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.

Yeah I did this for months at a time. Harder (but doable) with little mini fridge with only a tiny 'freezer' shelf - with normal fridge/freezer it's easy. As someone previously mentioned late night supermarket trips are the key. I learned what time the final price reductions were made at all my local shops and would go then. One small Sainsburys reduced items going out of date to 10p ten minutes before closing at 22.00! That was an absolute goldmine, but the others are also great. Basically I would stock up on packets of mince/sausages/chicken, etc for a few pence and then freeze it. Rest of budget spent on Iceland frozen veg and local market for £1 fruit/veg bowl (they usually do a bowl full of one kind of fruit or veg, but I asked them if they would do me a mixed one and that was never a problem). Before I had a proper fridge/freezer I would then spend the evening cooking up the packet(s) of meat I had bought in a few nice, simple meals, e.g. tray bakes, stews, etc and then portion everything up for meals for the week using my mini freezer shelf for the end of the week stuff.

Def got more than 5 a day.

We eat for a £1 a head most days and have done for years. I have to cook a lot from scratch, I have to source reduced foods, and we eat a lot of curries with the meat bulked out with veg, beans and pulses.

It makes meal planning essential but you also have to be flexible and be able to adapt to the ingredients you can get. You have to have a decent range of spices.
I used to buy the cheapest of everything - 30p bread, 80p sultanas, 40p flour, and buy in bulk whenever I could.
I can get a small chicken for £1.90 which gives 3x 6 - 8 oz portions of meat plus a litre of broth, so we have that once a week.
We eat a lot of beef mince because for some reason its often on special offer at my local supermarket. I have 3kg of 5% fat steak mince in the freezer atm which cost 80p a kg.
We have eggs once a week as a main meal, for example hard boiled in cauliflower & macaroni cheese, as an omelette, or cheese toasties.

I can make various pastry, dumplings and stodgy puddings from some flour, fat and brown sugar, with some dried fruit and food flavouring. Spotted dick, steamed pudding, or jam roly poly are all the same recipe tweaked a bit. Its also easy to make custard from custard powder, and you can add food flavouring and cocoa.

Our food budget has increased recently and things have got a lot easier. The main change to our diet has been to add more treats and fruit, and to upgrade some of the ingredients.
I used to use the cheap frozen chicken breast to make packed lunches, and we've recently upgraded that to fresh chicken breast.
I used to buy the 30p bread, its ok for bread pudding, bread sauce and toast but the more expensive bread is much nicer as a sandwich.

We don't have many leftovers and rarely throw food away.

Indian food like lentils, veg curries, rice and chappatis work out very cheap and you wouldn’t be nutritionally deficient.
Stews made with veg, beans and bone broth are good.
Most traditional or ‘peasant’ diets all around the world are quite cheap and nutritionally ok.

£1/head per day probably doable but no fun. You'd also need cash up front to bulk buy rice / pasta / tins.

A week and I'd be way over it tbh.

@Tonightstheteriyakichicken

Years' ago a MNer said she could get several family meals out of one cooked chicken, wish I could remember how.

Oh yes i remember this

@wishthiswasreallife

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

I can't even work out how that would come to £1 per day. Tuesday has chicken and duck mentioned, plus eggs. An egg would be at least 20p

Tesco has 15 eggs for £1.18 or 8p each, the cheapest bread is 36p.

Duck is expensive, I have no idea how it would fit into £1 a day unless it was bought reduced price.

I've no idea why people mock stretching out a chicken, it makes sense to not waste any of it.

A large chicken from Tesco is £3.50 which is 1.5 to 1.9kg, you would get 900g or more meat from that. That can make a lot of meals and the carcass can make some nutritious stock.

For a while, my supermarket shop was £30 a week including household items and toiletries and I managed to feed me and a teenager well on that.

So it's for £14 a week?

Eggs for breakfast
Homemade soup, bread, cheese for lunch. Whatever veg is on special.
Chilli and rice x 2 evenings
Chicken curry x 2 evenings with baguette
Sausage and mash, carrots x 2 evening
Beans on toast or frozen pizza the other night.

No alcohol. Full fat milk if you need to buy milk.

If I had cash left from that, I'd buy either a pack of biscuits for the kids or a jar of peanut butter.

I. E. £14 for 2 people

A few years ago Sainsbury's had 3 booklets with meal plans to feed a family of 4 for £50 for a week including a Sunday roast. Toast and jam or porridge for breakfast and a sandwich and carrot sticks for lunch. It also made use of a lot of frozen foods like big bags of frozen sausages and mince. That's still nearly £1.80 per person per day and food has gone up a lot since then.

We suddenly had a much more limited budget when I was a SAHM (but not £1 a day). Prior to that most food I bought was organic so food bills were huge.

