Money Saving Meals

Money Saving Meals Makeover: Coles "Feed your family for under $10"

Diane’s healthy meal challenge for Coles ‘Feed your family for under $10’ campaign

If Coles ‘Feed your family for under $10’ campaign is anything like Sainsbury’s ‘Feed your family for a fiver’ with Jamie Oliver, it will be very healthy for the supermarket chain’s bottom line. But how healthy are the everyday meals ‘young gun’ Australian chef Curtis Stone has come up with for families?

Having just written a Money Saving Meals cookbook, we know it’s not easy to put a healthy, balanced meal on the table for a family of four for under $10. It is more like $10–$14, because family fare is about more than filling bellies. It’s about nourishing them with the foods they need for energy, growth and long-term health while serving up tasty meals everyone will enjoy.

We took a look at two weeks’ of Curtis’ family meals’ recipes to see how he did it for under $10. The short answer is by keeping vegetables to a bare minimum. Although many of the recipes sound very tasty, we were hard-pressed to find one that we would serve our families.

For starters, they are rather too high in kilojoules and fat for an everyday meal. We don’t want to sound like the ‘fat’ police, but seven of the eight recipes we looked at had (per serving) 30–46 g fat and in some cases half of that was saturated fat.

And those vital-for-our-health vegetables (remember we need 5 serves of them a day) only get to play a ‘bit part,’ apart from ‘Curtis’ beef stew with winter vegetables’. In fact Curtis’ family meal recipes typically include only 1 or 2 vegetables as part of the recipe and apart from the 8 cos lettuce leaves in Curtis’ burger, greens are an extra ‘serve with’ option that we estimate will add around $1.50 to $2 to the meal. Bliss for picky kids, but not a healthy, balanced meal.

We know Coles are in this for business reasons and not the goodness of their heart, but if they want to be seen as family friendly, we think that they should have sat down with Curtis and thought a bit more about what a family meal needs to be in this ‘diabesity’ day and age.

Putting a healthier everyday meal on the table for $10–12 is doable. Compare Curtis’ Homemade Burger with Diane’s Money Saving Meals Burgers with Beetroot Relish with and see how easy it is to cut the kilojoules and fat (especially saturated fat) way back, pile on the veggies, up the fibre and come up with a meal the family will love.

Curtis’ burger (you’ll find the recipe online at coles.com.au) is beef mince and egg with ½ an onion and flavours served on a roll with bacon, cheese and lettuce (and optional extra roasted tomatoes).

• Per serve it provides 2885 kJ, 46 g fat (includes19 g saturated fat) and 2 g fibre
• The total cost is $9.86 (or $11.36 with the optional roasted tomatoes).

Diane’s burger is beef mince with 1 onion, 1 zucchini, 1 carrot, breadcrumbs and flavours served on a roll with tomato, lettuce and cucumber and a simple beetroot relish.

• Per serve it provides 1805 kJ, 18 g fat (includes 5 g saturated fat) and 8 g fibre.
• The total cost is $11.40.