Food is not expensive

I dont understand either. Are there special shops for people who can cook? I admit i dont much like supermarkets but dont have much choice now as i dont drive .
I looked after a friends son yesterday. Hes only 9 but ate as much as me! How people manage in school holidays with multiple children to feed is beyond me.

Food is by far our biggest monthly expense (though we are mortgage free).

How do you define expensive then op? Curious?

For us it's our second highest monthly outgoing after our mortgage. IT's gone up significantly in the last few years. It's cheaper in the UK than some other countries but in those countries wages are generally also a lot higher or taxes are lower.

Co op is bloody expensive. I wish our local one would turn into a Lidl.

I know it’s not for main shopping but it’s an expensive way to top up.

I have a family of 4 to feed including 2 teenagers who are constantly hungry.
We shop at Aldi / Lidl. We try to have a few days meat-free per week. I batch cook at lot.

Im horrified to realise that I pay more for food per month than on my mortgage. That does include other things like toilet roll, etc but even so!! I used to be able to get a weekly shop for us all well under £100 per week but those days are long gone.

Food prices are rising on a weekly basis I’ve noticed.

I am soon to be an empty nester and I’m going to be setting myself the task of spending £40 per week on food. I’ve cancelled my Tesco saver DD and will do all my food shopping in Lidl/Aldi.

Food is much more expensive than it was, as are most things. People tend to comment more on the cost increase in food because they encounter it on a regular and visible basis. Some people on tight budgets are struggling to eat properly and healthily. They don't have the luxury of being 'prepared to pay more', as they don't have any more.
I think preaching to people about paying more for meat is particularly unreasonable.
If people can't afford to eat healthily, and you're the sort of busy body who wants to tell them how they should do better, the advice should surely be to reduce or cut out meat altogether, and focus on high quality plant foods which give a lot more value for money and health.

I take it your a farmer.

So your a farmer is that it.

Food can be cheap but quality food is expensive. I've got a foster son who has lived with me for about 5 months. When he first came he wanted a lot of carbs and sugar. Now he's eating and enjoying different proteins like salmon, chicken, steak and tuna steaks, lots of different fruits he had not had before and vegetables and salads as well as a portion of carbs each day. He loves berries and they cost a lot but he never got them before and now he can't eat enough. The loads of toast, chocolate spread, jam, bread and spread and pasta with just tomato sauce he used to eat was probably very cheap but not very nutritional.

It's a basic vegan sponge batter (cheap as no eggs or butter) with added fruit - usually either sliced apples or plums at the bottom of the tin, or frozen raspberries or blueberries with some lemon zest mixed in to the batter. Baked in a square tin to make it cut into lunchbox sized pieces. Wrap each piece in greaseproof paper and ta dahhh, lunchbox cake.

Hi could you share more about lunchbox cake please?

Ok from one of those poor folk, I buy the same things through neccessity, and over half the items I get ( baked beans, tinned chick peas, the cheapest bags broken rice etc) have more than doubled in price.And the shrinkflation is becomng a joke, so many things have a third less food in them for double the price. I shop roughly every 6 to 8 weeks as I have to factor in the bus trip and thats not cheap, and every time I shop prices go up and up and up. There are no 2nd car, 4 holidays, tv subs to cut down on for wiggle room so we skip meals. An online friend who only shops at M & S reported that most of her shop has stayed the same price.

Are you in the UK? It's 5 a day here love (because most of us can't even manage 3) and the 30 different foods is not part of the UK food model. The UK food model is called the Eatwell Guide.

I've given up on shop bread altogether. Waitress no longer seem to stock Heyford, and the only two bakeries in my town charge £4.50 for a large wholemeal loaf. Since January I buy a 16kg sack of wholemeal flour from a local mill and make my own, early every Sunday morning.

It's delicious, non-upf and works out about £1 for an 800gm loaf.

Absolutely. Ime food prices may be cheaper than other countries, but if what you've always eaten has consistently been going up on price, food shopping seems very expensive. For example, soft cheese spread was 49p pre covid, is now £1+

I've never been a fan of cheap bread but a nicer loaf is £3 v about £1.80 in 2021.

So food is expensive compared to previous years, even if it's cheaper in UK compared to other regions.

@Absolutely45

No idea where you get the 30% number from. Which specific profit numbers are you looking at ? A link would be helpful.

I am not here to either explain supermarket pricing strategy or defend it

However in terms of the CMA and their findings with respect to supermarket profitability it seems they are right. You haven’t disputed either the logic or the numbers in their report. And it seems neither did any of the consumer groups you were thinking of.

I do share your low opinion of our regulators (including the CMA) and agree it will get worse as their remit is expanded to include growth, however thats not what this thread is about.

@FullOfLemons
Tesco increasing profits by 30% in 23/24 but not profiteering - ok.

So why is price increases aimed at what we buy the most of? which you agree is happening.

