`Meal deals' offered by major high street retailers and supermarkets at lunchtime can save you a pretty penny - but how many calories are they adding?
At lunchtime in pretty much every city centre, you’ll find hungry workers looking to get their lunch fix. If you’re one of the millions of people who enjoys a meal deal every day, you’ll be used to picking your usual three items – a sandwich, a drink and some kind of snack. But have you ever stopped to think about whether you’re actually saving money by doing this?
Sure, if you add up the individual cost of each of the items in your shopping basket, you will have saved money. But how often have you popped in looking for a sandwich and then been tempted to add in a drink and a snack that, actually, you didn’t really want?
Not only is this potentially damaging for your purse, you could end up adding hundreds of extra calories and several grams of fat that you hadn’t originally intended in a bid to ‘save money’.
We’ve compared three of the biggest meal deal providers in Britain - Boots, Tesco and Sainsbury’s - and looked at the value of each meal deal, along with the potential extra calories you could be adding. Obviously, there are literally hundreds of combinations that we could look at – so we’ve chosen a chicken sandwich in each case as the starting point.
Boots
Cost of Meal Deal = £3.29 (non-London stores)
Boots Roast Chicken Salad Sandwich
Cost: £2.30
Calories: 274
Fat (Saturates): 4.5g (0.7g)
Boots is the most expensive meal deal provider of the three, but offers the widest variety with its meal deals, with every sandwich, wrap or salad, every drink and every snack (less than £1.35) being eligible for the meal deal.
The chicken sandwich itself is a pretty good light lunch, coming in at under 300 calories and less than one gram of saturated fat. But, for only an extra 99p, you can add a drink and a snack to create your meal deal, which of course seems like a bargain, even if you didn’t want these items in the first place.
If you’re going to do this, the sensible option is to go for something like a bottle of water (individual price £1) and a small packet of chopped apples (individual price 52p). This adds only an extra 57 calories to your lunch. But, it’s not the best “value” in terms of cost per item, with the meal deal saving you only 52p.
Instead, you could choose to add a 500ml bottle of Coca Cola (individual price £1.20) and a Caramel Shortbread (individual price £1.30). The total cost of the individually priced items is now brought up to £4.80, saving you a more impressive £1.51.
It’s easy to believe you should opt for the better “value” meal, as you’ll be saving yourself more money, but what is it doing to the nutritional value of your meal? If you opt for the caramel shortbread and the Coca Cola, you will have added a whopping 498 calories to your meal.
Tesco
Cost of meal deal = £2.50 or less
Tesco Roast Chicken and Bacon Sandwich: £1.80
Calories: 330
Fat (Saturates): 7.9 fat (2.6g)
Tesco provides the cheapest meal deal of the trio, promising to deliver a sandwich, drink and a snack for £2.50 or less. Not everything is included in the meal deal however, so the choice is a lot more limited.
Again, if you take the sensible option and opt for a (small) water and chopped apples, you don’t add much in the way of calories, but the saving is only 30p.
Unlike the Boots meal deal, you can’t add more expensive drinks and snacks to the deal, but you could include a 330ml of Coca Cola and a large Kit-Kat bar. You will still have only saved around 40p, but now will have more than doubled your calorie intake, by adding another 371 calories.
Sainsbury’s
Cost of Meal Deal = £3 or less
Sainsbury’s Chicken and Bacon Salad = £2.50
Calories: 400
Fat (Saturates): 14.4g (2.9g)
Sainsbury’s almost offers the best of both worlds - there’s a wider choice of sandwiches, drinks and snacks available in the offer, plus with a single sandwich costing £2.50, there’s a decent saving to be had.
Here, going for the sensible apple and water combination leads to a fairly decent saving of 92p. But once again, the more ‘value’ meal deal could see you including a 500ml bottle of Coca Cola and a 35g packet of Walker’s Ready Salted Crisps. You’ll have saved yourself £1.19, but you will have also nearly doubled the calories with an extra 395 to add to your meal.
So what’s the lesson we learn here? Sure it’s a good deal, if you were likely to buy the drink and the snack anyway. But next time, why not think about just buying the sandwich on its own?
What do you think? Add your comments in the box below.