Snugmeal Blog
Budget cooking, no nonsense.
Meal planning, smart shopping and prices from Biedronka, Lidl and Auchan. Concrete, with numbers.
The fewer nuts in the jar, the more you pay per kilo
Peanut butter made of 100% nuts costs 22.21 zł/kg. A spread with 86.8% nuts: 37.11. A spread with 13% nuts: 54.26. Every percentage stands on the label.
One egg carton, four breakfasts. 18.64 zł and no eggs left in the fridge
Ten class M eggs mapped to the piece across four different breakfasts. On average 4.66 zł a plate, three of them carry over 22 g of protein.
Rice cakes carry as many calories as hard candy. Gram for gram
Rice cakes come to 386 kcal per 100 g, hard candy to 384. Both numbers sit in the nutrition tables on the product pages. It's the slice that's light, not the product.
The dearest coffee in the shop makes the cheapest cup
Instant costs 185 to 210 zł per kilo, ground 69 to 104. Yet a cup of instant comes to 37 groszy, and a capsule cup to 1.56 zł. Same brand, same zł/kg.
Is the bigger pack always cheaper? Five pairs from one shop
From 34 percent cheaper per kilo to 45 percent dearer. Same brand, same product, two pack sizes, and a different answer every time.
Three dinners from one pack of mince. 20.60 zł and nothing left over
A pack of mince holds 400 grams, and a recipe takes 120 to 150 per portion. Three different dinners that add up to the gram cost 20.60 zł.
Eggs M or L. The shop counts pieces, the difference is in grams
The same eggs from one brand: ten medium cost 13.49 zł, ten large 13.99. Per piece the medium ones win, per kilo the large ones do, by 2.69 zł.
How much meat is in a frankfurter. We checked seven packs
From 71 to 100 percent meat and from 22.06 to 48.69 zł per kilo. The most interesting pair comes from one producer: 100 percent meat costs 38.95 zł/kg, and 95 percent costs 29.52.
Having the cheese sliced for you costs 2.40 zł a pack
Gouda in a block costs 31.48 zł per kilo, the same gouda in slices 37.48. Practically the same ingredient list, the same weight, and the difference is that somebody sliced it.
The plant-based kabanos costs more than the pork one from the same brand
77.67 zł per kilo for the plant version against 64.67 zł for pork. The pack is 15 grams lighter, costs 20 groszy more, and its first ingredient is dried onion.
On one vegetable shelf the price gap is fourfold
Beetroot and cabbage at 2.99 zł a kilo, peppers at 12.99. We checked today's prices for twelve vegetables and built a dinner around the cheaper column, at 3.67 zł a portion.
A kilo of ready-made salad costs more than a kilo of chicken breast
A chilled lunch box is 10.99 zł for 255 g, which works out at 43.10 zł per kilo. The same lunch off a pan costs 7.45 zł, with half again as many calories and nearly three times the protein.
The pricier ketchup has fewer tomatoes. We read both labels
The 9.49 zł ketchup uses 148 g of tomatoes per 100 g of product, the 6.45 zł one uses 160 g. The premium buys a shorter ingredient list, not more tomato.
Chicken thigh looks half the price of breast. Take out the bone and the gap shrinks
Chicken thigh costs 13.89 zł per kilo, breast fillet 25.49. But around 30 percent of a thigh is bone and skin, so the meat alone works out at 19.84 zł. Plus a correction to our own database.
In a 9.39 zł jar of pickles, less than half the weight is pickles
The lid says 920 g, and there are about 450 g of cucumbers inside. The price per kilo on the shelf already counts the food alone, which makes it the only number worth comparing on anything sold in brine.
Over half that box of granola is the same oat as the bag next to it
Crunchy costs 17.11 zł per kilo, rolled oats from the same shelf 4.99 zł. The box is 55.5 percent oats, and the rest, sugar, oil and flours, costs 12.12 zł more per kilo.
A dozen dinners or one evening of crunching
For the same not-quite-12 złoty: a dinner base for a dozen-plus portions, or one snack evening of 786 calories. The same amount, two different weeks.
One Auchan, one Biedronka, one tie
The same mustard cheaper at Auchan by 21 groszy, the same horseradish cheaper at Biedronka by 40, the same passata level. Three identical products, three different results.
Per bar, per kilogram, per gram. Two tell the truth, one misleads
Per bar one pack wins, per kilogram another, and the weight of a single bar upends both. Three ways to count the same price, and how to read the ones that tell the truth.
On the left, 3.99 zł. On the right, 3.91 zł
One Snickers for 3.99 zł against two home suppers for 3.91 zł together. The same money, more than three times the calories and real protein on the right.
Three supper recipes, four portions for 8.10 zł. With a shopping list
Potato pancakes, red lentil soup and white bean spread. Three meat-free recipes make four portions for 8.10 zł, at 2.03 zł an evening, with instructions and a shopping list.
A sachet of sauce thickener costs 83 złoty per kilogram of starch
Cream-fix is 83 zł per kilogram of glucose and starch. A spoon of flour does the same, over 46 times cheaper. A ten-second rule: read the first ingredient and divide the price by the kilogram.
We throw out 69 kilograms of food per person a year, at home alone
The average EU resident wastes 69 kg of food a year at home (Eurostat 2023). In Poland nearly 3 million tonnes come from homes alone. Three moves that cut it.
A protein bar costs nearly ten times more per gram of protein than lentils
A protein bar is 37.72 zł per 100 g of protein. The same 100 g from lentils is 3.84 zł. How to check in ten seconds what the word protein really costs you.
A jar of pasta sauce is nearly three times the price of one made from pulp
A jar of ready arrabbiata sauce is 11.99 zł. The same sauce from tomato pulp and spices comes to 4.07 zł. Ten minutes in a pan, around 412 zł a year in difference.
Your grocery basket is up more than 40% in four years. The store won't refund the difference
Food prices in Poland rose 41.5% between 2020 and 2024, about 140 zł a month per person. No one will give it back. But you can reclaim part of it, and we counted how.
The cheapest calories at Biedronka are sugar and oil. We counted złoty per 1000 kcal
The cheapest thousand calories come from flour, sugar and oil, 0.49 to 0.96 zł. The same thousand calories in a candy bar cost 16.62 zł. Why the cheapest calorie is a trap.
A week of breakfasts for under 16 zł. Three recipes, one shopping list
Seven mornings from three breakfast recipes for 15.38 zł in total, or 2.20 zł a day. With a shopping list and a breakdown of how much of each package you actually use.
Ultra-processed food costs three times more. We counted 152 products
The median price per kilogram at Biedronka is 9.98 zł for unprocessed food and 32.23 zł for ultra-processed. Plus a swap that leaves around 906 zł a year in your pocket.
100 g of protein from tuna costs 26.60 zł. From lentils, 3.84 zł
A protein cost ranking plus a ready plan to cook this week. Three dinners, each with over 30 g of protein, 10.41 zł in total, shopping list included.
311 zł for a kilogram of basil. What you really pay at Biedronka
The same basil costs 311 zł per kilo in a small bag and 15.65 zł wholesale. Three packaging swaps that leave around 476 zł a year in your pocket.
Welcome to the Snugmeal blog
Budget cooking, no nonsense. What we write about and why.