Questionaires & Looking after destiny

I found out by reviewing my completed day research forms that single mothers spend a large amount of time preparing food, and i wanted to look into wasteage, cost and nutritional worries.

I firstly created a questionaire tailored to this focus, with the following questions:

1. How old are your kids?
2. How many do you have?
   
3. How much do you spend on food a week?
4. How much do you waste?
5. What sort of things do you throw away?
6. Why do you usually throw food away?
7. How do you choose what's for dinner on a daily basis?
8. How long do you usually spend on meal preparation every day?
9. How often do you have takeaway?
10. What do your kids do whilst you are cooking?
11. Do you eat the same meals as your children?
12. Why is this?

From the responses i recieved (a few of which i recorded on my phone), i had a few ideas.

Focus on giving the user FAST meal ideas to reduce food wasteage, and also create variety. Nutritional information, and the inclusion of fruit and veg is important as some mothers are worried about their childrens intake of healthy foods and also their salt/fat intakes.

Also to possibly involve the kids with the meal preparation, to teach them skills and also to keep them busy to cut down on their time in front of the tv.

I decided to look after the 3.5 month old fostered daughter of one of the mums that i'm in contact with for the afternoon on my day off (and of course her mother was on hand just in case anything went wrong). Even without having to go to work, basic tasks like having to prepare food, feed her, clean up after her and give her the attention she needed was very dificult. I spent a lot of timemaking sure that her food was the correct temperature, and at one point i had to go and buy some from the shop (I asked her mother to not bring enough food so that i'd have to go shopping). It was extremely difficult just to navigate my way around the aisles, make sure she didn't get fussy and find the right formula with baby Destiny in a handheld baby cradle (as opposed to a body carrier which would leave my hands free). I was also shocked by the expense of baby formula, and how many different types there were.

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/formula/findrightformula/

I got some extra information from this website, and discovered that my very slow bottle preparation time is typical. Based on preparing a single bottle for a baby taking 30-40 minutes, and 6 bottles being consumed a day, it can take upto 4 hours a day out of a mothers daily routine.

I've been looking into typical food costs online.

http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/house-garden-194/kitchen-household-14/258854-average-food-cost-family-3-a.html

Mothers are giving suggestions on saving money on the weekly food bill, and i've found a website which allows you to input your weekly shopping lsit, and searches the 4 biggest UK supermarkets, then selects the cheapest options from each shop, creating a cheapest list for each, and allows you to get deliveries and only have to checkout once. The service is completely free, and claims to be able to save you 35% on your food bill. You can even save a shopping list, or import your tesco favourites list.

The website is: http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/departments/Bread_in_Tesco.html

It also has a great little section called a 'health checker', where you can input the food you like, and it generates a healthier option.

The website also gives you a very interesting calories per weight which is clearly displayed above all foodstuffs, making shoppers aware of their buying choices.

This functionality of this is similar to a project i did last year, which helped motivate dieters and provide healthier eating options.

Saving money seems to be quite a large part when it comes down to food, and i will take thi sinto consideration when creating my website.