to be going down, while we pay more for ever-shrinking packages of pricey processed versions, our survey indicates.

It also suggests that if you want to grab a real bargain while shopping - look down. 

Goods at eye level are the heavily marketed and packaged goods they want you to buy to generate more profits.

The products that save us money are the bulky simple items usually found on the bottom shelves.

These used to make up our staple diet.

Then big business  came along and packed sugar, salt and harmful additives into what once were wholesome foods.

They used expensive marketing campaigns to persuade us to buy pricey processed versions in ever smaller packs that harm our pockets and our health.

The environment can also do without all the extra processing and junk they come wrapped up in.

Here are our seven grocery heroes that can save us a packet:

1. Clean up with soap

Mango, mint, apricot, mandarin, lavender and pomegranate…no, this is not some fancy dessert concoction from a celebrity chef.

These are just ‘ingredients’ (i.e. chemicals)  found on the ever-expanding shower gel shelf in your local supermarket.

And the money we waste on them really gets me into a lather!

Soap was invented as a handy, concentrated, cleaning substance.

A bar can create gallons of fluid that cleans us very efficiently. Shower gel reverses the process. They sell us what is basically diluted soap in tiny quantities compared to what a bar would produce.

As Donald Trump would say: “Genius move!” This process costs billions of euros in extra storage, retail space, packaging and marketing plus extra profits – all  of which we hve to pay for.

The last time we did this survey (2023), shower gel could be bought for around a euro per bottle. We checked prices this week on Quidu.ie (a great website for checking supermarket prices apart from Lidl).

And the cheapest one was €1.49 for Radox’s ‘mineral therapy’ bodywash in Aldi.

When I tested shower gel the last time, I got just 10 washes per bottle. (It’s hard to use efficiently with most of it splurging uselessly down the plughole.) That’s 15c per shower using the cheapest product. Soap is much easier to store and use. A bar lasts 30 showers for 65c – or just over 2c each. That’s over seven times better value.

2. A salty tale

Himalayan Rock Salt sounds delicious. All that pure mountain air! And it must cost a fortune to send Sherpas up to hew it by hand out of Mount Everest, right? So it’s well worth paying extra for.

But where does Himalyan Rock Salt really come from? Much of it actually does come from somewhere near the famous mountains. Just not from anywhere near the top.  It’s from a marsh near the capital of Pakistan. But Islamabad Swamp Salt wouldn’t sound so appetising.

This is just one of a plethora of fancy salts in ever-smaller containers that are basically the same stuff – salt.

You can buy a few pinches for €5.99. Or you can get a relatively humungous container of it for just 45c.

And the cost of plain salt has actually come down.

The last time we looked, the very cheapest bottle was 49c. Now you can get it for 45c from Aldi, Tesco or Dunnes (60c/kg).

Meanwhile, the pricey stuff keeps going up in price – and down in size. The dearest salt on Quidu.ie (Tesco’s Maldron Sea Salt Flakes) comes in a minute 55g bottle for €5.

That’s a whopping €90.91 per kilo! It won’t be long before we’re forking out €100 a kilo.

The only explanation I can think of for the fall in price of basic salt at a time of high inflation is a sizeable drop in demand.

So the marketing is persuading us to pay ever more money for ever less product by convincing us there’s something ‘fancy’ about it. (And don’t get me started on ‘sea salt and lemongrass shower gel!)

Salt itself isn’t healthy. But it is much healthier for your body and your finances  to prepare your own food and add small amounts of salt rather than the industrial quantities they somehow manage to shovel into pre-packaged processed meals. (The same goes for sugar).

3.      Push the oats out. 

Oats are a classic example of how marketeers have taken a simple product and made it ridiculously expensive by selling it to us in tiny packets using a silly concept like “instant”.

Those little plastic pots of ‘instant oats’ near the checkout  cost 17 times more per kilo than the same stuff in bigger 1kg packets.

Yet, stick a bowl of any oats in a microwave and you’ll have porridge in seconds!

Oats in proper 1kg bags cost from just 75c at Aldi and Tesco  – even cheaper than the last time we looked. They’ll make you 25 bowls of porridge for just 3c each.

The same oats in those tiny plastic containers (that'll cost us money to bin and is bad for the planet) cost 65c for just one bowl of porridge.

That’s €11.40 per kilo – 15 times more!

4.      Self-raising value

Flour doesn’t just make bread. It can also be used in sauces, or to make things like wraps, or pitta bread. I find it easier to make naan bread (stick in a few raisins or garlic to spice it up) than nip down to the shops and queue up to buy some. It’s also healthier without additives and sugar. Thousands of years after its discovery transformed human nutrition, flour is still the best value food around at 0.59c a kilo from Aldi. Supervalu charges just 65c.

5. Save on spuds

Fresh basic vegetables are not just healthy to eat – they are surprisingly cheap, wherever you shop.

Potatoes once sustained over 8 million people on this island and still offer tremendous value. The cheapest on Quidu.ie are from Dunnes and Tesco at €1.09/kg with Aldi not far behind at €1.14.

And carrots are even cheaper. Tesco, Aldi and Supervalu are ‘neck and neck’ for the best deals in our survey at €1.08 per kilo.

6. Bargain Balsamic

Balsamic vinegar isn’t healthy. But it really peps up a salad, which is.

Though normally a fan of my local Aldi (Bayside), it's disappointing that the only balsamic vinegar I can find there is everything I hate: i.e.  a fancy small bottle with a load of sugar and price added.

My local Supervalu has a simpler own-brand product (i.e. less sugar) for €1.50 a bottle. That works out at €3 per litre compared to €10.36 per litre for Aldi’s sugary Balsamic Vinegar of Modena in a bottle half the size. And it is much healthier.

Dunnes own-label balsamic matches Supervalu on price – while Tesco’s is just 40c dearer per litre.

7. Fruit of the Forage

The best supermarket is mother nature’s 24-hour convenience store where there are no checkout queues and everything is free.

Foraging at this time  of year can provide a bounty of fresh and organic fare at your fingertips.

Why are we forking out several euros for a tiny packet of blueberries (an American fruit), whilst ignoring the profusion of Irish blackberries all around us?!

(Note: We used to the Quidu app to compare prices.  Lidl is not included as it doesn’t display pricing online, but its prices are very similar to Aldi’s).