So, how much should food cost?

[LondonCheesecake]

Following on from a thread in AIBU about the cost of food, it's got me thinking, how much should food cost? I understand very well how it feels to be paying out a large-ish sum of money every week and that the cost of the weekly shop has risen significantly recently but what is a reasonable cost?

People seem to think that food for 4 people for a week should be around £60 but that's £15 each, a touch over £2 a day. This isn't a thread asking can you feed 4 people for £60 (pretty sure you can but quality, and possibly quantity won't be great) it's a genuine question as to how much people think is reasonable to spend. Likewise, people spending £300 on 2 people blows my mind, that's over £21 a day each! So, if you had an an extra £200 given to you for your weekly food budget, would you spend it all on food or would you feel that you were spending more than necessary?

I would expect it to cost a similar percentage of my income each year rather than have a specific number in mind.

Reality is we have had it good over here for many years in terms of the price of food, this is partly why wages have stagnated and why we have remained a low wage economy, so now they have risen to be more comparable with a lot of similar countries but wages havent people are feeling the bite. I think some people forget the supply chain, labour and logistics involved in nicely packaged foods in supermarkets.

I think what I mean is £2 is approx 10 minutes work on minimum wage. Is it right to work 10 minutes for a day's food? Feels a bit low to me if I'm honest

£10 per person per day
on average

In the UK we spend a very low proportion of our income on food, and it appears to be a race to the bottom in terms of quality.

It is a tricky discussion as many people are struggling with the cost of living however the need to buy the cheapest food drives quality down along with cost.

A most difficult conundrum as I would argue that we should spend more for better quality food, however I can't afford to.

Home made food

obviously eating out/bought lunch you then pay for more labour

as you do with ready meas etc

This is daft. A kg of potatoes costs the same whether you earn 20k per year or 20k per month.

I’d say that £5 for main evening mean then £2.50 for lunch and breakfast for 2 adults and two under 10’s is reasonable so £70 a week but that doesn’t include household cleaning items, loo roll, toiletries or baby items, nor alcohol. Typically we spend £70 a week but just 2 of us and that includes household cleaning items and basic toiletries plus a bottle of wine

Depends whether people want food security in UK and decent quality food, or just cheap food. If people want good quality food then you have to pay UK farmers a fair price.

We have got used to eating cheap, poor quality food. I think we forget that the price of food is dependent on a lot of different factors, especially the weather.

I live outside the UK and spend around 200€ per week for four (Monday to Thursday) or five (at weekends ) adult sized people (three of whom are older teenagers, all taller than me). I cook from scratch and everyone has all their main meals from the ingredients (some taken to work etc). There are no such thing as school meals and nobody buys lunch at work except Ds1 occasionally (maybe two or three times per month).

When my mum visits from the States she is astonished at how cheap our food is. I take her food shopping and have her guess what the total will be. The actual amount will be like £130 and she will guess £250. A bag of carrots where she lives costs $5, here 70p, for example.

And she says the food here tastes so much better, although that will surprise nobody. It’s quite funny because something like hummus needs to be eaten within a few days but in the States, my mum says she buys hummus and it lasts a month after opening! Far fewer preservatives here. We don’t have it so bad.

Food isn’t expensive in the UK. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you disagree, I have a suggestion: Try France.

Last weekend I went to M&S to buy chicken. 3 whole legs were £1.50. At M&S, for goodness sake. That is ridiculously cheap.

The problem is that many people buy highly processed convenience food, which is expensive, rather than buying raw ingredients which are cheap & cooking from scratch. If people did that, they would find that it’s still perfectly possible to spend around £5 per person per day on food. Or to put it another way, a bit more than the price of a single coffee from Costa.

I spend about £120/150 a week for three of us, two teenagers so not toddler portions. That feels about right, we eat good quality home made food, it allows for some fresh fruit and veg, topped up by frozen, some treats and snacks. I’m able to pay more for quality meat with decent welfare standards. Not living in luxury but eating good, nutritious food.

You might find this interesting, scroll down to ‘Average food costs per week’.

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-uk-household-cost-food#week