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More ways to save on food

Supermarkets are cathedrals of consumerism. They're almost perfectly-honed marketing environments, benefiting from millions of pounds of research into how to encourage and seduce us into buying and spending more than we need.

With a few focused techniques, you can save £1,000s annually on supermarket shopping. Our full step-by-step Supermarket Shopping guide has a plethora of ways to maximise discounts – here are a few highlights ...

Do the downshift challenge

Over the years, supermarkets have hypnotised us into spending more and moving up the brand chain. Many people gradually buy increasingly more expensive versions of the same thing.

The downshift challenge, which provides ENORMOUS savings, has a simple premise:

Drop one brand level on everything and see if you can tell the difference. If you can't, stick with the cheaper product.

Don’t worry, we're not about to argue you should buy no-frills everything. The aim's to downshift only where you can't tell the difference. For many families, this alone can save 15% a year on shopping bills, typically £800. Full how-to in the Supermarket Shopping guide.

Compare supermarket prices at speed

It's possible to speedily compare the prices of your typical shopping trolley at all the online supermarkets. Better still, once you find which are the cheapest, you can just export your basket there, without entering the details again.

This takes place on MySupermarket*, which checks out the cost of the main online supermarkets: Ocado, Waitrose, Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s.

It's simple to use and you can save your basket of goods, so you don't need to refill it each week. The savings from doing this can add up to £100s a year.

Get big discounts on beyond-best-befores

There’s no explicit safety risk just from eating food beyond its best-before date (except for eggs). There are local stores around the UK that do this, and also online store Approved Food specialises in selling clearance, short-dated and out-of-date stock.

Typical goods include two big Walkers packets for 99p, six tins of Farrow's peas for 99p, and 1p for Hellmann's 235ml salad dressing.

There's a £5.25 delivery charge, provided deliveries are under 35kg, so it's worth bulk buying. As there aren't any finite rules on how far beyond a best-before date it's still safe to eat products, you need to make the decision yourself.

Generally though, the longer the original shelf life of the goods before the best-before date, the longer you can go beyond.

Save £100s with grocery coupons

Grocery coupons don't just come in magazines; many are available instantly on the web. Better still, supermarkets sometimes accept coupons for products they’re not designed for. So a voucher for £1 off a box of Coco Pops could get you £1 off any shopping, not just the cereal.

Policies can vary store by store on this. It’s worth a try, yet never be dishonest. Be upfront and ask their permission.

Note that Tesco, which used to be fairly accommodating on this, now has a policy of not allowing coupons to be used for items they aren't designated for (read the Tesco Coupons news story). To get loads of free vouchers, see the Supermarket Coupons List.