to ask for an explanation of supermarket snobbery?

[elfsmamma]

I am British but I have lived abroad for the last 5 years, when I lived in the UK I had a pretty demanding job so I did my shopping in the nearest supermarket.

I am staying with my parents over Christmas, me and dp wanted to go shopping for tge ingredients for a couple of meals and also some pyjamas as I had forgotten to pack mine.

There is an ASDA and a Sainsburys both about a 5 minute drive from my parent's house I suggested we went to ASDA as it is bigger and more likely to have pyjamas.

My mum said "oh god, don't go to ASDA, it's terribly depressing" she went on to justify this by saying the food was crap and the other shoppers were rude, people often had trolleies full of junk and whinging kids. I am not sure how the other shoppers are anything to do with my dm. Dm finished off by saying she prefers to spend an extra 20 pounds a week on her shopping at Sainsburys.

We went to ASDA despite the warnings. It was great, we got a huge fresh salmon for 4 pounds a kg, fresh dill, organic new potatoes, pasta and the ingredients to make bolognese, some good wine and lots of fresh fruit.

Cab someone explain supermarket snobbery to me?

Ohhhh, you're one of thoooose.

Actually killing myself that you can't see when something is written as a piss take, and when something is written seriously.

Tbf the chav reference maybe a bit offensive, but accurate

Because if ethics matter to you re meat you'd be at sainos not asda every time

Some of the people here with chips on their shoulders clearly need to pick up dictionaries.

sugarhut It took me a while to get used to shopping in Aldi, but know I do the majority of my shopping in there. Agreed ,there is not an enormous range ,like Morrisons, but what they have is good, and a good price. It encourages you to cook from scratch rather than have everything pre-packed. I love it there now.
There are a number of brands creeping in, anyway.(Marmite,Kellogs cornflakes, oxo cubes, Warburtons farmhouse loaf (only £1.05!!!!) to name a few.)

Am I right in thinking that those who say that waitrose and sainsburys are not much more (if at all) expensive than other shops, buy branded (ie the most expensive) items wherever they shop?

I tend to flit between brands, depending on the product and how flush I feel that week. Which unfortunately leads me to tesco to shop, as I feel it has the widest choice re prices. I hate the business though :(

jam I have been told by others to persevere with it, but I just can't see how you get everything you need in there...unless my Aldi is terribly tiny compared to most. Which is possible. It's maybe the size of two tennis courts?

I do cook from scratch, but I use a website that give me 5 recipes per week, all the ingredients I need to buy for those recipes on one list, and I literally couldn't get a third of the things on the list, none of which were particularly exotic. I came out muttering, well, like Mutley and ended up having to go to my usual haunt to pick up the shortfall. But definitely agree, what I did buy was very good value.

Love M&S and will buy at least 2 meals a week from them. But FAR too expensive for a weekly shop no jealousy here at all

Just because I'm poor doesn't mean I'm rude and nasty to people. In fact I go out of my way to try and be nice. Granted, I often get it wrong but I don't push people out of the way, shout and swear at people in the supermarket. I'm always pretty well covered as I wouldn't want to give anyone the boak. I may not qualify as a proper human being but that doesn't make me a nasty bully.

The key to shopping in a budget supermarket is to adapt recipes or create your own based on the ingredients you can get. I never follow a recipe blindly because of this.

No I don't quite get everything: I get Heinz tomato ketchup and Plenty Strong kitchen roll and more unusual things in Tesco or Morrisons. But the basics ( and some not so basic) things are from Aldi. They have their little booklet every week, so you know what is coming up in the "seasonal" and "specials" aisle,so sometimes you can stock up on the more unusual things then, if they are having an Italian/Chinese/Indian/French/German week etc.

Oh and our Aldi isn't much bigger than the one you describe!!!

You don't have to be rich to shop at local shops. We have a fabulous green grocer who is much cheaper than supermarkets with better quality. I buy my meat from the local butchers, fruit and veg from green grocer and bread from the local cafés/bakeries. Supermarkets for stuff like milk and other essentials.

Depends on the local shops. [winks] Our local butcher only sells premium Organic meat....it's not something many people could buy on a regular basis, it makes Waitrose prices seem very reasonable.

Butchers? Greengrocers? Cafe? None of those in our village!

We were even without a bakers for a while, when Peters went bust.

We have a great butchers in ours. The meat is so local I can see the animals it will come from by looking out my window. However it's twice the price of Lidl so we can't afford to shop there regularly. The deli closed about 10years ago (may actually be longer) the fishmongers also closed. There is a shop that purports to be a greengrocers but it's expensive and the fruit and beg are often quite literally rotten.

I buy my meat from the local butchers like grumpy and we can see the animals where the meat comes from in the fields. It is expensive but the quality is fantastic so I just buy and eat less meat. It really is much nicer - the pork tastes like pork and I can't eat a supermarket steak as it is just so tasteless. (that goes for more or less all of them with the exception of waitrose because there isn't one near us). Supermarket mince - even the low fat stuff- has 3 times the amount of fat I get from skimming the butchers £4 per lb mince...and it creates much less food packaging waste.

yy to butchers. I like being able to buy 300g if I want it rather than being limited to the shop's own sizes. And only a butcher chicken can do more than one meal, MN-style.

Oh, and because we are near the coast, we have a fish van that comes round on a Thursday but I haven't used it. I can't eat fish and DD1 doesn't like it (except in batter ), so only occasionally buy for DP and DD2 and recently apparently a Fruit & Veg van but I've never managed to catch it. The local farms have shops too, good for things like big bags of carrots and pots and eggs but don't go that way often and strawberries and raspberries in the summer (although we usually do pick your own).
So glad I don't live in London anymore!

I do a mixture of Morrison's (organic milk and brands). Lidl for fruit, veg, cereal pasta, bread (multiseed farmhouse is 99p) butter and local butcher. Can't stand the f&v in Asda or Tesco and the meat is v poor quality. If money was no object might do it all at Waitrose, but reckon it would double the food bill (currently £60-80pw).

Btw I am as middle class as it is possible to be. My mate who does a weekly Ocado shop hasn't been abroad for 3 years (and I know their income/outgoings are v. Similar to ours) whereas we have 2 foreign holidays a year. £50 (an estimate a of our savings, actually I reckon it's more like £70 as I don't buy coffees out and DH and I both take lunch) week is £2500 a year.

I live in London, albeit in a villagey area. We also have a fish van that comes down from Grimsby once a week. As well as our great local shops we also have a monthly farmers market. We are very lucky.

Oh yes eggs from a farm £1:50 a dozen per week.

I suppose I'd warn visitors off our local Tesco, which is dark, depressing, has hardly any fruit or veg and charges a fortune for parking. Not that I object to Tesco any more than I have a nagging objection to most supermarkets (though Tesco aren't exactly beacons of ethics) but it depends on the local shop. Ours is terrible, to the extent I've never been able to buy apples or oranges there because 'we don't stock that sort of thing'.

???

I do shop at Waitrose and TBH if you buy the essentials range it's about evens with Tesco (and they sell exotic things like apples too)

went to a Waitrose for the forst time last year. The way my my mother had blethered on about it you'd think the floors were solid gold and each trolley came with a complimentary manservant.

It looked like a bog standard supermarket but with extortionate prices.

Sounds about right ComposHat. I occasionally shop at sainsburys, M&S or waitrose if it's on my way, but otherwise Asda delivers my food at home. No food snobbery here.