AIBU to be confused when people say it's cheaper to cook from scratch?

[Blueskiesandcherrypies]

(Sorry another 'weekly food shop post'....)

I just don't think it is! I struggle to get our weekly food shop below £140pw. That's for me, DH, ds9, dd7 and dd1 (and soon to be newborn ds). We all love our food, though I tear my hair out every week planning meals everyone will enjoy rather than refuse and sulk about tolerate, and cook from scratch (just things like spag Bol, curry, carbonara, puff pastry 'pizza', roasts...) but I often think blimey if I could just chuck a few ready meals in the trolley and loads of bits from the frozen section (burgers, nuggets, kievs!!) we'd be quids in! But then we wouldn't be eating so healthily and I wouldn't know exactly what we're all putting in our mouths.

Weekly food shop includes packed lunches, loads of fruit for snacks, cat food, household bits, nappies.... but not alcohol, that comes out of DH's 'own' pocket rather than our joint account even if it's wine for me. We never have leftovers so can't stretch a meal over 2 days (DCs have growing appetites).

I am green with envy when I see people saying they can feed a family of four for £50 a week! Just....how?!

And ok, before you ask, I have been shopping at ocado lately but I haven't seen a huge price diff than when I used sainsburys.

Please help me see where I'm going wrong!

Feel free to throw your premium Ocado plum tomatoes at me... but I'm one of the annoying people who has learned to manage of under £50pw and claims still to be doing it healthily. In the interests of full disclosure, we're all veggie and DCs are 4 and 2 but I'm also feeding an additional 1-2 adult family members 3-4 nights a week.

How I've done it

• Aldi and Asda Smartprice. Waaaay cheaper than Waitrose, Sainsburys, Tesco, Morrissons
• A few more carbs and a bit less cheese than I'd prefer.
• Plenty of pulses, legumes etc. You'll not be constipated, at least.
• Seasonal fruit and veg
• Trying to shop whenever the close-to-sell-by-date stuff gets reduced. I got a whole bag full of aubergines for 12p the other week, and four tubs of fresh pineapple chunks for 40p. I made the aubergines into large amounts of moussaka and froze them and OK yeah I just scoffed the lot of the pineapple
• Trying to resist the marketing hype. A few spoonfuls of plain yoghurt must be healthier than a diddy pot of luminous Peppa Pig fromage frais, anyway
• Baking my own treats. I'll still never quite managed not to burn a tray of flapjacks, but we're getting there. And homemade pizza can be really fun
• Challenging my own prejudices. For a long time I wouldn't buy value peanut butter because I assumed it would be full of added rubbish. Once I compared the label with the branded stuff, I realised there's really not much difference.

What's paleo/primal and what are your theories behind ODDD? Can you cook for a fiver? A main meal needs to be around 500 calories to sustain someone who has been working or at school all day, how would you provide four of those for a fiver every night on a paleo/primal diet?

If you buy fish in supermarkets it's better to buy it frozen because they normally sell defrosted in their fish section. Prawns etc are much cheaper frozen in specialist Chinese hypermarkets. Legumes and nuts are much cheaper in "ethnic" shops such as Turkish ones. If you go meat light (no more than 2 days a week) it reduces the bill as well. I think cost of cooked from scratch meals goes up because you can't help but start thinking about what you put in your dishes and go for healthier/fresher ingredients. My weekly supermarket bill goes up if I have to restock cleaning products so I am considering natural ways of cleaning as soda bicarbonate, vinegar etc are much cheaper.

Op try meat free instead of whole organic chickens.
You will save money.

horsetowater are you sure you need 500 calories per meal. I have tracked mine and it's 300-400 calories only. I eat 3 meals and morning/afternoon snack of also about 300-400 calories. So at most 1600 a day. There is no way I can eat 500 in one go. I have been the same size since I'm an adult so I'm not on a diet.

I think those eating 500 are over eating imho.

We have 800 calories for our dinner. I would be hungry on less. So would DH. I need 2000-2400 calories a day.

I've been to the grocery store today after doing a week food plan and making everything from scratch. $285!!! That's for 6 of us, but still! I didn't even plan anything particularly fancy AND that didn't include any loo roll, cleaning supplies etc as I get them in a monthly Costco shop or from the local Mrs Greens.

That said, I'm really determined to get our family's diet back to having as little processed food as possible. It was easier when they were all younger and not as vocal about their likes and dislikes!

400 calories is a 'diet' meal.

300-400 calories is very little.

Ie this eve we had salmon fillet, with. Creamed spinach, broad beans and asparagus.

