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Manchester Evening News

Entertainment

Emma Gill

We shopped at Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Aldi and Lidl to see where we could make the cheapest school lunchbox

Asda Tesco Sainsbury Aldi Lidl Morrisons

When it comes to food shopping there is one thing parents know they can save money on and that's school lunches.

Unless your child qualifies for free school meals then it's almost always cheaper to buy your own child's lunch rather than paying for school dinners.

And while they can be as elaborate as you want - we've all seen the Instagram posts - most mums and dads would probably admit to keeping it simple.

So how cheap can you make a lunch for? Well we visited all six main supermarkets to find out.

Our plan? To make a ham sandwich and include a tube yoghurt, a packet of crisps and a Royal Gala apple for a little as possible using like-for-like products.

We made the same lunch with products from each of the supermarkets to see whose was cheapest (Manchester Evening News)

We visited Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl and opted for own brand products where possible.

It was only in Sainsbury's where we had to go for the branded Frube yoghurts and Tesco, Asda and Morrisons the Wildlife Choobs. Both Aldi and Lidl sell their own versions.

Overall - with two pieces of bread, 40g (four slices) of ham and 6g of margarine used for the comparison - it was those two budget retailers who came out as cheapest, at 62p for the entire lunchbox.

Aldi (left) and Lidl (right) worked out cheapest at 62p for the entire lunch (Manchester Evening News)

Impressively, none of them came above £1.

The most expensive was Asda, at 92p - mostly because its own brand crisps (82p for a six-pack) weren't available, so we had to go for Walkers at £1.50. With its own brand of crisps, it would have reduced the lunchbox cost to 81p.

Had we taken advantage of the 2 for £2 mix and match offer on packs of fruit, it would have reduced even further and the retailer says it would have been cheaper to pick its Smart Price ham at £1.59 a pack and its Farm Store apples at 72p for 500g.

Morrisons worked out as slightly more than Asda's lowest price, at 85p, followed by Tesco at 79p and Sainsbury's at 75p.

Most products were much of a muchness, with a medium white loaf from all stores except Morrisons, where only thick sliced was available. The pork content of the ham ranged from 77% at Sainsbury's up to 88% at both Aldi and Tesco.

The biggest difference was in the apples (Manchester Evening News)

The biggest difference we noted was in the apples.

You can see from the photo just how much they differed in size - Sainsbury's, at £1.60 for a pack of six by far superior to the others - but Tesco and (also £1.60) and Lidl (who, along with Aldi were the cheapest at £1.19) gave them a run for their money in both quality and size.

A spokesperson for Asda said: ‘’This survey does not compare like-for-like products or include lower-priced options on bread, ham, apples or crisps.

"Asda is consistently the cheapest major supermarket - a position recognised by independent surveys such as The Grocer 33 and the Which? basket comparison, which recently found that Asda was the cheapest traditional grocer every month for the last two years.”