The great british menu - food poverty... AIBU?

[Bogeyface]

I hate myself for thinking this but, AIBU to think that Lady Whatsername who said in the 90's that the reason poor people couldnt manage on benefits was because they lacked the ability to cook good simple nutritious meals, may have had a point? The way she said it was totally U and she was very sneery, but I cant help thinking that there might be a grain of truth in it.

Of the three families I have just seen in this program I saw what 2 of them ate in a day. one was a mother and daughter who's only meal of the day was a microwave burger each costing £1 each, and the other was a family where the children had fish fingers or nuggets and oven chips, while the parents had tinned veg.

£14 per week that the first family spent is enough for a bag of baking potatoes, some basics pasta, baked beans, passatta, a pack of frozen sausages, a bag of porridge oats, some cheese, some sandwich meat such as Haslet from the deli counter (35p per 100g in my tesco) and milk. The DD would be getting free school meals if I heard correctly about her age and their income. Far healthier, more filling and more than one meal a day!

The second family, again, for the price of nuggets, fish fingers and oven chips they could make a spag bol using basics ingredients that would feed them all well.

RAther than focussing on the cost of food, which is only going to rise, surely it would be better to focus on educating people who eat badly because the food they choose is more expensive than cheaper, healthier alternatives that require a bit of cooking knowledge?

ICBINEG - this would be my list:

SALT
PEPPER
MIXED HERBS
STOCK CUBES
GARLIC GRANULES
PLAIN FLOUR
VEGETABLE OIL
WORCESTER SAUCE
WHITE SAUCE PACKETS
VINEGAR
JIF LEMON

Probably a few more as well

I,m no expert at cooking by any stretch of the imagination [got better when I had kids] but last week in asda there was a packet of pasta for 50p and a pasta sauce for 50p that could of fed a family of 4 and maybe some left over, but home bargains for example sell sauces and condiments extremely cheaply I agree markets are a very good sauce of cheap fresh food.

besides alwayscheerful if getting a half sack and splitting it between four happy friends and dragging it home on your kid's skateboard would 'cost no more than a small bag' then why bother?

Always - where can you buy rice by the sack?

As I said before, I have only about £1 a day per person to feed my family. Admittedly, it's easier to do it for 7 rather than 2. I also have a key meter for electric and a card meter for gas. it's not the fridge or freezer (if you have them) that eat the electricity, it's the washing machine, the oven and then all the multiple other things like computer, kettle, iron etc that get used often throughout the day. The worst culprit is a tumble drier, I don't have one for this very reason - I can't afford to run one.

If you find cheap, meals which you can cook on the hob in 15 or 20 minutes, it doesn't take much electricity or effort. Things like pasta with onions, mushy pea soup, omelette, chilli beans and rice. I don't drive, I don't live within walking distance of any shops and the bus fares are a fortune, but luckily we manage to get shopping once a week. I get mine delivered because Asda does midweek delivery for far less than it would cost me to actually go there and back - but you can only do that if you have over £25 to spend on food. It's a lot harder to manage when I can't do this.

I have a meal plan for 2 that costs just under £14 for a week that gives 3 meals a day. There isn't any fruit and you only get maybe 3 of the 5 a day, but it would fill stomachs and give some nutrition and at this level that's the most important thing.

20 kg of top quality basmati cost me £16 from an ethnic shop after I bought it I saw half a sack of cheaper rice in tesco on offer for £6, ordinary rice not basmati, mine will last me a year and I have given quite a lot away.

The ethnic isle in Tesco is much cheaper than the ordinary rice and pasta isle, I will check the prices online.

halal grocer shops luis - middle eastern or pakistani - i had a lovely rice from one of those, really good quality.

Should have said my project is v recent, inspired by this thread but if I am honest also partly by Big Brother's basics when the shopping task has been lost

People HAVE lost the knowledge of how to cook. My Mother in law says we need another war. While I don't agree with most of what she says anyway, and certainly not that we really need to fight with anyone, there is a point to be made: needs must.

Dhal is about the cheapest thing you can make for a family; I feed 4 for about £1.50. There are ways....

But that's still not cheaper than the 40p a kilo value rice, and if you don't have the money to lay out in the first place then you can't buy it anyway.

