to be shocked at the price of chicken these days

[holdyourown]

it's so expensive compared to what it used to be! It's very hard for people to afford to eat well now. That's all

Well, you can eat extremely well without chicken .

Ldll...

it's so expensive compared to what it used to be so are lots of things!

but I'd rather eat well reared quality chicken once a fortnight than cheap rubbish pumped full of water and chemicals every other day.

you can live healthily even on a tight budget and there are countless threads on here full of advice and recipes.

I'm more shocked at the size

They're bloody tiny now. What's labelled as a 'large' chicken would have been small to medium a few years ago.

Meat is murder.

YABU

Depends how far you go back in your comparison. When I was a kid, chicken was relatively expensive, we didn't have it often. Factory farming made it shockingly cheap. What price an animal's life?

And murder is bloody delicious .

I hear you OP. Like the poster above we eat chicken less often now but will spend £10-£15 on a very good quality bird.

I still haven't found out where MNers buy these magic chickens that feed a family of four for a week though . A large chicken does one meal here with possibly enough leftovers for one sandwich .

Really? A family sized chicken is one of the 3 for £10 meat deals in Morrisons and Tesco, and if you want free range, they are £5 in Aldi. Both sound cheap to me

I'm shocked how cheap they are.

£5 for a free range one in Aldi. Shouldn't be eating non free range anyway.

And shouldn't be eating something as special as chicken more than once a week.

It's a whole animal for a fiver.

Agree with Errol.

As somebody who rears egg-laying hens and table chicken (for my own freezer), I can tell you that supermarket chicken is bloody cheap! Food, housing, slaughter, plucking and gutting when done my way are massively expensive and time-consuming. You should thank your lucky stars that the process of rearing chickens commercially has been so streamlined and economised to enable oven ready chicken to be sold in a supermarket for £5 or sometimes even less! My jaw drops when I go in Lidl and see free range chicken for those prices.

Agree bunny. With my anaemia (on tablets but need iron from diet too) i could never be veggie plus i enjoy the taste. I find chicken cheap meat compared to others. Those 3 for 10 pounds deals means you get a huge chicken which can last 2-3 meals. Just wish fish was cheaper....

Agree with ERroll & Laurie

Cross posted with Laurie - you are so right!!

Those 'family' sized chickens in those deals are really only a small chicken with a medium label on it though. On Ocado they are cheap but about 300g smaller as well.

Lidl do seem to be the best on this. £2.96 I paid a few weeks ago for a medium bird. As is buying thighs in bulk over whole chickens.

In those 3 for £10 look through as some chickens are heavier than others....

A medium chicken (1.5kg) is on Ocado right now for £2.62!

A live chicken cost less, you could alway buy a live chicken and kill, gut and skin it your self.

I disagree. They're very cheap compared to what they used to be, but those cheap chickens are disgustingly cruelly reared. A relatively "kindly" reared chicken will cost closer to £8, but as Erroll said - what cost an animal's life?

Plenty of ways to eat healthily and cheaply without chicken, although I agree it's nice to have.

When I was growing up (1970s, middle-class family) chicken was a special-occasion thing - it only became a cheap, everyday sort of food with factory farming, overuse of antibiotics and all sorts of other unsavoury stuff. No one needs to eat chicken (I don't, I'm vegetarian now).

I spend £8 on a large chicken from Tesco and get three meals each for DP but I can imagine it wouldn't go very far if you have kids.

I don't mind the cost but I HATE when I'm looking for some breasts (hur hur) in Tesco and they're really unevenly cut, so there's a massive one and a tiny sliver. Guess who gets that one for dinner...

If you are going to buy cheap chicken could you please buy it from the Co Op? They have higher welfare standards than most.

meat should be expensive, surely, to ensure decent animal welfare.

You can eat perfectly well without buying cheap nasty meat - better, in fact.

If it costs twice as much buy it half as often.

Are they more expensive because welfare standards have been raised? If so then I think that's absolutely fair enough, if however it's just Tesco whacking their prices up and still shafting the farmers then i agree, the prices have shot up and because if it we now rarely eat chicken.

Our co-op have really good chickens for £5 and are often £4 on offer. If I go in at 6pm when they are reducing goods I can often pick one or two up for £1 each. It makes a good cheap meal.