Most of us are veggie which is cheaper if you're cooking from scratch but more expensive if you include ready made stuff like sausages or burgers.

An issue I found when planning a weekly menu is price and size variation. One week a cauliflower for £1.00 was the size of your head the next week the size of a fist!

Staples were

Breakfast - Porridge with sliced banana or basics wholemeal toast and marmite.

Lunch - Basics wholemeal sandwich - hummus/cheese/egg/tuna with cucumber and carrot sticks. Mini apple or satsuma. Homemade cake or flapjack. Or veg soup - clear as minestrone or blended as cream of/carrot and coriander soup.

Dinner -

Cauliflower, (spinach) and chickpea curry with rice then

Cauliflower macaroni cheese to finish the cauliflower.

The same Lentil mix used for spag bol /lasagne / cottage pie / stuffed peppers for variety.

Home made pizza with tomato sauce that was used the next day in a pasta bake.

Veg chilli with either rice /potato wedges / baked potato / wrapped in a tortilla.

Frozen sausages as either bangers and mash or toad in the hole with frozen peas.

Pea and parmesan risotto.

And an occasional Roast chicken for poor DH on a Sunday with the leftover breast in sandwiches and leg meat in the risotto later in the week. I was amazed that a whole chicken cost the same as a pack of two breasts.

We still eat the same things now just with posher bread and more varied fruit and salad which adds up.

@DayKay

Indian food like lentils, veg curries, rice and chappatis work out very cheap and you wouldn’t be nutritionally deficient. Stews made with veg, beans and bone broth are good. Most traditional or ‘peasant’ diets all around the world are quite cheap and nutritionally ok.

This is what we did. Or a huge pot of chilli made with 250g mince and the rest beans and vegetables, served with rice, that lasted two of us five days.

We had a fridge with a small freezer compartment and a stove top to cook on. I understand it would be more difficult in temporary accommodation.

Thanks for all the replies Iv been really interested readying them.

I mean Iv been in worse places where I haven't eaten (DD always fed) but had I planned better I would of been able to survive on this routine.

Sounds silly but it really really sounds like it needs a lot of planning,maths,etc to work it down to the last penny!My DD would struggle shes so fussy 😩

I personally don't buy it. I have teens and some of the suggestions are just not enough filling foods for them.
I would also worry about the quality of the food long term.

If you want to save money on food go veggy, use whole foods and cut out all the expensive processed crap. It's also a lot more filling so you need less. Giving you a healthier diet.

Why are people that don't need to do this giving this so much headspace? It's clearly a depressing and unhealthy way to live. 5 a day would mean we would all be pasty, spotty and unhealthy if we did it for any period of time.

It’s what’s known as a ‘conversation’ @Janevaljane. It doesn’t always have to be uplifting.

It only works if you cook in bulk, in which case it averages out to £1 per head rather than actually being a case of being able to buy the ingredients for a meal for £1.

So if you were cooking 5 portions of a hearty soup or lentil and veg casserole for £5 that's doable. If you only have 2 people to feed and £2 available you would struggle to buy the ingredients and cook them for £2 unless you get some end of day bargains in the supermarket.

One of the frustrating things I noticed more when I had to plan food shopping to the penny, was how often those cheap basic range items change prices. Asda used to be really bad at it. One week I'd be able to get everything I needed with my £7, next week I'd have needed £7.50 which I didn't have.

It only works if you cook in bulk, in which case it averages out to £1 per head rather than actually being a case of being able to buy the ingredients for a meal for £1.

I disagree. £1 per head would be fantastic, but £1 per day is completely doable. It’s very unhealthy, soul destroyingly boring, there’s no room for fussy eaters or allergies. But it’s entirely possible to have full bellies.

I don't know about today's prices, but when I was a single mother I did this, then again when DH was on a zero hours contract and I was just pulling in odd hours as a barmaid. We didn't know what we'd be earning from one week to the next.

Tesco at the time had a £25 basket minimum (still miss it) and I had a delivery saver pass which wasn't prohibitive.

So on a bad week I'd spend £25 but on a good week it'd be £35. I'd sit for an hour on Sunday evening and stock take the cupboards and meal plan. Not sure we were quite on £1 a day per head but for years it wasn't much more

Most things that are Tesco Value are fine, they actually just have less added sugar and salt, so the likes of pasta sauce were fine with an extra sprinkle of herbs and garlic.

