If it costs more does it taste better?

Not always according to consumer watchdog Which?,  who claim this week that standard supermarket strawberries taste just as good as organic and premium varieties.

They found no overall difference in taste or appearance between organic, standard and premium strawberries from six of the biggest supermarkets – including Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose.

Here are mySupermarket’s top tips on the nations favourite summer treat.

ASDA Smartprice Strawberries (227g) - £1.27

ASDA Strawberries (300g) - £1.68, 2 for £3

Tesco British Strawberries (454g) - Was £3.99, Now £1.99

Tesco Finest Jubilee Strawberries (400g) - £2.99, 2 for £4

Sainsbury’s Basics Strawberries (250g) - £0.99

Sainsbury’s Stawberries (454g) - Was £3.99, Now £1.99

Sainsbury’s Organic Stawberries (300g) - Was £3.99, Now £2.99

Waitrose Strawberries (400g) - £2.99, Buy 2 Save £2

Waitrose Organic Strawberries (400g) - Was £3.99, Now £2.49

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View all strawberries in Tesco

View all strawberries in ASDA

View all strawberries in Sainsbury’s

View all strawberries in Ocado

 

Fairtrade Fortnight Special Offers

There are still plenty of Fairtrade bargains available for the duration of Fairtrade Fortnight.
Here’s a selection of the best deals this week. Click on the links to see and buy ALL the Fairtrade products in your supermarket

Tesco:
Tesco Fairtrade Tea Bags (80) - Was £1.00, Now £0.75
Tesco Fairtrade Pineapple - 2 for £3.00Percol Fairtrade Colombia Arabica Coffee (250g) - Was £2.48, Now £1.94
Tesco Organic Fairtrade Conserve (340g) - Was £1.39, Now £1.11

ASDA:
ASDA Fairtrade Oranges (5) - 2 For £2
ASDA Fairtrade Pineapple Loose - 2 For £2
Stellar Fairtrade Organic Rose Wine (750ml) - 3 For £10
Percol Fairtrade Nicaragua Arabica Coffee (250g) - 2 For £4

Sainsbury’s:
Green & Black’s Maya Gold Organic Fairtrade Dark Chocolate with Orange and Spices (100g) – Was £1.68, Now £1.28
Los Robles Fairtrade Carmanere Curico (750ml) - Was £4.99, Now £3.74

Ocado:
Wychwood BeeWyched Fairtrade Honey’d Ale (500ml) – Was £1.72, Now £1.37
Fruit Passion Fairtrade Pure Orange Juice (1L) – Was £1.04, Now £0.83
Cafedirect Fairtrade Rich Roast Ground Coffee (227g) – Was £2.49, Now £1.99
Traidcraft Fairtrade Double Chocolate Chip Cookies (200g) – Any 2, Save 40p

 

Fairtrade Fortnight on mySupermarket

February 24th will see the launch of Fairtrade Fortnight. Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. It’s hard not to agree that buying Fairtrade products is the right thing to do, but we’re also aware that it’s normally more expensive.

With the price of basic grocery products soaring over the past year, we find ourselves trying to cut back and Fairtrade ends up costing us more.Here are a few tips from mySupermarket for how you can support Fairtrade, without hurting your wallet.

1. Always look out for find Fairtrade products on special offer. With over 2000 different Fairtrade products on the market, online shoppers are finding more and more choice. Generally speaking, the more Fairtrade products sold, the better your chances of bagging a Fairtrade bargain. Sainsbury’s currently offers the widest range of Fairtrade products with 83 in stock. ASDA has 80, Tesco has 65 and Ocado has 46.

