£100 on food a week for family of four

[Fruitteatime]

I know prices have gone up and I know we are fortunate to be able to afford this but does anyone else regularly spend this much on food a week? We rarely drink, maybe buy the equivalent of two bottles of wine a month but do buy organic dairy and fruit/veg when possible because I'm convinced it's healthier. I guess I'm looking for ways to cut down without compromising health as our monthly spending is starting to cut into our savings. I would like to know if anyone has a way of reliably predicting fruit and veg consumption for the week, I often get it wrong with too much!

I spent £63 today then a further £32 for 3 Gousto meals (got a voucher) for the 4 of us (all adults)

We're a family of 4 (but one's a baby!) and I struggle to get our weekly shop under £150 at the moment so I think £100/week is pretty good!

You can make a broccoli soup very simply by boiling broccoli in water and then blending it. Season to taste. You can do the same for most veg, though a small quantity of bouillon powder will boost the flavour - you don’t need to sweat veg for hours to make a soup. The bouillon powder will cost a couple of pounds but you only need a small amount and it will add all the seasoning you need. If you want you can blend a mixed veg soup, but if you leave it with chopped veg then add tomato purée and some broken up spaghetti or pasta (both cheap in the scheme of things) ten minutes from the end, it’ll be a minestrone, and more filling.

Cakes do, of course, need extra ingredients but these can be cheaper versions - Stork soft for baking is a good alternative to butter and keeps for a long time. Own brand flour is (relatively, given everything is going up) very cheap. Eggs are likely to be getting more expensive. But a fruit crumble can be topped with a small quantity of mixture made by rubbing fat into flour and adding a small amount of sugar. Oats are cheap and they make a lovely nutty and crispy addition to the crumble mix as well as bulking it out.

To turn left over or unused veggies into soup. In big pot fry onion&garlic, and chopped veggies and cook for a few minutes add stock (either ready made or cube) add in red lentils or drained canned beans, add some dried herbs. Simmer for 30 minutes or until dinner time which ever comes first

You use 30g mince per portion of spag bol? Jesus Christ. You know that's about the same weight as a Mars bar right?

I missed this. Spag bol, the new MN chicken

OP, £100 for a weeks shopping for four people is very very reasonable in today's climate. If you are genuinely feeding your family 1/16 of a pack of 500g mince for their dinner I would not suggest cutting back anymore. You must be absolutely starving

£100 a week on a food shop for 4 is not unreasonable really. Ours is similar. We don't buy organic but do usually include a bottle of wine.

Do you have a garage or shed or sonewhere to put a stand alone freezer? It will really repay you in terms of being a ie to use up leftovers and enable you to batch cook. Have a look at The Batch Lady on Instagram - she does weekly meAl plans costed out for Tesco and makes the point that if you double up and freeze the extra the additional week’s meals come to much lower cost.

re vitamins in organic food / I seem to remember learning in food and nutrition O level (yes I’m that old) that many vitamins leech out of veg while cooking anyway. If money is tight and you all eat a varied diet honestly the benefit of organic will probably be marginal.

ALWAYS check what you have in the fridge, fruit bowl and veg box before you go shopping.

Bloody hell definitely not starving! Me, my daughter and my husband are overweight actually. I suppose nowadays it does 3 meal times rather than 4, now that both children are older. It probably did 4 when the older one was under 3. I really bulk it out with courgette, carrots and tinned tomatoes, and sometimes mushrooms. We always have cheese on top and often a couple of pieces of garlic bread. No one goes hungry! I thought the idea was to eat less meat and someone told we only need one portion of red meat a week, so it's not different to eat one pasta meal with a full portion of mince and then one veggy pasta meal another night.

Thank you for the soup and crumble recipes. Now I just need to catch the produce before it goes off.

No absolutely no access to any outside space for a freezer. It could go in the lounge but theres not really a space to put it in that won't cause mould or that isn't next to a radiator. Plus it won't look attractive when we try to sell our place. The plan is to move at some point and really hope the new kitchen will have space for a proper fridge freezer!

We do the same with chicken fajitas. 3 chicken breasts does four meals for the four of us because we use lots of peppers and onions then eat in wraps with cheese and avocado and toddler ds eats very small portions. We generally eat quite well for the £100. It can include hygiene products, toilet roll and laundry/cleaning. We are slovenly and so cleaning stuff lasts a while and buy the biggest laundry products we can. Toilet roll I always buy quilted. So it's still around £100 with this stuff if I don't buy any extra treats like crisps, pastries or desserts, but then if I don't buy the the cleaning stuff and get treats it can still be £100. I think it's starting to be £100 every 5 days now it's summer so I thought something has gone astray but it sounds like it genuinely could be rising prices. When dd was young we budgeted around £50 a week for food but this didn't include non food items.

Ah god four chicken breasts does two meals for the four of us! I meant a meal each times 2

Does the £100 a week include all your household cleaning stuff as well?
If it does I think £100 a week is really good going.

I think it's getting closer to £115- £125 a week including cleaning stuff and since I've switched to shopping coming every 5 days. I wasn't sure if this was caused by me over buying food, and we do chuck a few items each week that have gone mouldy or that have been open a long time by the time the new shop needs to be crammed into our tiny fridge. I can see now some of it might be caused by price increases.

I think that's really good, we spend about £150 for 3 of us (+ 2 pets) I'd be really happy with £100!

I too think you're doing really well OP! We spend more than that on three adults, and we have a decent sized freezer which makes all the difference. However hard we try, most of us accidentally end up with a bit of waste. I hate it, but it happens!
There are all sorts of tips about for reducing spends (I used to bulk buy with 2 friends when our children were small)

£100 per week for a family of four is only £25 per person. Which is £3.50 per person, per day. That's hardly extortionate, especially when it includes cleaning products and toiletries as well as food.

If I was looking to save money, I'd stop buying organic and I certainly wouldn't be buying things like avocados!

Oops posted too soon! As you said you can afford it, carry on as you are! It's not you that's a spendthrift, it's that prices really have gone up

Think about the few items each week that you are throwing away. Could you consider not buying them each week? Or buying something different in their place. We had been really wasteful about bread and had been in a routine of buying the same things each week without thinking about when we would eat it but now buying much less.
I think your meal planning sounds really organised

Yes we spend £100 a week (at least). Lots of fruit and veg and not just cheap stuff - spring greens, raspberries, strawberries, spinach etc etc. plus we eat meat.

Really?

I used 500g mince for one spag Bol for the four of us. Maybe a tiny bit of waste but we definitely each have 100g a portion.

Thanks for starting this thread OP, I'm really interested in this. We're a family of 4, 2 adults and 2 primary age kids. Trying to keep spend around £100 per week to include everything, but top up shops seem inevitable. I like to do it online- I think it was the OP who said they have a delivery twice a week instead of one. I might try this! It's things like salad items and fruit I end up shopping for mid week, then buying other things we may not actually need...

I think £100 per week for a family of 4. We spend about £120 that but not including toiletries , loo roll, washing powder etc… because I tend to buy those somewhere cheaper and in bulk.

For wine I’d recommend an ‘introductory’ box at the times wine club, naked wines etc… You can stock up the wine rack cheaply and it lasts ages if you’re not a massive drinker. You can only do it once though and you need to remember to cancel but definitely worth it.