Off the top of my head, we ate things like a basic pasta with frozen spinach and peas and value cream cheese added plus a 30p garlic baguette. Soup is cheap to make - I remember using a lot of celeriac at one point which was very cheap at the time. Cabbage, potatoes and bacon - Tesco did 7kg of spuds for I think £4. Cabbage is pennies, fry it up with an onion and bits of cooking bacon.
Root veg casserole topped with cheesy mash and breadcrumbs - again, swede and turnips are pennies
Sweetcorn fritters with green beans/salad
We always had a roast and made the chicken last - the reason why the Mumsnet chicken is seen as an exaggeration is because people want the equivalent of breast meat every day, but if you simply have less meat it's doable - a handful of chicken as an addition to pasta for example, boil up the carcass for stock.
Fruit cake and banana cake for snacks and lunchboxes. Rice pudding and apple crumble for puddings.

We live 20 miles from the supermarket and apart from the village shop and the Tesco deliveries had no access to wholesalers etc, no car either so no buying in bulk

Peppers stuffed with couscous and olives was another one that was cheaper than you'd think.
Lentil loaf with frozen veg and Yorkshire puds

My bible was Rose Elliott's Vegetarian Cookbook from the 80s. Lots of good family recipes for very cheap. We weren't wholly veggie but ate limited meat.

Value bread, cream cheese and cucumber for packed lunch sandwiches, pita, grated carrot and cheese ditto

DC ate better than many of the better off kids who were always bringing chocolate and crisps and prepackaged sandwiches to school.

When our finances improved, I rested on my laurels and became a bit overweight because I got lazy and we started eating far more meat. We all felt unhealthy and sluggish and have actually gone back to a moderated version of our previous poverty diet (soup and omelette nights made with veggie leftovers,no junky treats unless we bake them)

I wouldn't like to go back to it purely because although we are far from rich, it's obviously nicer to be able to buy the big punnets of blueberries for the DC without worrying too much and all that, but there's a lot of habits I've kept and certain things I won't pay for the branded product. If I had to go back and shop and eat like that again it would be a bit of a PITA but the absolute least of my worries. I'm fairly confident now in my abilities to make do and to live under a hen.

Tbh it pisses me off a bit on MN when people basically play the tiny violins and virtue signal over the thicko poor people and their cheap chicken nuggets and super noodles. Obviously there are people who eat absolute junk from dawn to dusk, but it's more complex than that, and there are plenty of poor people who are quite capable of making soup, roasting a chicken and boiling an egg, and take pride in doing so. Our manual jobs also meant we were fit and slim.

In fact the most unhealthy family I know were wealthy middle class- they had a different takeaway every night of the week. There was Chinese night, chippy night, Indian night, McDonald's night. A takeaway for a family of four around here will easily set you back £20- poor people can't afford that!

We tend to have very cheap meals because we bulk cook but we have a massive freezer. I don't know how anyone could live long term on £1 per person a day without the ability to buy in bulk to get savings and then have masses of storage. Well I suppose that or live off the exact same food every day which would limit your nutrition.

I’ve done it long term for £2 per head per day and I found that easy. Thankfully I was time rich as a sahm and that helps. I would also shop daily, that helps massively, and I have a large variety of shops available.

I’d be interested to see if I could get it under £1 a day. All the menus seem to be based on three meals per day but we generally eat two on average, so I suppose that might help.

There are sources of free food if you have the time to find them, like food growing wild. I’m lucky enough to be able to run a freezer and I’ve got stacks of free fruit in it at the moment. Will have less by spring. I’m also lucky enough to have the skills to preserve and cook what I find, so have plenty of jars of pickles and jams, jellies, chutneys too. Not free, because they have things added, but low cost.
Stuff like out of date food outlets are also good. But I imagine to make it interesting and sustainable you’d need a fair amount of staple resources (like spices) a fair amount of skill and expertise (foraging, cooking, preserving) and a well equipped space to cook, as well as space to store. And to be able to get to the places you needed to be, meaning being within walking distance. Hidden costs, shall we say, that make it very doable for one family and totally not for another.

It definitely doesn't need to be unhealthy. As I say, I did it for years and years and, tbh, I don't spend much more than that now.

We always got 5 a day at the very least, often double that, plenty protein from beans, lentils, peanut butter and cheese, limited sugar because I made all the snacks.

Obviously, if you're living off cheap frozen pizza and chips, then, yes, it's unhealthy, but it's very patronising to think that's how all poor people eat. I raised 5 children successfully to adulthood on the diet I outlined earlier.

I have been really inspired by this thread.

Today for lunch I made chilli, sweet potato and red lentil soup with coconut milk. I have not costed it out but it has made enough for at least 10 bowls (and more if you add more water and stock of course).

TBH I think i need to eat less meat, dairy and more pulses and fruit and veg (frozen and tinned are fine).

I could really do with cutting our food bill. And definitely our booze bill. So I might start giving all of that some serious thought.

Yes I could feed us all for £63 easily but would be very boring.