2. Look out for long life Fairtrade products on special offer and buy in bulk.

• Sainsbury’s Organic Fairtrade Malbec Wine (750ml) is down to £4.99 - that’s cheaper than many other Malbec wines.
• ASDA Extra Special Fairtrade Organic Coffee (227g) - both Caffeinated and Decaf - are at 2 for £3, so worth stocking up if you enjoy good coffee.
• Green & Black’s Fairtrade Organic Cocoa Powder (125g) is down to £1.11 at Ocado, while ASDA has it as low as £1.
• And for snacks, Traidcraft Geobar Raisin and Chocolate Fairtrade Snack Bars (6×35g) are down to £1.48 in Tesco - that’s cheaper than Kellogg’s Special K Choc Chip bars.

3. When it comes to fresh produce like fruit, vegetables and dairy products, there are normally a few on special offer, that don’t cost much more than the regular stuff (sometimes they even cost less).

4. Know which mySupermarket Departments to check. 57% of Fairtrade products are in the Drinks Dept - there’s a wide range of coffee, tea and cocoa products. 14% are in Tins, Jars and Cooking and Fruit & Veg constitutes 11%.

5. You won’t always find Fairtrade products you like on Special Offer. In such a case, the best way to support Fairtrade without hurting the wallet is to try to save money elsewhere in your trolley and use the extra cash to squeeze in a couple of Fairtrade products. With mySupermarket’s Trolley Checker, you can save up to 20% by swapping some of your chosen products with others that are similar but better value. On an average trolley, that can come to around £15 of potential savings - more than enough to go towards some Fairtrade products.

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Click to buy Fairtrade products at Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s or Ocado.

 

Will 2008 bring us more grocery price hikes?

Towards the end of 2007, a mySupermarket survey of the rising price of staple products caused quite a stir. Since the launch of mySupermarket in October 2005, we’ve kept a daily record of the price of every single product available at Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Ocado. With the rising price of basic ingredients like milk and wheat grabbing headlines, we decided to check how prices of the most popular staple products had changed over 12 months.

The results were astonishing! Prices of the most basic food had gone up by as much as 16% over 12 months. The results were reported by the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sunday Times and Scotsman amongst others. We also compared the price of a Christmas shopping basket and found that Xmas Dinner 2007 could cost 6% more than it did the previous year. See the Mirror and People for more.

So what will 2008 bring us? It’s hard to know. It depends on global prices of wheat and other basic ingredients, as well as whether the supermarkets opt to genuinely keep prices low. One thing’s for sure - the only way to ensure that you pay less for your shopping is by getting mySupermarket to check it for you!

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You can check out today’s prices for the staple trolley here… or better still, why not try filling your own trolley to see who’s cheapest:

Thick Sliced White Loaf (800g), Kids Funsize Bananas (7), Golden Delicious Apples, Carrots (1Kg), Cucumber Portion, Iceberg Lettuce, Tomatoes (6), Maris Piper Potatoes (2.5Kg), British 6 Pints Semi-Skimmed Milk (3.41L), Medium Free Range Eggs (12), English Butter Salted (250g), English Mild Cheddar (Approx 250g), Fresh British Beef Mince (500g), Bernard Matthews Wafer Thin Turkey Ham (170g), Garden Peas (1Kg), Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce (420g), Dolmio Original Bolognese Sauce (500g), Strawberry Jam (454g), Silver Spoon Half Spoon Granulated Sugar (500g), Corn Flakes (500g), Fusilli (500g), Indian Basmati Rice (1Kg), Premium Tea Bags (80) and Pure Smooth Orange Juice (1L).

 

“Intelligent shopping trolley is new front in battle against obesity”

Valerie Elliott, Consumer Editor for the Daily Telegraph recently reported about a new invention due to hit the supermarket aisles in the future:

Technology experts have devised an “intelligent” trolley that will alert shoppers when junk-food items are dropped in. Barcodes on foods high in fat, sugar and salt would trigger red warning lights on an interactive screen.

As exciting as this futuristic shopping trolley sounds, mySupermarket shoppers know that it’s nothing new. mySupermarket shelves already alert our shoppers to products that are high in fat, saturates, salt or sugar and our revolutionary Health Checker will go as far as suggesting similar - yet healthier - alternatives!

