To think this increase in cost is going to break me?

YABU @Yummmyy for posting about food on mumsnet! You’ve awakened the batch / scratch cooking competitive beasts who think life should be a race to the bottom. And let’s not even mention how bad it was in the 80s 🙄🙄🙄

YANBU in general. It’s mental! We should all be able to feed our families decent meals without this level of worry. It’s out of control and feels like it will never end.
orange juice really should be be a luxury!

Don't buy everything in one place. Know your prices / research. Buy what you use a lot in bulk when cheap (if you can). Yellow Sticker. Vegetarian. Seasonal. Cook from scratch. Meal Plan.

Use Home Bargains, Farmfoods etc. Buy discounted supermarket shopping vouchers through employee schemes. Use ALL the apps, particularly Nectar / Sainsbury's.

Keep meals, lunches & snacks simple.

We picked enough blackberries to last at least 6 months. Just bought Cauliflower on offer in Morrisons this week - chose the biggest one, but also with the most amount of leaves / stalk etc on. Will use those to add in & make a Cauli Cheese Pasta Bake. Don't waste anything.

Is this a joke?

Orange juice has gone up there too! It was 1.60 2 weeks ago for 1 litre, now 1.65 (and it was 1.35 only a few months ago so that's not the only rise)

We are thinking that we can't afford meat really now.

I went to Aldi on Monday. Got my weekly meals in, but had got a new fridge freezer as the other broke so also needed to restock everything so added in loads of extra stuff and had a full trolley and it was 101. Ive noticed Asdas increased quite alot though so will be sticking with Aldi. Tesco is extortionate as is Sainsburys and Morrisons.

We make our own bread, we cook from scratch, we are clever with left overs.
We shop with a list and meal plan. We don't buy alcohol, fizzy drinks, I'd say our luxury is cheap coffee, we could always drink water from the tap.

We shop around - but some things are higher at lidl than tesco. Not poncy staff, just normal things!

We shop at the greengrocers in our village because they are cheaper, we like supporting them. They in turn support local smallholders. If their prices go up, then we will have to vote with our feet. We can't afford not to.

There are 4 of us. I'm growing lettuce and tomatoes this year. And garlic. Can't remember last time had olive oil!

When nics go up, it will be worse across the board. Mortgage rates have to come down. Our council tax is going up, food is going up, water bill going up. Wages static because of the nics increase.

We have a freezer in an outbuilding. It will be utilised properly this year, because we are going to meal plan for autumn winter soon and buy special offers where we can.

Bonkers!

Buy the custard powder - Birds is £1.35 for a big tub in Home Bargains. Much better value for money and takes almost as little time to make / heat.

Sorry to burst your bubble but I can still get a frozen pizza for 97p in Asda. Think it's likely to send it the other way.

£2.59 olive oil was in Aldi, today £6.79😱 it’s ridiculous how much everything has gone up.

I’m eating very cheap teas at the. Min as I have huge vets bills but even beans on toast has gone up!

I agree, tesco also price matches Aldi on a huge number of products.
You have to laugh at some of the previous response 'is it processed food that's gone up' it is just a thinly veiled attempt to show how much better they are than everyone buying processed food.
I agree about meat. We buy most of our meat from a local butcher and they are facing massive increases. This will filter down to the supermarket soon enough. Maybe then the smug won't be so smug.
I think as well supermarkets are slowly reducing quantity. What always used to be 500g of beef mince is now 450g, cooked delicious meat used to be 5 slices or 10.slices now 8 or 4, butter used to be 250g now 200g on some brands. People don't notice this shrinkflation.

I am in no way affiliated with Lidl and I don't have one too near me but I went into one with a relative in my home town last week and was blown away by how close to brand the own brand products I tried were. They seem to have really taken the time to perfect them. Their cream of tomato soup was as good as and much cheaper for example! My family eats gallons of it. I'd do my main shop there if I could.

They are much better than they were 20 years ago. To be fair, Tesco were so bad they have kind of gone to the other extreme. I won’t say they are generous but they do verge on fair now in my side of the industry. Sometimes the ones with the worst reputations have to work hard and turn out to be the best. Aldi and McDonalds are two others that do much better than they used to.

What are you getting for £60 to feed a family of 3 for a week from M&S???

(Not snarky genuinely pls tell me haha!)

I'm really selective with what I grow on my allotment and grow things like soft fruit that are expensive to buy in the shops. So in a way we break even, but the truth is, if we didn't grow our own, we just wouldn't eat kilos of strawberries, raspberries etc

So yes, nice hobby but you'd have to be a he'll of grower to actually save money.

agree they also terrible for anyone with an egg or dairy allergy. you can't even get dairy free yoghurts 🤷‍♀️

Sainsbury's underlying profit was £573 million by December- and bear in mind they are stripping cafes and hot food out of their stors because profit margins are not increasing fast enough. Underlying profit means not taking into account any big one-off events eg selling assets like land or planned for redundancy costs- so profit on their core business. Their prices rise weekly at the minute.

Supermarkets are incredibly greedy.

Builders are greedy- they are making fortunes from new housing estates and standards are shocking. Governments are handing them billions of public money from first-time buyers ISAs. Large engineering construction companies are raking in billions from government contracts for infrastructure projects.

Energy companies and water companies have been allowed to make hundreds of billions in the last 15 years from increased charges, public monies and under-investment in infrastructure.

Public services and small businesses can not afford to increase salaries to keep up with these costs. It is not viable to keep lining the pockets of these people

They need to accept much smaller profits- captalism is out of control.

@WhitegreeNcandle have things got better for farmers with supermarket contracts?

I had heard previously that the supermarkets put really unfair pressure on farmers to sell their produce at below-cost prices - taking advantage of their buying monopoly.

My impression was that this was the biggest thing we should pressure supermarkets over, not their cost to shoppers (which we know is much lower than in most countries)

Glad to know if that's got better!

I get £810 a month to live on on UC. I get extra because I have a chronic illness that means I have a limited capacity for work.

It's joyless and miserable.

What an absolutely idiotic and evil thing to say. I don't normally I'll wish, but I hope you get everything you deserve.

The other problem with growing your own is that your harvest coincides with the product being plentiful and quite cheap. We grew corn on the cob one year and had hundreds!

Not so stealth brag much?!

Whilst I absolutely agree that the rate prices are going is staggering...cheapest orange juice online at tesco is 95p for standard bottle
That being said the most expensive one,albeit slightly larger is a whopping £4.90!!

@Shitshower 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