According to 'google'
Salmon 150g - 350 calories
Creamed Spinach 100g - 143
Broad beans - 88
Asparagus - 20
= 602 calories.

That was an average meal but if anything half other main meals are more not less calories

One boiled egg is 155 calories. So my 2 year old who ate x2 boiled eggs, a few spoons of garlic buttered mushrooms and some grilled tomatoes for breakfast must have 500 calories most mornings just at breakfast ( he's not huge btw)

Onelittletoddlererror.

How can you say with certainty that whoever eats more than you is overeating?

Ludicrous!

For example, I am 6ft1, and do 1-2 hours exercise a day.

My colorific needs far exceed those of the average female ( or even male).

Great that you found what works for you but I get so tired of people assuming we all have identical calorific needs....

soundevenfruity Turkish shops are great! The quality of the fruit and veg in turkish food shops is far superior to any other supermarket IMO.

The turkish fruit and veg near me looks completely unnatural and forced. Lettuce the size of footballs, cherries the size of tangerines, etc. Like something out of a scifi. It also tends to be placed right next to the really busy road and at toddler sneezing / nose-picking height.

When I was on the alternate day fasting diet I was using 100cals of milk per day and 400cals in a meal in the evening and I must say I found that most of our family meals were coming to around that 400 mark if I had less of the carbs. But it is a fairly conservative number of calories to take in for the main meal.

I think I only mentioned it because I wanted to understand what this paleo thing was all about and whether you could provide the actual nutrition for the same cost within that diet.

I don't think meat is THAT expensive, it's how you use it. Most of the supermarkets do 3 packs of meat for £10. Example I'd get sausages, 750grams of mince and 400grams of chicken breasts. (That's from Sainsburys) the 750 of mince would do two meals here, half for spag bol bulked out with onions which are 18 pence each then the other half for cottage pie again bulked out with carrots, onion. So that's four meals of meat for the week, the other 3 we fill with pizza night (there is always pizza on offer, just be prepared to change brands) pasta and soup night. All nights apart from pizza and soup we have vegetables, the other two days we just eat more fruit etc

I shop at Aldi and spend 50 quid a week for 4 of us with a 20 pound top up mid week at farmfoods.I've recently discovered farmfoods and get a big sack of potatoes for 2 quid and bags of frozen veg,we go through tons of veg and it was costing us a fortune so switched to frozen and it's just as tasty.Definitely do a jacket potato night,we also do an omlette night,it's all about keeping the cost down!!

Just wanted to add that 50 pound shop at Aldi includes nappies,wipes and toiletries.I won't ever go back to shopping at the bigger supermarkets it's disgusting the prices they charge.

Paleo/primal/clean eating healthy eating are all pretty much the same. It's how we always ate until people started eating junk. I think it can be as cheap as chips. It could be 100% vegan if you prefer. It could be 100% meat. It's up to the person and their budget. It could be foraged in forests although not everyone lives in the country or can grow their own of course. It could be roadkill, fish you catch, berries you pick, mushrooms. It really doesn't have to cost much to eat a healthy diet.

Eggs 13p each where I buy them.

My main meal today was a tin of tuna in a pan with some veg. I have not really costed it out but I would be surprised if it had to be any more expensive than junk food. I don't find nuts very expensive.

I worked out that we spend approx 25 quid a week ON YOGURTS

That;'s quite a lot. I just saw a very one sided ad. A chap boiling himself an egg for breakfast (nothing healthier really) and then some junk food sugar full additives product drink probably by Kelloggs is suggested as being much healthier. No wonder the nation is getting iller and iller and fatter and fatter when they turn away from real food to eat junk.

If you were eating 500 cals at each meal that would be 1500 cals a day, that's not much is it? Not enough for some surely?

A boiled egg is about 80 calories btw.

As you were

I think we eat really quite healthily. I have three children all heavily into sport. They eat pancakes at breakfast (homemade mix) made with 2 eggs, toast and wholefood peanut butter, sometimes baked beans, slice of banana cake, sometimes bacon, porridge, Greek yogurt, fruit. Cereal is porridge and sometimes weetabix.

To those saying 400 calories in a meal is a diet portion. I have used my fitness pal before to work out my meal sizes. And it can also calculate calories needed to maintain weight.

Using this online calculator (first one on google), I need the following to maintain weight

1373 if sedentary
1573 if light active (1-3 times exercise a week)
1733 if moderately active (exercise 3-5 times a day)

So I do know I'm not on a diet portion. (Besides not feeling hungry)

And also I do take in another 300-400 calories in snack. I eat both a morning and an afternoon snack.

The calorie calculator used www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html