food
It’s a fact that switching to frozen food could save the average family over £1500 in one year. With the ever-popular ‘health food’ campaigns telling the public to only use organic vegetables or to stay clear of GM crops, it’s easy to overlook the fact that we still tend to buy the majority of our groceries from the chilled food aisles; but is this the best option? The new year VAT rise has pushed many UK families to rethink their spending habits. The New Ice Age and British Frozen Food Federation is responding to the pressures felt by UK families to reduce their foods bills by encouraging them to reacquaint themselves with their freezers.
The claim that you could save money is reinforced by results from an independent study by Manchester Metropolitan University; the study (commissioned by The New Ice Age) revealed that cooking from frozen was 33.12% less expensive than from fresh. Each family from the Manchester area that took part achieved savings ranging from 12.73% to as much as 56.95% when cooking meals from frozen. The fresh food average cost per week for the main meal, for a family of four, was £41.29 whereas for frozen food it was £27.60.
British families are not the only ones moving towards frozen. Celebrity chef, Aldo Zilli has recently been an active supporter in the ‘frozen food movement’; incorporating quality frozen food into his award winning meals, which he serves daily at his Soho restaurant Zilli Fish.
Zilli says, “Cooking with frozen does not mean lowering ones standards on freshness or nutritional value. On the contrary, frozen can often be fresher, especially when dealing with seafood and fish. The British consumer is very financially mindful and environmentally conscious - frozen food allows consumers certain luxuries without compromising on taste, lowering wastage and ensuring great value for money.”
It is an interesting fact that many high-end restaurants rely on frozen food to deliver the ‘freshest’ ingredients everyday. With fish for example, many restaurants buy their supplies frozen so that they can capture that ‘fresh from the sea’ taste in their dishes, without having to be based next to the coast. ‘Fresh’ fish however, can often be up to 10 days old before it reaches the consumer, carried in small boxes across land; many of the subtle flavours and nutrients are lost in this time-consuming transportation period.
The restaurants are not alone; the message of frozen food is being promoted to consumers too. A recent promo stunt in Manchester on 22nd January saw two walls of ice being erected to highlight the amount of money you could save in one year from favouring frozen foods over chilled for a family of four. Both walls contained notes, coins and vouchers suspended in the ice, which valued £1515.68 (the amount you could save on average in a year by favouring frozen foods). The event then saw consumers smashing into the ice with the aim of grabbing the cash.
With the benefits of frozen food being promoted all over, more and more families are filling up their freezer rather than their fridge? For a long time, the ‘ready meal’ face of frozen food has convinced many customers that their freezer is best used for quick microwave meals and as a storage place for those rainy days. However with the newest research praising the health benefits of frozen and the general move to try to cut down, can the average family really ignore the move to frozen?
Why buy frozen?
- Products are frozen at their peak of quality
- Freshness is locked into frozen products
- Freezing is a natural process and does not require preservatives
- Frozen products offer optimum price stability and competitiveness – avoiding expensive out of season prices
- You can use as little or as much frozen food as is needed – thereby reducing waste
- Frozen foods offer an extended shelf life
- Freezing offers year-round availability of seasonal products
- Frozen foods offer long term menu planning