£800 pm on groceries for a family

i did our weekly shopping for this week coming for 2 adults, 1 teenager, and 1 8yo. including catfood (14 tins) and a few toiletries (toilet roll,shower gel, kitchen roll, wash pods) for a grand total of £65.

granted the kids are back to school this week so i dont have to deal with school lunches but ive never spent more than £100 a week for all 4 of us.

we dont eat too badly either, cooking from scratch every evening

this week we have
sweet chilli salmon couscous and green beans (salmon from last weeks shopping)
chicken and cheese quesadillas w sweet pot fries
paneer butter masala w rice and naans
chicken and chorizo pasta w garlic bread
teriyaki beef noodles with gyozas
buttermilk fish burgers w chips

maybe once every 2 months we will spend another 100 at on buying a few essentials like rice, pasta, large bottle sauces, and a few bits from the local Asian supermarket

Sadly, I'm old enough to have voted to join the common market, as it then was in 1975 when the UK was in an even worse state than it is now. We were known as 'The poor man of Europe' then and we're not much better now. Brexit was a stupid and pointless mistake and the ramifications will continue to haunt us for decades to come.

Large parts of our food inflation is down to increased costs of import, red tape and admin as a direct result of Brexit, including currency devaluation of the pound relative to the Euro. Many of these increased costs act like tariffs so of course are passed on to the consumer and throughout the economy. The damage is not just to imports, but more generally throughout the food production industry in labour shortages and costs, a slump in exports and poor trading conditions. This was very clear before Brexit; and to be honest, I’m amazed that anyone’s still trying to defend it, when economically it’s clearly been and is an ongoing disaster.

You can’t just compare prices in another country without looking at salaries and other living costs/taxation in that currency. Salaries are much higher in the US, for example — you do know this, don’t you? And it simply isn’t true that their food is more expensive. American processed food and food produced within the US is actually very cheap compared to here. It might be getting less so, but that is down to a variety of other factors.

In experience grandparents generation have no reasonable idea of what anything costs where kids are involved. One reason that I think the country is in the mess it's in

2 adults, 2 primary age kids and we spend around 8-900 pm I’d say. I’d say three big deliveries of £250ish plus occasional extras/top ups is fairly standard.

6yo DS has a very restricted diet so that makes life slightly more complicated as he has a separate meal at each mealtime. And DH needs about a million calories a day to survive (very slim, athletic man who does endurance sport and works a very active job).

It really isn’t. You need to look at local salaries and costs/taxation regimes/housing and so on. Housing costs relative to salaries in North America are much lower than here, and salaries are higher. Processed and junk food in North America costs much less than here; some fresh food prices are higher, but by no means all (meat in the US is much cheaper, for example). They may be complaining about the price of eggs, but overall food is still cheaper on average compared to incomes than either here or in the EU.

If you think that the cost of living generally in the U.K. is better than either the EU or in North America then you’re clearly living in a fantasy land! Anyone I know who’s visited here from the EU in recent years is horrified at how expensive, downtrodden, dirty and generally scruffy and broken the UK has become in the last decade compared to just about any EU country.

Anyway, I think I’ll leave you to the fantasy world in which we’ve got it so great in the U.K., as if just keeping on saying it will ensure we haven’t noticed the difference in our living standards compared to even five or ten years ago.

You shouldn’t feel bad and nothing wrong with own brands.

We're two adults and three teens, and spend around the same. Sometimes more, sometimes less - but we get a staff discount at Tesco so we save around £30 a week that way.

Your mum is out of touch.

I'm in the USA so my specific numbers will be useless but yes, shopping has gone up a great deal here as well, though the reasons are different for most products. (A few, like the big increases in costs for chocolate and olive oil, are due to global pricing.)

The fact is that prices have gone up and your DM doesn't realise and she also probably doesn't remember what it's like to feed teens. For the person who cluelessly suggested eating only 2 meals, an active teenage boy needs over 3000 kcal a day (more if they're massively into sport). They are bottomless pits. I have teens myself and really if I didn't cook job lots of food from scratch I don't know how we'd manage!

Also, please don't suggest feeding cats human food. It is possible to make from scratch cat food, but it requires supplementation. And if you're starting with human quality ingredients it winds up being much more expensive than buying commercial food.

I can't fathom spending 1k a month on food when rent/mortgage + bills is so expensive, are people and probably quite rightly prioritising healthy food over savings/cars/holidays? Because I earn a very good wage and I can't imagine having that much spare money every month to spend 1k on food.

Where's that shopping list ?!

Doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. My household is 1 adult and 1 bottomless pit teen. I spend £80-100 on a weeks shopping (including toiletries & cleaning products), if I could afford to it would be very easy to spend more than this, I have to meal plan carefully each week to stay in budget and I often don’t eat breakfast or lunch.

We easily go through £800 a month. Easily. Sometimes more like £1k. 2 adults, 2 kids, 1 dog

We try to buy organic "dirty dozen" and milk and eggs, but I don't stretch to organic meat as the cost makes my eyes water

We try to buy a variety of fresh fruit and veg and make sure everyone gets their 5-7 a day

Fish / seafood at least once a week

I also try to buy no or low UPF ....Olive oil rather than seed oils

I have a chocolate addiction and the price of that has skyrocketed. 3 bars of Tony's is another £12 a week. Obviously not an essential, but my one vice and I ain't giving it up

A daiiry allergy means oat milk and soya yoghurts for 1 child

No booze

We rarely get takeaways

We easily spend £10 a week on berries alone as we all eat lots.

I know we could cut down, but I'd prioritise quality food over things like beauty products, new clothes, or evenings out

I'd recommend the Snoop app as it showed me that what I thought was a £150 weekly shop was much more when I added in mine and DH's coffees, lunches out and trips to the corner shop and petrol station

Have you been to Canada? At least for Ontario prices there are worse!

Don’t do this, OP.

Domestic cats who don’t hunt can’t live on ‘plain’ human food like dogs can, they need the added vitamins and minerals (most importantly Taurine) in cat foods to survive. Boiled chicken and white rice can be good for short periods if they’ve come down with something like D&V though.

I read that before this was known the lifespan of pet cats was 18 months - 2 years and that Taurine deficiency is a terrible way to go.

If you actually read my post, nowhere did I say that all older people voted for Brexit. So your post is pretty pointless - just platitudes really, rather than engaging with the issue.

It’s amazing how far people in his thread will go to try to argue that the food price inflation since 2020 isn’t caused by Brexit. How expensive food is in other countries is a red herring, since they are paying with a different currency and in a different tax and financial system than ours. Unless you’re earning in the local currency, you’re not getting a good picture of how expensive something is if you just compare how expensive something is on holiday in the supermarket. Because you’re essentially paying in money you’ve earned in pounds, when the exchange rate is very poor for us. (Remember way back when the exchange rate with the Euro and the dollar were in our favour? Yeah, not for well more than a decade now.)

The real issue is the inflationary price increases. It’s not been normal in recent UK history for food prices to increase dramatically by 30-40% in the space of 4/5 years, has it? Not all food price inflation is caused by Brexit, as I said upthread. But for us in the U.K., Brexit is the main driver of the overall commodity price inflation we’ve seen since 2020. Part of that is our worse credit rating and weaker currency than before Brexit. Part of it is the increased admin, paperwork and costs; part of it is labour shortages in this country. Lots of aspects to Brexit that have caused this. But the fact remains: people voted for it in all its total fantasy folly, and they should own the economic consequences.

It wasn’t a criti criticism. I simply can’t afford o spend that much on basics.

Extra mature cheddar £4.99/kilo costco
tinned tomatoes 33tin usually farm foods or home bargains

Do enlighten us.

Its when I see posts like this, I realise although I struggle with costs of food, being a family of 3 adults, we have it easy

I have the grandchildren come to stay a week and the food bill will double because they have food stuffs that arent on our radar

( I actually get embarrassed when I hit the supermarket for the extras that the grandkid eat)

Mostly for 3 adults I can get away with £50 a week - we do eat meat When the kids/grandkids come - double at least But those generations behind me have grown up with ready meals and take out - not something my generation had

I was talking today with a single woman who was admitting she was struggling to feed herself - in her late 20's. I said her age I did 3 jobs to make everything meet, and I also said Im now in my 60's, I feel dreadfulul that Im still struggling, Im having to juggle so we can get through the month and eat as best we can

For those seriously struggling to feed the family , find where your community fridge is and sign up for notifications
Download Olio and Toogoodtoogo

Ask for a food bank referral if £20/30 is going to pay the electric so no surcharges

Look at veggie reciepies , you dont need meat, pulses are just as high in protein and twice as filling

Buy yellow sticker .

I couldn’t even contemplate spending that much on cheese and tinned tomatoes.

M&S bigger blocks of extra mature Cheddar work out at £7.27 a kilo and are really tasty. Tins of Italian tomatoes at 50p a tin are excellent quality, as are their baked beans, also 50p a tin.

Our currency has devalued after Brexit relative to the Euro, so of course we find the shops expensive!

We spend £450 for three and 2 cats but vegetarian again and I cook everything from scratch which is very time consuming.