Getting more bang for your buck
Did you know food is often the highest living expense after paying rent or a mortgage? Every families’ food bill varies, but one thing is the same from house to house: Kiwis are a hard-working bunch, and we want to know our hard-earned dollars are being put towards good quality kai for our whanau.
Mince is a family favourite meat cut with endless meal possibilities. From a nutrition stand-point, it’s packed full of essential vitamins and minerals which are easy to digest and readily absorbed. Protein is one of the stand out nutrients you get from mince, and a study led by Emeritus Professor Elaine Rush showed one of the best protein value for money (based on what most New Zealanders ate at the time) was beef mince followed by chicken and tinned tuna. The study also showed that a serve of mince gave more protein for less of the cost of convenience foods, such as KFC chicken and battered fish.
So, what does this tell us? Well, it tells us mince literally gives you more, in fact, the biggest protein-bang for your buck. If you’re scratching your head wondering “what about lentils or chickpeas”, unfortunately, these weren’t included in this study. This is probably because legumes and pulses were not represented as common protein sources in the last two adult nutrition surveys (which are very outdated now we might add). Anecdotally, we know more Kiwis are eating legumes and pulses, which is a notion that we fully support as part of a healthy, balanced diet.
Looking at todays (23/9/2020) prices at Pak n’ Save a serve of prime stewed beef mince (100g) costs $1.29 per serve and provides 24.2g protein. A serve of cooked lentils (80g) costs only 20 cents but only provides 7.6g protein (based on Pam’s 0.99cents/can). So you may be paying more for your mince but nutritionally you are getting a lot more protein and that protein is a high quality protein. A person would need to eat three times the amount of cooked lentils, around 240g (which is a lot of lentils and equivalent to 3 serves) to get as much protein as from a serve of mince.
But let’s consider the whole meal and the benefits of both these protein foods. For those really budget savvy people, the key might be to make your mince dishes half mince and half lentils. That way you’ll up the amount of protein in your meal, have the yummy taste of beef mince (along with its many other nutrients) and the fibre from the lentils, and it’ll be kinder on the pocket. To add more diversity to your plate be sure to include vegetables (frozen or canned are often cheaper) which are also easy to disguise these in mince dishes. Check out our Best Beef & Lentil Cottage Pie – to make this recipe even cheaper, buy the mince when on special, leave out the wine, change up the vegetables to include mixed frozen veges and swap the kumara for potato. Per serve this cottage pie recipe provides a whopping 36g of protein.
If you would like some extra tips on how to be a budget-savvy shopper, and how to save your hard-earned dollars, head over to our website to learn how you can stretch out a meal, eat on a budget and do meal planning. We have also got some great mince recipes on our freezer-friendly recipes page and have some delicious mince-based recipes which we have worked out the cost per serve for the following recipes
Magic Mince
Cost per meal: $10.20
Cost per serve: $2.55
Cottage Pie
Cost per meal: $10.09
Cost per serve: $2.02
Fried Rice
Cost per meal: $11.17
Cost per serve: $1.86
Note: The cost analysis was completed using information retrieved from Pak n’ Save on 30/04/2020. Ingredient costs were determined relative to recipe quantity required.
References:
Rush, E., Puniani, N., Snowling, N., & Paterson, J. (2007). Food security, selection, and healthy eating in a Pacific Community in Auckland New Zealand. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr, 16(3), 448-454.
Plant and Food Research and Ministry of Health. (2018). The Concise New Zealand Food Composition Tables. 12th Edition. Wellington: Ministry of Health.
*Based on 100g of lean, stewed beef mince being 23.9g protein/100g and split, boiled and drained lentils being 7.6g protein/100g. Derived from the New Zealand Food Composition Database