Aibu to be annoyed the food shop disappears so quickly

I’m not saying spend more. I’m saying be more strategic.

All the folk saying 'spend more' must not realise that some folk simply cannot 'spend more'. It's such a privileged comment to make.

I think you need to sit down and work out what is genuinely needed for the week, your list doesn’t seem much for a family for a week. If you are spending all you can afford then you need to look at alternative purchases and speak with your family.

Slim teen DD goes through 2 punnets of strawberries, a punnet of grapes, 4 apples, 1/4 of a melon, 2 peppers and 1/2 a cucumber each week alone. She has lunch at school, breakfast is usually cereal/yogurt/toast/bagel etc and adult size family evening meal plus after school pre sport snack of either toast and pb, sandwich, weetabix etc. Between school snacks, general snacking and mates over that’s about 21 items a week.

If the good shit gets eaten within a day, tough shit when there's nothing to snack on rest of the week.

It's not a lot of food at all. There's only DH and I & dog, and I'd buy about twice as much fruit as you just for us. How old are the children?

Just ban snacking. Buy only food that needs to be cooked.

The other thing to buy if you aren’t at the mo is popping corn - healthier than crisps, cheaper and lives forever in the cupboard.

£600 per month isn’t a lot for 5 people. We spend about £800 on a family of 5, not including dog food and eating out. I cook from scratch the majority of the time, shop at lidl when possible and we don’t buy crisps and biscuits. The kids snack on fruit, smoothies, toast and cereal, and I make a cake every now and again. Still, our food budget far exceeds our mortgage!😭

I agree that's not a huge amount of "snacks" for a week. We have 2-3 pieces of fruit per person per day (although there might be some included within your lunches?).

For snacks on a fairly strict budget I'd suggest "basic" fruit, with perhaps grapes or strawberries as a once a week treat. Buy plain packets of biscuits; they are fairly inexpensive (custard creams, bourbon etc). How old are the DC? If bottomless teenagers you might need to suggest they fill up on pasta, toast etc.

I also spend £130 pw on 2 adults one teen and two animals so I think your budget is unrealistic to include that many snacks for that many people, even with lunches being provided (for all 5 of you?)
You need to change the food you buy. If your kids are hungry leading to snacking then buy more filling cheaper things like bread, pasta, big pots of yoghurt etc. that they can have between meals if they are hungry. If they are just snacking because it's there then they can cope with running out once they have eaten it all!

ETA that's barely any fruit for a week.

Frozen fruit/cakes/bread - all mean an extra step so they last a bit longer.

You can buy box of biscuits packaged up into 3 biscuit packets - they are often on offer - you could buy one and bring out a week worth at a time.

Agreed- I get through this amount easily, plus apples and satsumas, in a week with just me and 5 year old!

It's not huge but it's also not miserly, based on the other info OP has provided.

I’d buy some oats and dried fruit and tray bake some oatie squares once a week. More filling. cheaper. Add peanut butter and honey. It takes ten minutes. Make snacks more sustaining, and cheaper. Some weeks add chocolate chips and vanilla flavouring. Sometimes add blueberries and cinnamon. Honestly, it takes ten minutes.

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Berries are expensive, I tend to just buy frozen ones, and make them into coulis to eat with plain yoghurt, sort of like a much cheaper and bigger version of Muller fruit corners.
Bananas, apples, pears and oranges are cheap and much more filling.
Also carrot, celery and cucumber sticks are nice served with a dip.

Try to get them eating wholemeal toast instead of biscuits, with cheese , egg or homemade houmous for a bit of protein. Or make banana pancakes with maple syrup (a little goes a long way!).

It would help if you give an indication of what/how much you buy - then it might be easier to make suggestions of hiding some/buying more/buying different.

Yeah it’s not enough. We are a family of four but children are very young and snack wise we would have
12 apples
4 x bunch bananas (6-8 on each)
4 x pears
1 x grapes
1 x blueberries
1 x melon
16 individual Greek yogurts
2 x pack of rice cakes
family pack of oat bars
this would generally last the week but my children will regularly eat 3 bananas each a day 🙄

It really isn't with the price of everything now

I massively cut our food shop to save money. Result is that our food lasts about four days and after that it's a bit grim. There's meal food but no snacks or treats. That's because we have eaten them. I have tried exert self control, with very limited success. I hate cooking but have resorted to cake baking to fill the snack gap 🙂

You don't have to make homemade snacks but you also don't need to buy Maryland cookies, strawberries and Milky Ways.

Bananas, apples and oranges are much cheaper ways to get fruit into them and last much longer. You can also buy cucumbers and carrots for them to snack on.

For biscuits, just get the cheap supermarket Bourbons or Custard Creams. Even the Tesco own brand chocolate chip cookies taste fine - there's no need to buy the branded stuff. Same for chocolate bars. Milky Ways are tiny and don't make much sense financially.

I agree its not enough food for 5 people, although bar mentioning the toddler you haven't said how old the kids are? My son would happily have a banana a day just to himself. The chocolate bars are going to fly out the cupboard when there is only enough for everyone to have 1 and then fight over the remaining. Fine if your happy to have a 'when its gone its gone' attitude but you seem to be genuinely confused why 1 and a half chocolate bars doesn't last a week. Personally don't see an issue with a chocolate bar being a once a week treat.

You can bulk out with apples, take out the strawberries, they are crap over winter anyway, maybe buy some frozen berries for porridge. Do your family like veggies? cucumber and carrot, I like to snack on baby plum tomatoes. Buy big tubs of yoghurt and add honey instead of expensive branded ones. Make sure there is bread/bagels etc with cream cheese, peanut butter etc

I agree. I rarely buy us dedicated "snacks" as such- there is always fruit (that the DC usually don't touch despite asking for it 🙄), one large bag of crisps for DS1's lunches, and oat cakes.

If they want to snack, there's always bread for toast, the oat cakes, or I usually have frozen berries and/ or stewed fruit (they'll eat that all right!), and they can have that with muesli and yogurt (I buy kilo tubs of Greek yogurt from Lidl).

Sometimes DS2 wants to bake, and then we have cake. DS1 makes pancakes a lot.

If I were you I'd massively up the bananas, scratch the expensive punnets and buy a load of apples too. Buy an extra loaf and they can have toast for snacks. If they're of an age to bake, get the ingredients for flapjacks in, and point them out when they moan for snacks.

Find a hiding place and ration them out through the week

I hide them in this house too, but I do buy way more stuff!

i agree, I have a banana every day, so 6 bananas for a family op’s size isn’t much at all.