Eating lean on a student budget?

I think so, people always seem to moan that fruit and veg is expensive but it doesn't have to be if you shop at places like Lidl and Aldi. Anyway, have you seen the price of a takeaway?!

You also need to be clever with cooking, grill where possible and cut any visible fat off meat. I always drain minced beef as this gets rid of any unnecessary fat.

And you'll save loads of money through not buying sweets and crisps etc and this money can be spent on slightly more expensive items such as fish.

I think so, people always seem to moan that fruit and veg is expensive but it doesn't have to be if you shop at places like Lidl and Aldi. Anyway, have you seen the price of a takeaway?!

I find that fish is a great source of protein. Usually two salmon fillets (they are quite small) will pack about 40ish grams of protein. Furthermore, fish is so low in fat. I usually have 2 fillets and some vegetables for my dinner.

not true - if you have 200g salmon (40g protein), fat content will be 26g.

Fresh lean meat/fish is one of the most expensive things you can buy in food shops.

Yes but it is good fat and 200g is quite a lot.

40g worth of protein from salmon would equate roughly 200g

but it is fat nonetheless, so you can't say 'salmon is so low in fat'

If you aren't a fresh, free-range, organic snob you can get decent food very cheap. Iceland do 1kg of chicken breast fillets for £5, 1kg of white fish (I have no idea what it actually is but the nutrition profile is great!) for £4 and milk is 25p per pint if you buy in 4 pint bottles/cartons.

If you've got a Lidl near you, then you really are set. Can't quite remember it off the top of my head, but iirc, they do something like 400g of lean mince beef for £2.50. Personally, what I do, is I go into Sainsburys and get loads of Basics Minced Beef. I know they are not lean as such, but it is an improvement over iceland's minced beef, and they are like £1.50 each and look and taste like minced beef. Don't get wrong, the frozen minced beef was still good; I practically lived off it for my first term of uni.

Other than that, I'd suggest having a look at your local butchers. They may or may not be more expensive, but if you look around, you might be a ; at the very least it would help you when looking at some other places to buy meat.

Definetly go into tescos about 45mins before closing time though, near the meat chillers. You can usually find stuff that has been discounted by a ridiculous amount. Co-Op food stores are also good for this apparently.