To think that £17,000 a year on food is obscene

[ChillySundays]

Watching 'Eat well for less' on i player. The family are spending £17,000 a year on food. I'd quite like to earn that. The bloke is saying about saving them £100 a week - my food bill is that a week (4 adults) never mind saving it.

What is really getting my goat is the mother laughing about how little fruit and veg the family eat. Surely most people would be embarrassed whatever the reason was.

Am I being incredibly judgey?

The researchers add up their receipts over a given period. It is crazy but watching it makes me feel very virtuous and also very very sad that cookery/ home economics is no longer compulsory at school. My kids were taught how to prepare and dress expensive salads which they brought home - for me to throw out as they had 'cooked the leaves in the vinegar- tropical fruit salad at around £7.50 a go and fruit scones! Thank god for Sophie Grigson and Jamie Oliver whose books they worked through with me to learn! They all peel and chop and make meals from scratch.

What I found annoying was that the food the family was given as swaps, that they said they would keep, was from at least five different places (on the labels we spotted Tesco, Asda, Sainsbos, Morrison's and Aldi).

Dh and I have been debating this. I don't even understand how it's possible to spend £325 a week just on food.

I just really, really, don't get it. We don't particularly scrimp on food...we eat a fair amount of meat and buy nice cuts. A good few branded items. Some 'luxury' and convenience items which are more pricey. It probably averages to around £140 a week i'd say for a family of four, which I've always thought of as a lot.

I don't even know how we could possibly more than double that unless we were having an absolute banquet every night for dinner. Even if we ramped up everything we bought to the most expensive brand - we still wouldn't get to that amount.

I'm only saying this because a lot of posters don't know how it's possible to spend that much on food, it is definitely possible.
Only 2 of us and we spend around the same amount not including eating out.

You spend £325 a week on food for two people?

How? Just...how?

can cheap museli taste like a premium brand?

Alpen's shite Most value muesli's way better! Read the % of fruit & nuts on the packet, you'll be converted.

125g of meat's nowhere near enough for me. I know this because I'm on a nail-scraping budget this week, so had half a 250g pack of mince as today's animal protein. Not enough. I am all weak & wimpy.
Some people are just more carnivorous than others ...

I did laugh at the smart price stuff. I was all 'but she shops at morrisons'

I don't believe for one minute that it's possible to spend over 300 quid on food alone for 2 people unless you're 60 stone between you!

To be honest, we spend that amount (but including wine, toiletries, pet food).

There are 4 or 6 of us (depending on whose home) and we mostly cook from scratch, large amounts of fresh veg, berries, locally produced meat, wild fish - much of it Organic. We are very aware how expensive our food choices are.

We bulk buy what we can (Costco is great!), batch cook, freeze (two large freezers), so I feel the money is well spent on good healthy stuff.

That family wasn't just spending a lot of money, they were wasting most of it on junk food and a good bit of it ending up in the bin I think.

CatMilk, I could easily spend it as well. When I could have afforded too, I didn't - although, thinking about it, my weekly shop was sometimes £150 which would be about the same today. The reasons I didn't were [a] I ate out several times a week, and [b] I'm an habitual bargain-hunter. But I'm a foodie at heart, and sometimes feel very sad that price now has to come before everything. It's lovely to be able to feed yourself what you want :)

TV producers are getting paid to teach people how not to spend £7 on microwave rice?

Surely a programme called 'Eat well for less' should start from a normal level and assist ordinary families trying to save money and eat healthily ! (I have not seen it)

Ok: how do you spend £45 a day feeding 2 people at home on a routine day?

Thinking about it, it includes breakfast and coffee for me 4 times a week and we do entertain so not always for 2 people.

I'm cooking for 6 on Sunday and that's got to be £200+

Cat - is that including your wine bill?

