In your continual efforts to stick to your weekly budget, every student has looked at the enticingly low prices of Tesco’s ‘Everyday Value’ range and wondered, surely it can’t be that bad? Well wonder no more, the Tab has the lowdown on some of the most popular Everyday Value range. Spoiler: Some of them were shit.

Bitter:

Taste – Overly watery and fizzy, but easy to drink. Invoked flashbacks of being 14 and drinking in parks (make of that what you will).

Appearance – Dark and clear, like the sky above Durham on a crisp winter’s evening.

Value for money – V.v.v. good, although the alcohol content is a measly 2.1%. This works out at 25p per unit, which would quite frankly be incredibly rude to refuse. Your bladder may not be quite as grateful, but swings and roundabouts y’know?

Overall – 3/5. Fantastic value and inoffensive taste coupled with hilariously low alcohol content make for an unremarkable drink.

Bit bitter

Plain Chocolate:

Taste – Squares were slightly crumbly and powdery, and also tasted semi-oily. However, there was definitely a high cocoa content, which was good for real dark chocolate lovers.

Appearance – Very matte finish, with minimal decoration on the squares. Not much effort gone into presentation, reflecting the low price.

Value for money – Absolutely fantastic. 24 squares for 30p, an unbelievable bargain.

Overall – 3.5/5. For a quick sugar high, this beauty will never let you down.

Nothing plain about this baby

Low fat strawberry yoghurt:

Taste – Quite flavoursome, although obviously low fat. There was a distinct lack of both creaminess and actual strawberries, which partially invalidated both the “strawberry” and the “yoghurt” aspect of the product.

Appearance – Very viscous and blancmange-like, extremely artificial pink colour.

Value for money – OBSCENE. At 15p a pop, you could get your recommended daily calorie intake for just £3. Variety is for weaklings.

Overall – 3/5. These yoghurts work as a small component of a much larger meal, but are largely dissatisfying on their own. Proceed with caution.

V. viscous dessert for two

Sliced peaches in juice:

Taste – Very watery “juice”, there appears to be a not so subtle watery theme running through Tesco’s ‘Everyday Value’ range. Succulent peaches though, which could definitely be used in an everyday diet without undue sacrifice.

Appearance – The peaches had a very strong colour, which was apparently, according to the can,  not artificial . Suspicious “juice”, which appeared to be almost pure glucose syrup .

Value for money – Not exceptional, but no one’s going to kick up a fuss over 35p.

Overall – 4/5. An unexpected winner of a product, the humble tin of peaches offered me an entirely new perspective on the fruit/pudding hybrid.

Seriously impressive

Chocolate chip cake bars:

Taste – Moist. Very moist. Evenly distributed chocolate chips were present, which had the potential to make or break. Great crumb structure #bakeoff. Could very easily be combined with the tinned peaches for a budget trifle. It’s ok, thank me later.

Appearance – Quite disturbingly pale on top for a baked good, but with a pleasing “home style” rise in the middle. Packaging leaves a bit to be desired.

Value for money – 10p a bar, impossible to complain.

Overall – 4/5. My house loved these, and ate them of our own free will. They tasted genuinely good.

Cake yeah

Chicken soup:

Taste – Far too “delicately” flavoured and exceptionally watery. Clearly floury at a poor attempt to thicken. Jewish Mothers everywhere would instantly reject this shoddy imitation of a timeless classic.

Appearance – Very unappealing milky colour with a few cubes of “chicken” dotted around, which were suspiciously uniform.  Again, very poor packaging which made the preparation process unnecessarily arduous. I felt I deserved better.

Value for money – 24p. Would be rude not to.

Overall – 2/5. One of my least favourite products. The meaty element added an extra level of queasiness to the equation, and the entire experience was in no way pleasant.

Not so soup-er

Cheese omelettes:

Taste – HAD to be masked with pesto. Extremely foamy texture, tasted and smelt like a particular bowel movement. No cheese taste to speak of, apart from a faintly acidic aftertaste.

Appearance – Nothing short of foul. Pale and polystyrene-like, DIY enthusiasts such as myself instantly compared it to insulation foam. The omelette started to “breathe” when removed from the microwave, which was upsetting for all who were there to witness it.

Value for money – £1 for 2, not particularly good value for 2 small omelettes which may or may not have been living.

Overall – 1/5. Truly horrid. I feel bad for these poor omelettes, especially as they appeared to be sentient, but they really were gross.

The less said the better

Pepperoni pizza:

Taste – Poor base to topping ratio, with a very thin sauce layer. Not much cheese coming through at all, and my housemate “didn’t really want to finish it”. This is coming from a man who is so determined to eat what he’s given that he recently ate three grated potatoes for his supper.

Appearance – Abundance of pepperoni which was evenly distributed. However, we burnt the pizza so it looked absolutely terrible.

Value for money – £1.60 for an enormous pizza, could definitely be t least two meals if you’re not a fatass.

Overall – 3.5/5. I enjoyed it, and the pepperoni did taste like actual meat.

Pizzer

Ham:

Taste – Could hardly taste the ham flavour because it was so watery. The texture was slippery and slimy, which made chewing an effort.

Appearance – Smelt like farts again, which brought back uncomfortable memories of the dark “cheese omelette” era. The experience was slightly disconcerting because there were many different shades of ham in one slice.

Value for money – £1.50 for 32 slices. Coming in at around a mighty 5p per slice, this could give you sandwiches for weeks on a budget.

Overall – 2.5/5. A very average product at best, but one which clearly serves a purpose and is one of the more popular Everyday Value items among students.

I wasn’t ham-azed by this

Verdict

If you’re really short for cash, most of these options aren’t actually that bad. However, regular consumption may lead to a feeling of emptiness that not even the pizza can fill. Oh, and stay away from the soup, ham and omelettes.