And if that’s not enough, how about this: You’ll never end up with a wobbly mySupermarket trolley!

 

Making Healthy Choices just got easier!

Up until now, by clicking on mySupermarket’s Price Checker, we’ve shown you how to save up to £20 off an average trolley by swapping a few items. Now, our Health Checker, shows you how to cut up to 4,000 calories (as well as fat, saturates, salt and sugar) from your weekly trolley. It’s like having a personal nutritionist answering your questions while you shop!

mySupermarket’s new healthy eating feature has won high acclaim from various newspapers and websites including the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror.  Nutritionist Juliette Kellow said, “With a few clicks of the mouse, shoppers can easily view the nutrition information for a whole range of products in one go, taking away the need to scrutinise loads of different labels individually.”

With reports of an “obesity epidemic” in today’s papers, the time couldn’t be more ripe for key nutritional information to be made easily available. For many of us, it simply comes down to a time issue - we would like to know more about what we eat, but reading through nutritional tables and ingredients is too time consuming. With mySupermarket, you can view the calorie count, as well as the FSA Traffic Lights, whilst you browse the shelves, putting you in control over what you buy. Here are some examples of swaps that our Health Checker has found for our shoppers, helping them cut their calories:

If you swap McVitie’s the Original Digestive (250g) with Hovis Digestive Biscuits (250g), you’ll save a whopping 410 calories.

Swap Hellmann’s French Dressing (235ml) with Kraft Classics French Dressing (250ml), and you can save 345 caloires.

And finally, swap Wall’s 8 Thick Pork Sausages (454g) with ASDA Extra Special 6 Sausages Premium Pork (454g), and you’ll save another 400 calories.

 

ASDA still cheapest on mySupermarket Index

For the past few months, mySupermarket has been keeping tabs on the supermarkets by comparing the price of a super-trolley containing a whopping 2,500 products. These products are all sold in all four online supermarkets - Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Ocado. We take the total cost of all these products each month and convert it to a simple index.

The super-trolley contains loads of the nation’s favourite products including Coca Cola Cans, Hovis Square White Bread, Walkers Ready Salted Crisps, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Cadbury Dairy Milk and Andrex Toilet Rolls.

Over the past month, ASDA’s index went up by the largest margin (2.3 points), but still remains that cheapest at 101.9. Tesco comes in second at 103 and Sainsbury’s is close behind at 103.5. Although, Ocado prcies fell by the largest margin of (o.4 points), they remain significantly higher that the others at 109.5.

With the gap between ASDA, Tesco and Sainsbury’s closing over the past week, it’ll be interesting to see what the supermarkets have in store for us over the next few weeks!

 

The mySupermarket Weekly Trolley - student pad!

This time I asked Joey, one of our regular shoppers to talk us through his trolley and check how the supermarkets compared. Joey and his flatmate - students from London - tend to do an online supermarket shop once every two to three weeks. With more snacks and booze than an average trolley, this week’s winner was Tesco, costing £83.10 for the fifty products. ASDA was in second at £84.29 and Sainsbury’s third at £86.58. In terms of savings options, Ocado was the winner this week with a potential mySupermarket ‘Save More’ saving of £25 off the £100.25 total. Joey checked through the suggested savings and in the end went with Tesco, swapping several items for mySupermarket’s suggested alternatives including these two:

Snacks

KP Original Salted Peanuts (300g), Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream (500ml), Haagen Dazs Cookies & Cream (500ml), Nestle Rowntrees Fruit Pastil Lolly (4×65ml), McVitie’s 12 Jaffa Cakes (150g), KP Hula Hoops Original (7×25g), Walkers Crisps Assorted (6×25g), Bassett’s Fruit Allsorts (215g), Mars Milky Way Bars (6×26g) 

Drinks

Coca Cola Cans (6×330ml), Pepsi Max (2×2L), Beck’s Bier (20×275ml), Smirnoff Ice (4×275ml) 