I would love to live in a place that had access to ethnic shops. I'm always reading on here about how cheap they are. The nearest Tesco did away with it's world foods aisle ages ago and Asda has never had one. I don't think that there is much demand around here for that sort of thing - I wish there was.

regarding chicken fillets as opposed to whole chickens you can buy a bag of frozen chicken fillets [smart price asda ] for under a fiver and they have about seven decent sizes fillets in them these would make several meals as opposed to one with a whole chicken two at a push

Thanks luis (sorry I can't tell from context - are you actually in the position where that would help you, or are you hypothesizing?)

Anyone else have a list of things that would make their future shopping cheaper?

Burberryqueen, - because 4 people would each have 5 kg of basmati for £4 or 5kg of ordinary long grain for £2.50, and if each person collected one item, the effort and or cost of collection is shared, so division of labour if you like.

It's good to have a store cupboard you can make a pudding with milk and a cardomon pod! Dare I mention the cardomon pod.

I realise You can buy broken grains of value basmati at tesco for 70p a kilo, some of you may say why bother?

I am sure there are Asian cash and carry type places which supply rice much cheaper but I am aware of the value of time and petrol and shoe leather.

stressed you aren't in the NE are you by any chance?

always cheerful as someone else pointed out value rice in the supermarket is 40p per kilo - no offence but this demand for basmati rice is v MC and would not even cross some peoples minds who are on a budget.
anyone who was that bothered about basmati would probably have a four wheel drive and a holiday home in cornwall . (half joking before anyone starts howling outrage at me!)

For me, doing an online delivery is cheaper than using the supermarkets. There's more supermarket own brand.

ICBINEG, no, I'm on the West coast of Scotland, not unutterably far from Expat I believe, but across the water.

Totem, yes, it's much cheaper for me to do an online Asda, as long as I'm careful when I get it delivered. it costs £3 on a weekday afternoon as opposed to the over £10 that it would cost me to actually go there and back.

I know that the 40p value rice isn't very nice and I would buy basmati if I could, but when you are trying to feed folk on as little money as I am, especially when some of your kids are grown and the others are pre-teens and teens, it's more about filling folk up with a reasonable level of nutrition than anything else.

Appreciate basmati is not the best example, but I don't buy rice very often as mine will last more than a year and I don't have room to store several sacks!

I just called a local Indian shop 25kg of ordinary white rice for £6 i think thats 24p a kilo if my maths is right, yes Asda everyday value is 40p a kg so it is probably the cheapest supermarket rice, but there is still a saving in buying a sack and it is a good feeling to know you have a back up store cupboard.

No doubt there are cheaper sacks around in places like Bradford and leicester but I don't have access to them and I hear that's what you are all saying about transport.

that is a brilliant bargain always....

Yes I totally agree about on line shopping you can play about with your basket of food and take advantage of the special offers and you are not tempted by junk food,the delivery is cheaper than transport but I do miss the yellow stickers.

ICBINEG I have been very close to running out of all on my list and even closer to using a food bank. I am just about scraping by at the m

When I was 18 (in the early nineties) I worked at a company fifty miles from home in a gap year. The wages were just enough for the rent at my landlady's place within walking distance of the office, plus food, a few beers with friends at Karate class and Irish Dancing and travel home once every six weeks. (A car would have been too expensive.) I was so glad my Mum had taught me lots of recipes to see me through that year.

I would make a spag bol one night, followed by a chilli the following night with the left-over spag bol... you get the drift. That time has set me up for life for coping with a limited budget.

The kitchen I was using was well-equipped which helped a lot. I also remember using savings to stock-pile certain things and my family gave me a lot of stuff (not money) to set me up as well.

For young people that have no savings, or back-up I think something should be done to help get them started as independent adults. Otherwise their income will never be enough to meet the costs of even the most efficient expenditure on food. Personally, I think this is a far more pressing issue for the Government to tackle than the one of banging on about school packed lunches being bad.

Sorry, moment. Last month I ran out of stock cubes which had quite an effect on budget cooking - cottage pie and the like. Have now restocked a bit but have good understanding of how it is possible to have bare cupboards.

Like on the programme I have been down to a few pence in my account, in fact most weeks really.

My list would be what I would use but I'm guessing quite typical for many people.

Up thread I mentioned a 'cook-in' because if you can't buy in bulk (common if weekly paid) I wondered about getting a group together to buy larger quantities. Have no idea if it could work in practice though.

I do feel that all these are great ideas on this thread but also have the sinking feeling that its a sticking plaster rather than a solution. Not that I could properly define a solution of course.

I think this thread is in danger of becoming the Rice and Chicken Thread [grin[

Oh pants