Aibu to be annoyed the food shop disappears so quickly

How old are the children?
If school is providing lunch and snacks how many more snacks are needed everyday?

mine had a substantial snack on return from school ( a sandwich or homemade flapjack for example ) and then a cooked tea with yoghort or fruit for pud

choc bars /crisps, berries / grapes were a weekend treat but still only one portion of each each day max

also the younger children ate snacks together at the table with me and so learnt portion control

maybe look at the portions in your meals - if they are snacking so much do they need more filling meals?

But it is part of your grocery shopping, its part of the spend, doesnt really matter whether you get it with your weekly food shop or not, its all coming out of the kitty which is what OP is managing.

I wouldnt dream of getting anything like that from main supermarkets, we only get it from Aldi and Lidl, same with coffee and high cost items. Sometimes home bargains if I spot its cheaper but it isnt always.

These are bought in bulk at totally separate times. If money is tight then you don't buy your cleaning products from Sainsbury's.

These are bought from the discount stores.

I do get washing powder from Aldi though. Same with washing up liquid, but I buy 10-12 bottles at once so I don't have to think about it again for a long time.

I just treat these purchases totally separately from the weekly food spend.

It's probably a quirk of mine, but I find it helps.

I would also stop buying snacks like biscuits altogether. Even fruits for us are usually part of a meal (or part of a snack with yogurt or toast but not on their own).

I think it would come cheaper and simpler to stick to wholemeal toast with cheese, PB or other things like this. Or plain yogurt which can be bought in bulk, with fruits etc.
And maybe keep the treats for the weekend only?

When he was a teen, my brother used to make himself bowls of plain pasta with butter for snack 😂 He was eating so much!

Yes, it's true that we cook most things from scratch. Most meals are lentil or pulse based, or things like chunky veg curries/fajitas etc. I often batch cook to freeze too and we don't have too many snacks - some biscuits, toast works too, lots of simple fruit. I just can't get my head round people spending double this, but I do see that meat and fish add a lot I guess. And yes, we don't do much at all in terms of fake meat type meals - much prefer lentils to Quorn and can't stand all those veggie bacon, chicken etc type things - halloumi is so much nicer in a stir fry for eg.

Yes meat and fish are expensive and add to the cost, v just eating vegetables.

Agree cereal or toast is a good filler
dd will have a snack biscuit/fruit but if still asks for another I offer cereal

if she doesn’t fancy that then I say well not really hungry then …..

but the main issue with your list @toadstool32 is that 2 punnets of grapes /berries isn’t a lot for 3 kids /5 people

I do love tinned fruit as cheap and doesn’t go off. The peach slices I mentioned above are 39p I think in Aldi and nice.

pineapple or mandarins also cheap

That isn’t a lot for 5 people. Once everyone has had a banana, and a handful of other fruit then that’s all the fruit gone, for example.

I’d look at buying cheaper and healthier snacks and more of them. Buy 20 apples, 10 bananas, 20 x yoghurt, 4 x packs of rice cakes, 10 x mini choc bars for a treat (but everyone knows that once they’re gone, then that’s it). Also Weetabix maybe? I buy the off brand wheat biscuits and in Sains they’re £2ish for 48. If DC are moaning they’re really hungry they can have 2 weetabix and a banana.

You’re not buying enough food op. A family of five plus a dog and you only spend £100 some weeks isn’t enough. You might think it is but it obviously isn’t.

I make my own cakes, while flour is cheap, eggs and butter are not, and also dried fruit.

No washing up liquid? No laundry products? No soap? No window cleaners? No shower gel or shampoo?

These are what I would call cleaning products.

130£ is $242 here in Canada. I spend more like $250-$350 per week/10 days if I can stretch it. It's 2 adults and 2 kids under 4 in my home.

We have 3 dc and definitely focus our main fruit buying on apples, mandarines, bananas and oranges, and toast is a legitimate snack. I keep the individually wrapped stuff for ‘on the go’ between activities as the kids do a lot of sport. I am working full time but I do try hard to bake some snacks. You can freeze raw choc chip cookies and bake from frozen so I make a triple batch when I do those. The kids help so it’s family time :)

Family of 4 & I spend at least £150 on food. Most things bought come in packs of 4,5 or 6. To be fair to your family even if they had 1 item each that snack pack is gone in a day.

Good advice. Baking your own snacks such as muffins, brownies, fruit loafs is a cheaper way to provide treats/snacks.