Regulars

Own Brand Thick Sliced White Loaf (800g), Warburtons Sliced Sandwich Rolls (12), Mr Kipling Bramley Apple Pies (6), Cantaloupe Melon, Granny Smith Apples Bag, Baking Potatoes (2.5Kg), New Potatoes (2.5Kg), Onions (2), Red Peppers (2), Tomatoes (750g), White Cabbage, 4 Pints Skimmed Milk, Danone Activia Fat Free Red Cherry Bio Yogurt (4×125g), Campina Yazoo Chocolate Flavour Milkshake (1L), Fresh British Beef Mince (500g), Bernard Matthews Wafer Thin Turkey Ham (170g), Own Brand 20 Thick Pork Sausages (1Kg), Birds Eye Garden Peas (907g), Own Brand Steak House Oven Chips (2Kg), Goodfella’s Solos Pepperoni Pizzas (2×120.5g), Own Brand Houmous (170g), Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup (2×400g), Own Brand Cream of Chicken Soup (2×400g), Heinz Top Down Squeezy Tomato Ketchup (570g), Sun-Pat Smooth Peanut Butter (340g), Own Brand Fusilli (500g), Uncle Ben’s Boil in Bag Long Grain Rice (8×62.5g), Ambrosia Creamy Rice Pudding (425g), Ambrosia Low Fat Devon Custard (425g), Jacob’s Cream Crackers (300g) 

Household and Health

Tesco Washing Up Liquid Original (500ml), Andrex Honey Tuggable Huggable Softness Toilet Tissue (2×9), Own Brand Kitchen Towel (4), Duracell Plus AA Batteries (4), Lynx Touch Revitalising Shower Gel (250ml), Gillette Series Foam Sensitive Skin (250ml), Macleans Freshmint Toothpaste Tube (100ml)

 

The Supermarket Own Brands Challenge

One great way to save money on your weekly shop is to try switching one item you regularly buy for a cheaper brand.  You might not even be able to taste the difference.

At mySupermarket, we believe that this is a decision that you need to make. That’s why we always try to make our Save More swaps of the same quality as the product that you originally choice. That said, if you’re looking to save even more money, why not try out a few own brands to start with? You’d be amazed how much cheaper the own brands can sometimes be. Check out these examples if you don’t believe me!

Supermarket	Product	Brand price	Own Brand price	Difference	% Saving through Switching
Tesco	Heinz Baked Beans (4 pack)	£1.86	£0.98	£0.88	47%
Tesco	Wall’s Magnum Classic (3)	£1.79	£1.00	£0.79	44%
ASDA	Weetabix Cereal (24)	£1.59	£0.87	£0.72	45%
ASDA	Walkers Salt & Vinegar Crisps (6 pack)	£0.95	£0.76	£0.19	20%
Sainsbury’s	McVitie’s the Original Digestive (500g)	£0.61	£0.42	£0.19	31%
Sainsbury’s	Tetley Tea Bags (80)	£1.51	£1.15	£0.36	24%
Ocado	Nescafe Gold Blend Coffee (200g)	£4.74	£3.49	£1.25	26%
Ocado	Sun-Pat Crunchy Peanut Butter (454g)	£1.59	£0.89	£0.70	44%

  

 

Britain’s Favourite…Chocolate

The problem with going to the supermarket is that we often find ourselves getting tempted by all the goodies that line the shelves. Especially when we’re feeling a little peckish, the confectionary aisle can be dangerous territory to pass through on the way to the cat food! That’s not to mention the kids’ nagging! When shopping online at mySupermarket, it’s much easier to stay away from these naughty foods, simply by avoiding clicking on the naughty shelves. For that reason, far less chocolate is bought online than in the actual supermarket.

Here are your top ten:

1. Nestle Kit Kat
2. Mars
3. Twix
4. Maltesers
5. Snickers
6. Green & Black’s Milk Chocolate
7. Galaxy Minstrels
8. Bounty
9. Cadbury Dairy Milk
10. Cadbury Bournville