Food prices are up over 7% this year, so the cost of feeding yourself and your family is rising.

Yet with a few simple tricks up your sleeve and an insight into the sneaky tactics they use to persuade you to part with your cash you can save hundreds of pounds from your annual food bill.

Martin’s Downshift Challenge

When you next do your normal shop, trying buying one of everything a brand level lower. Supermarkets have very cleverly moved us into four brands:

• No frills/basics brand. E.g. Tesco Value, Asda Smartprice.
  
• Supermarket own brand. E.g. Tesco, Sainsbury’s.
  
• Mainstream brand. E.g. McVities’s Jaffa Cakes, Ribena.
  
• Premium brand. E.g. Tesco Finest, Somerfield’s The Best.
  
  

So if you usually buy premium brands, opt now for mainstream brands, and if you normally buy mainstream brands plump for supermarket own brands instead. If you were to change your whole shopping basket you’d cut the bill by 1/3 – that’s £1,500 on a typical family's annual spend.

Yet it doesn’t stop there. The aim isn’t to get you to switch automatically, but to try everything and see what you can’t taste the difference on. Having done this experiement many times, once you ignore packaging people can only taste the difference on 50% of things. So simply switch to those and you'll make an easy saving of £750 a year.

We challenged one family from Kent to try the downshift challenge. We asked them to do their normal shop followed immediately by a downshift shop before they came into the studio. We kept the results from them until the show when they discovered they saved 30%. Over a year that could save them around £1,250.

For full details of the downshift challenge and how it works, supermarket by supermarket, read Martin’s full Cheap Supermarket Shopping guide.

More Supermarket Cost Cutting Tips

• Quickly compare online prices
  
  As you’d expect the internet is also a great tool for slashing your grocery bill. Just input your normal shopping basket goods into website Mysupermarket.com and it'll compare the total cost in four online supermarkets, including Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda.
  
  Even if you don’t want to shop online it gives you a good idea of how much your shopping will cost in the stores.
  
  
• It’s not just where, but when you shop
  
  Timing is also essential. If you pop into Tesco’s after 4pm you can pick up discounts of up to 50% on some items while it’s more likely to be after 5pm in Sainsbury's.
  
  
  
• Become a coupon collector
  
  Vouchers are also a handy way of cutting costs. With a smile and the gift of the gab you may even be able to persuade check-out staff to accept vouchers for goods they’re not meant for.
  
  
• Always eat before you go
  
  When shopping it’s also important to resist temptation. For example, most people are aware that supermarkets pump their stores with the smell of fresh bread to make you feel hungry and spend more dough. So make sure you eat first before heading to your local store.
  
  Also don’t fall for the impulse buys such as magazines and sweets that are placed near the checkouts.
  
  

For many more tips, links to menu planners, and detailed research on the how to dramatically cut your weekly shopping bill go to Martin’s full Cheap Supermarket Shopping article.