Eat Shop Save - The Marshalls

The Marshalls from Manchester are made up of Becky and Craig and their baby daughter, Bonnie. Before the start of their challenge, the pair admitted to Ranvir that parenting was taking its toll on their lifestyle, with eating and spending habits spiralling out of control.

They were ordering takeaways 3 - 4 times a week and nighttime snacking had become the norm. With Becky’s maternity leave soon to be over, she said she had no idea how she would manage to do her job whilst staying on top of busy family life.

Cooked breakfast can be healthy!

The Marshall's were huge fans of a fry-up, often having a couple a week, but top chef and nutritionist, Dale Pinnock, has some home truths about the realities of their favourite breakfast.

With three sausages and rashers of bacon on each plate, Dale reveals to the family that in each fry up, they’re consuming over three times the government daily recommended allowance of processed meat, in just one sitting.

Not only that, the sausages the family usually buy contain just 42% pork, which is the lowest legal amount they can contain and still be marketed as a ‘pork sausage’. Dale’s recommendation when it comes to processed meat is to cut down on quantity, think more about quality and always read the label. 

Dale gives this family favourite a facelift by preparing his own, healthier version of a fry-up, which comes in at a whopping 700 calories LESS than what the Marshalls were eating before. You can find the recipe, as well as the rest of our series 4 recipes, here.

The freezer is your friend

Savvy shopper Kate Hardcastle tackles the family spending on food, which was racking up to around £200 per week. She discovers that the couple have been buying fresh meat from the supermarket each week, despite having around 40 portions of frozen meat in an outdoor freezer which they hadn’t touched in months. 

Kate recommends keeping an up-to-date freezer list, so you know exactly what is in there and how long it has been in there for.

By stocking up the freezer with healthy batch cooked meals - which, when you are time pressed, are a great alternative to a takeaway, Kate reckons the Marshall’s could save around £3,000 a year just by ditching them altogether. 

Military fit

The young parents complained of feeling older than their years at the start of their Eat, Shop, Save challenge. 

To get them feeling good again, personal trainer Tom Pitfield pushes them out of their comfort zone, at a military style bootcamp in their local park. Similar classes happen all over the country, welcoming people of any level of fitness and they are the perfect way to start to get fitter, whilst meeting new people and enjoying the great outdoors

Despite difficult circumstances of COVID-19 challenging Becky and Craig during their Eat, Shop, Save challenge - they have achieved some fantastic results.

You can find out how much money the Marshall’s saved cutting the takeaways and the incredible changes they have made to their diet and lifestyle in this evening's episode of Eat, Shop, Save - on ITV at 7:30pm.

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