If we added what we spend on wine, we would I think be pushing £300 per week for 4 of us. 2 adults and 2 young children.
I am at home, the DSs have packed lunches and DH is at home for lunch more than 50% of the time.
We never buy coffee out, we always have it at home but buy our own roasted beans and use those which is expensive although much cheaper than Starbucks.
We eat salmon once a week, always have a roast on a Sunday and buy locally reared meat when we can which can be £20-25 just for the joint.

We can afford it so I don't see the issue, mostly it is cooked from scratch, we use very few processed things.

Agree, obscene. What was worse was the mock surprise at how much they spend.Really?
Any fool can add up a few supermarket visits at the end of each week!

i have a family of 4 and we eat well, cook from scratch, make packed lunches and it costs around £85 per week. I shop at Aldi, don't buy brands and don't drink much.

I've only seen the first two episodes of this series but it seems to me that it's more extreme than the last series - more about families who spend a lot on crap, because it makes better TV. I thought the last series was a bit more about helping ordinary families save money.

If I had that much to spend on food I'd be buying organic steak and lobster, not 60 packets of crisps and ready meals.

The butter/marg thing made steam come out of my ears! I wasn't impressed by the advice on use by/sell by/best before dates either (episode 2 I think). A lot of the stuff she was throwing away because it was out of date was veg - why didn't they explain the extreme unlikelihood of getting sick from eating broccoli a day after its best-before date?

I dunno. I never used to know the price of things like milk and bread, which shocked people on tighter budgets (like me now!) The only reason I remember my weekly shop was sometimes £150 is because that was above my vague mental idea of what my shop cost - it didn't normally register.

I'm not knocking it, either. It is lovely to be able to feed yourself what you want. Strangely enough, that's less likely to make you fat, as well. When you can always have what you want, there's no sense of deprivation so little urge to 'fill up', as it were.

I agree mountain so much money on beige food! Also, the advice that tinned fish is exactly the same nutritionally as fresh. I do use some tinned fish but not much as it usually has salt added!

I didn't really understand where the money was going, looking at their typical menus. The kind of stuff they were eating was what I'd probably be looking at if I was on a budget at the end of the month: boring, beige stuff to fill up the family without going into the red. If they were ordering hand-carved baby vegetables from Harrods I could have seen where it was being spent. I have a lot less money these days than when I used to do my weekly shop in Waitrose then top up at M&S, and it didn't come to half of £17,000 a year.

Series like this always seem to head toward being edited to show the "Victorian freak show" of people who are at extreme ends of the scale....They don't have a £300-per-week budget of people who have the "aspirational" shop featuring organic, locally reared, deli, seafood, brilliant cheeses, etc. And never ever those who eat properly 90% of the time and sometimes have a treat, who could be helped to save some cash, without trekking around 15 different shops.

And likely not the people as they are, but edited for "impact".

Yep it's insane.

It is quite scary how much it adds up to though. DD and I often share the little pots of pomegranate seeds and the fresh chunks of coconut (those two things are some of the very few that I'm happy to pay for convenience rather than the faff of doing it myself) - but if I got them both each week, that's £104 a year just on those two things. Depressing that I'd have to work about 13hrs in my day job or give 11 piano lessons just to cover those two things. Similar with stuff like the naice chocolate croissants we get for a treat breakfast... no longer get them with every weekly shop as it just gets to crazy money when you look long term. I dread to think how much we spend on snacky stuff, we don't always get crisps and chocolate but when we do it's often say 2 for £4 and stuff so that must add up to a horrible amount!

I am rubbish at adding up while I go round the supermarket, all common sense goes out the window, so I often get a nasty shock when I get to the till. I do our regular shopping online and it's a lot easier.

Love watching EWFL, going to watch it on iplayer tomorrow. Guilty pleasure as I just shout at the telly

Chilly just buy a rice cooker you will soon save the money not using pouches.

Gosh if we had that budget for the weel we would eat out every meal, and still have change. Saves on the washing up too!!

Two adults, two cats, a little child and a baby. We spend around 100pw inc nappies and formula.