Can you really feed your family for £1 a day?

[wishthiswasreallife]

I'm on a social media page where they advise people how to feed their families for £1 per day with handy tips,pictures,recipes etc and people add their advice.It just came to me when I was going through the page is that really possible?I meant it's just me and DD but she is so so fussy I really doubt I could feed us both for £1 a day!can you do it?im always looking for ways to save money as it's very tight at the minute and genuinely would try if it was possible!Very boring topic but I'm really interested to find out if it's possible.

I remember joining a FB page for this. She used to do a month's worth of food planning iirc

boogenese is clearly a new dish. And not very enticing.

(I need to change my glasses).

From a health point of view bulking with lentils is also good. Or skip the mince altogether and have lentil spag Bol!

Anyone else care to suggest a menu?

I haven't done the actual sums, but we eat very cheaply & well - we have to as neither of us have worked much since March, didn't get furloughed & no government funding I usually spend £40 on weekly shop at Aldi for 5 people (2 adults, DSes are 11,9,6), but can be as little as £30 or up to £50 on a very expensive week.

I shop at Aldi & use cheapest products. I go to Tesco at 7pm once a fortnight & stock up on yellow label bargains (pack of sausages for 30p, mince for 50p, loaves of bread for 15p etc). My boys will eat absolutely anything, which helps. We also have lots of tomatoes growing in the garden which go for soup, pasta sauce, salads etc & my mum gives us the odd item from her veg garden eg a pepper last weekend. The boys all take packed lunches.

It's not fun watching every penny, but it is not unpleasant either. We still have food treats, which I make most of. Don't have to worry about shoes as have been given loads which get passed down through the boys

£1 per person should be doable. £1 total would be possible but not very good for anyone. We work at around £3 per person per day but could probably skimp if we wanted to.

I used to be able to feed us for 1.67 per person per day. Vegetarian/ vegan, including 30 portions of fruit and veg between three per day due to medical conditions. Now, not a chance. . Everything has increased in price. Oh and it relied on averaging out over several weeks so not much good if you start with nowt and can't bulk buy offers to spread the cost.

There was a fascinating article in National Geographic a few years back about food poverty in the US - shed some light for me on how some people in the grip of this can end up relying on cheap take-out with no nutritional value because they're too exhausted/depressed/clueless to try and cook cheap scratch meals. It was such a sad piece and would be worth a read for anyone struggling to understand why people bulk family meals out with cheap ingredients.

To do it I think you would have to have a lot of money To buy every ingredient you need for the whole months and plan every meal down to even snacks.

This house is often heat or eat or has been in recent months and slowly getting better so I really wouldn't knock lentils in Bolognese etc if it meant I could get a hot filling meal into my DD.Iv seen me go without 3 meals just so DD can be full,warm and happy at all times and I wouldn't think twice about skipping eating if she needed new school shoes or something.It's not as bad now but it's sacrifices Iv taken in the past and would do again in a heartbeat if needed.

My local supermarkets never seem to reduce yellow stickers by much. It’s normally a pack of meat reduced from £3.95 to £3.25

£1 per person might be doable with very careful planning and portion control and not very exciting meals.. I have fed 80 people for a weekend on £500. Friday evening meal to Sunday lunch so 2 days and works out about £3 per person per day. That was for cooked breakfast plus cereal and juice, packed lunch, fruit and cake available for snacks, cooked dinner and pudding and supper of hot choc and biscuits and fruit.
Thinking about it you would have to get rid of the best parts of the menu (reduce fruit, no salad with dinner, no cooked breakfast etc) in order to get down to £1 per person ,

I think it'd be possible if you had a large (due to economies of scale) non fussy family but it'd be really repetitive.

I would cook like my nonna, variations of minestrone most nights!

Variations of minestrone sound gorgeously tasty and healthy and slimming and perfect actually.

Jam sandwiches, pasta with tomato sauce and salad cream sandwiches

I joined one of the fb groups once but got kicked out because I queried the amount of food in a lunchbox(it was a tiny amount of food for a teenage boy, think a sandwich made with 1 slice of bread). It is possible to eat cheaply but i think having to stick to £1. - day for a long period of time would be very draining.

I'd love a daily menu plan. £4 a day for my family....genuinely not sure it is doiable. But we are big fans of tinned fruit so that might stretch things.

Hmm, I'm finding this thread really interesting. I've been fortunate enough never to have to feed us for £1 per day. I'm not much of a cook, so if I really had to, our menu would look something like this:

Breakfast - porridge oats with whole milk (40p for 2 portions including cost of milk), small cup of milk for DS (probably around 15p), share a banana or an apple (15p). So we're already at 70p just for breakfast.

Lunch - 2 fish fingers each (12p per fish finger so 48p in total), small can of baked beans (24p) plus some frozen peas (15p). 72p

Dinner - with only 53p left, it would have to be something really cheap like eggs (8p an egg so 24p for four eggs) on toast (you can get an 18 slice loaf for 45p so 5p for 2 slices). So that's 29p. That leaves 24p. I'd probably let DS have a slice of cheese (5p) and a value fromage frais (7p) before he went to bed to stop him feeling hungry. Total 41p for dinner.

For snacks we could then afford one slice of toast (15p) and one piece of (cheap) fruit between the two of us. That would bring it to half a penny over £2.

Personally, I'd have to massively reduce DS's milk consumption to fit within the budget, change where I shopped and the brands I bought and we'd be eating 4 portions of fruit and vegetables a day rather than 7. It also wouldn't look very appetising. I've realised how much I rely on being able to pick up a nice piece of meat or a ready-prepared salad to have food that appeals to us .

Hmm, finding this thread really interesting...We spend too much on food here (especially snacks). Also, I'm not much of a cook... Here's how I'd feed DS and I on £2 per day...

Breakfast - porridge oats (40p

No, of course not. Not even in the UK, where food is ridiculously cheap.

Sorry, double post .

This is in the group as a rolling 8 week menu

im not in any way being rude or slating the group just showing an example

Once, when I was a student, I had spent all my grant. So I lived on Tesco Value white bread & marg, and cups of tea for a week. I ended up with horrendous constipation!

Looks blurry now Iv listed but it wasn't before!!

Meals that work out at a cost of £1 per head based on portions etc are not the same as only having £1 to spend her head.

What an interesting thread.

I am fortunate that I’ve never had to even consider feeding us for so little but I imagine it can be done if you were savvy and knew how to cook the basics I.e pasta sauce ( unfortunately not everyone has those skills)

I mean pasta is very cheap, baked beans, chopped tomatoes, porridge oats, jam and bread can be purchased for very little. The bbc website also has a section for £1 meals, more for students I think but obviously anyone could cook and eat it. Not saying it would be the most tasty food, or the most balanced with vitamins but you would have food.

To the poster with the why bulk out comment...well news flash some people don’t earn much and have to make money go further. I can afford not to bulk out but often do then we have the leftovers for lunch the next day. Nothing wrong with a bit of bulking!

I am always a little sceptical with these budgets TBH! Yes you could probably feed them ,but how well nutritonally and will they eat it? I am trying to lose a little weight ATM. And porridge is always rolled out as a healthy breakfast ,however I cannot eat that much in the mornings! Maybe eggs and beans as PP above said would be better .