Jo McLoughlin, also known as Yellow Sticker Girl, grew up in Cornwall and moved to London seven years ago, where she found supermarket prices far higher than at home — and they have only increased since.
Rather than sacrifice healthy eating, she began scouring reduced sections for fresh produce. Soon, yellow stickers became her main source of food shopping.
A £40 weekly food budget
"I have a £40 weekly budget for my food. I go to various supermarkets along my high street and I look for those yellow stickers – they’re a lifeline," Jo tells Metro.
She sets aside a "pot" each month and uses a dedicated card for food purchases. "With the cost of living and the massive upping of food prices, buying yellow sticker foods is a necessity to ensure that I get healthy, nutritional food into my diet," she says.
Jo shops for herself and is "constantly planning" around available deals. "If a product which is normally high value, for example chicken, is on a remarkably reduced offer, I might buy a few packets, separate them and freeze them, helping me for the week after," she explains.
"Some weeks I do a bulk buy, which can last me over a week and a half. Other times I’ll go to the shops every day of the week to see how I can create healthy meals. I’m always really pleased to see a yellow sticker on soft fruit – raspberries and strawberries are especially rare."
Going digital
Jo visits several supermarkets, including M&S and Waitrose, to keep her bill down. More recently, she has also used the Too Good to Go app. "Through [the app] Too Good to Go, I got a delivery of yellow sticker foods. It had a purchase price of £6.66, and upon getting it home I tallied up the original prices. I had saved around £30."
"There were groceries I could freeze and make juices from, and plenty I could batch cook. I can use yellow sticker foods pretty much straight away. It’s within my affordable budget, and also it makes me feel good that I’m buying food that would otherwise go to waste."
Campaigning for food equality
Jo became a member of The Food Foundation’s Ambassador Programme in April 2025 and has campaigned for food equality since. Last month, she took a photo poem about her experience to Parliament and displayed it to MPs.
She argues the issue is bigger than her own reliance on discounts. "The lowest fifth percentile of earners have to spend 85% of their disposable income on their food shopping to be able to afford healthy products," she says, referencing The Food Foundation’s Broken Plate Report, released this year.
That figure is up from 70% in 2024, showing that a healthy lifestyle is growing less achievable for the poorest families. "There’s a lot of blame on lower-income individuals for buying less healthy or sugary foods, but that’s shockingly the only food group that has got cheaper in the past year."
The wider problem
According to the report, healthier foods are nearly twice as expensive per calorie than foods high in sugar, fat and salt. Fast food outlets make up a quarter of places to buy food in England, rising to a third in the most deprived areas.
Jo hopes that one day people will not need yellow stickers. "My poem highlights to governments that yellow stickers are a visual representation of what’s happening." She asks: "Why are these healthy food products having to be reduced at the end of the day for people to be able to buy them, when actually they could have been better priced, and then we wouldn’t be in this situation?"
Practical advice
For now, she encourages shoppers to check reduced sections. "Check the end gondolas weekly for specific rotations of healthy food. Pre-plan and take shopping lists before you go and use methods like freezing and bulk cooking to make healthy food stretch."
"And importantly, don’t be ashamed to buy yellow sticker products. There’s so much healthy food waiting to be bought."