As i said, regulators have been giving clean bills of health to the industries they regulate for many years.

Public believe the supermarkets profiteer, thats important too.

It was the CMA's Veterinary report that was met with disapproval by consumer groups, apologises.

Once again, a regulatory that backs the industry investigated... profits come first & it'll only get worse as Labour have ordered the regulators to promote growth first.

Possibly irrelevant in terms of what the CMA found, but not irrelevant in general…actually one of the most relevant factors in the perception of expensive groceries.

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/poorest-hit-hardest-by-inflation-as-budget-groceries-soar-in-price-awGN66n1RaHz

I was quite ashamed that, until I had this pointed out to me, I was a bit like…what’s a 15% hike on something I could already afford, and will keep on affording? You need to pay a decent price for decent food, animal welfare, etc etc etc.

I’d totally overlooked that the things I buy are already towards the upper end of the price scale, and so an increase of a couple of quid makes up a smaller proportion of the price I was already paying, and so less pain felt. If it does become a bit pricey or uncomfortable, I can downshift to a less expensive line. There’s wiggle room.

IF, however, you are already buying the budget ranges, any price increase is likely to constitute a bigger proportional increase in price…21% in this article from 2023…goodness knows what it sits at now. I’m not sure any of us could really comfortably absorb that significant an increase in our grocery bills…and that’s if if we have other areas we could sacrifice, like 4 holidays a year, 2 cars, Sky, what-have-you.

Now imagine you’re in a position where every pound needs to be budgeted for. The £50/week you were spending was what you had. Things increasing to £60/week just isn’t possible….but there’s literally nowhere to go. You’re buying the cheapest range. What do you do?

Budget ranges increasing in price at a greater rate, even just proportionally, than others is far from irrelevant.

Not compared to the 1970’s it isn’t. 🤷‍♀️

You are correct to say lower priced goods e.g. value ranges have seen some of the highest price increases.

However this is irrelevant.

Overall profit margins are low as explained in the CMA report, which they supported with fact based evidence.

Do you disagree with the CMA findings on profit margins ?

Are you able to name the consumer organisations that disagreed ?

No, I thought not

I'm so sorry you are going through this, I really hope better days are ahead for you 🌻

Obesity and poverty do sadly go hand in hand, and paradoxically obesity is often seen in people who can least afford food.

It's quite easy to see why - it's much cheaper to buy a massive bag of chips, sack of potatoes or bag of pasta and have it with some cheap processed meat than it is to buy multiple ingredients, especially when you factor in things like being time poor, not having good access to facilities to cook in, not having the energy (as in gas and electric) to afford cooking meals. The mental load of putting some frozen processed food in the oven at the end of a long day is so much less than meal planning and cooking from scratch, even for somebody who likes to cook and knows how to make meals.

You then introduce more complex issues that result from food insecurity, like for example struggling to budget properly and spending more on food (especially takeaways), because when you've been eating very poorly you often crave that treat and convenience when you do have money.

I remember when my kids were very little and I was struggling financially. I vividly remember choosing to get frozen chicken nuggets and pizzas from Iceland instead of getting potatoes, a whole chicken, and veg etc like I normally would, because I was on a prepayment meter for gas and electric, and knew that if I bought the ingredients to cook the meals I wanted to, I wouldn't have the money to cook them.

It costs a lot more to roast a chicken and even to boil raw potatoes and veg on the stove than it does to put the oven on once for 20 minutes. It's really fucking depressing having to make those decisions and I'm not well off now, but I will forever be humbled and grateful that at the moment, I at least have enough to comfortably pay my bills so I can cook meals. And I still struggle towards the end of the month.

I'm reminded of when Air Canada went metric in 1983. 22,000lbs of fuel was entered into the computer as 22,000kg and, somewhat inevitably, a Boeing 767 ran out of fuel somewhere over Manitoba.

As a general rule I find in the UK that quality and wholesome food is very expensive, but highly processed crap is relatively cheap by global standards, although this masks a number of nuances.

I spend a lot of time in Portugal and do similar food shops in both places. I spend significantly less in Portugal even adjusting for average incomes in each country but that's because my diet is largely Portuguese - fresh fish, fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables, legumes etc. If I ate mostly frozen ready meals, tins, out of season produce, and processed breakfast cereals it would be a lot cheaper in the UK in absolute terms, and even more so relative to wages. To give one example I've used before - 500g of dried cannellini beans is £2 (€2.30) in Tesco, but only €1.05 in Intermarché in Portugal. But a 400g can of cooked beans is 49p (€0.57) here and €0.89 in Portugal.

By European standards the UK grocery market is actually quite competitive, which helps keep prices down compared to peers like the Netherlands or France. However, because our housing costs are much, much higher and we earn less because we're simply less productive the disposable income available a typical British family to spend on food is significantly less.