Once you get into the swing of it, it doesn't take too much time. The kids can do it themselves too.

Spend less on cleaning products.

There's no cleaning product in my weekly shop.

Aldi and Lidl are cheaper, if you want to buy more food for the same amount of money.

Stop buying branded junk food and it brings the costs down too.

I’ve been told that apparently raisins are awful because they stick to the teeth. Crisps too as they cling, whereas chocolate will melt at body temperature and is more short lived. Generally though fruit is better than juice.

I’ve never worried about it. My kids often had something sweet as a snack during the day or after dinner. They brush their teeth morning and night and none have ever needed any fillings.

Don’t dentists recommend not finishing meals with sugar / sweet foods as it’s awful for teeth? I just offer seconds or cheese and biscuits after meals for that reason. Hot pudding on a Sunday usually but otherwise it just isn’t something we do. Maybe an ice lolly in summer but then worry and give a bit of cheese 😆

I dont understand this obsession with snacks!

I would provide more filling meals - including more protein in form of lentils and pulses and more veg, and extra courses if needed (see below).

Work out when the kids are hungry.

If they are hoovering up snacks when they get home from school, for example, try bringing dinner/tea forward or provide something like own-brand cereal and milk, toast (preferably wholemeal)with jam/peanut butter, oatcakes and cheese, or something home-baked. Home-made pancakes are easy and cheap as well as being lower in sugar (plus no added preservatives etc) and you can bake a batch and put them in the freezer then defrost in a minute ot two. Same goes for home-made cereal bars, muffins etc.

If they are hungry aftee the evening meal start giving a pudding if you don"t already - could be yoghurt and fruit, (maybe frozen fruit), fruit crumble (again, cheap and quick to make and you can use cheaper fruit like apples or frozen fruit to keep cost down). Consider serving soup as a first course.before what you would normally serve as main course. Substitute in things like wholegrain rice, pasta etc which are more filling (and healthier) than white varieties.

If they are still hungry after evening meal, give them own-brand cereal and milk, maybe with fruit like banana or apple added in, or a mug of hot chocolate.

If you are on a tight budget, don't feel that you need to buy lots of soft fruit - most of their five-a-day can come from vegetables, pulses etc in meals. Fruit can be cheaper fruit like apples and bananas and can be part of meal rather than snacks to make them go further. Frozen fruit or fruit tinned in fruit juice are just as good nutritionally as fresh. Consider growing some soft fruit in your garden if you have space. Most soft fruit is very easy to grow and after the initial outlay the fruit works out very cheap. Rhubarb, blackcurrants and raspberries are all pretty reliable and easy to grow to eat fresh or to make into puddings/muffins etc. If there are places nearby to pick wild fruit such as brambles/blackberries, raspberries etc, these are great fresh and also good for freezing and for making things like crumble and muffins.

The odd snack/treat is fine. I buy one sweet treat a week for each of my DC - one likes Oreos and one likes Mentos. If they eat them all on the day of the shopping, that means they have to wait a week for more! I sometimes also buy a pack of nice biscuits (whatever is on special offer) and we have ice cream as a pudding on Friday. However, the focus in our house is on healthy, filling meals at mealtimes.

Please dont feel.judged. Food is so expensive but there are ways of changing what you buy to make your budget go further.

Glad I'm not the only one!

You being vegan/ veggie will have a lot to do with it

Im old school ( as you can tell from my posts previously ) I learned to cook, I'm the sort that will open an empty fridge and pantry - and make something , because Im from the generation that had fuck all growing up and we ate what we were given - no choices - well two - eat or go hungry

You are probably the first generation ( maybe second ) in your family who are vegan?veggie - you had to learn to cook with vegetables and I bet most of your meals are pure plant based, not processed tofu and "meat replacements"

As I said previouslyy, we didn't have the snacks because most hand been invented and those that had been were beyond our price point

Veggie kids are growing up on processed meat replacements - not a friggling clue on how to cook real food

Thing is we have had 30 years of cheap fppd because of our Standing within the EU mostly , but also pretty much steady weather patterns

The past 10 years, the weather has be becoming more extreme, we flood, other countries burn, we left the buying power from the EU, Trump decided to add more fuel to the powder keg

You have to be earning big bucks to be able to shop with impunity at the moment

Meat will add a lot to the total, especially if it's pricier cuts, though even mince and basic gammon are getting more expensive these days.

Yes meat and fish costs

reading all the replies from veggies /vegans their cost is much less