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?

There's just no way I coul spend that much a month. And I'm an absolute cunt for the butter :grin:

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

Absolutely, Saz. This is why I avoid 'reality' TV - it sets people up as Aunt Sallies, often lying to them about the purpose of the show and then lying to the viewers about the subjects. It's really tempting to watch them and spend half an hour going "Gah! What loons! (I'm better than that!)" but I always hate myself afterwards, so I don't.

Doesn't stop me joining in vicariously on threads here, though ...

£75 on top of what they spend a week feeds all 7 of us for a month.

We eat really well as well so I couldn't see how they were spending so much.

There's always lots of fruit and vegetables included in what we eat and our 2DD's especiallly like the more pricey fruit,raspberries,mangoes,blueberries,pomegranate,pineapple and where as they were buying things like frozen kievs we buy fresh steak,salmon,whole smoked mackeral,we get through quite a bit of shellfish as well.

I wonder if alot of it is to do with the supermarket some of those familys are using.

What shocks me is that after they convert them to better, healthier and cheaper ways of doing it. They would still be spending £200 Per week on food, while buying supermarket own brands.

We are a family of 4 and don't spend anywhere near £200 per week.

The frying in EVOO tipped me over the edge. Why would you be using something expensive because you think its healthy without looking into it?

Whoops forgot to say we spend about £100 a week which includes the kids packed lunches. We work from home so don't buy lunch at work or anything and 99% of our food is made from scratch.

I spend £70 a week on an online shop for four of us. If I went to the supermarket I could spend more but with online I only buy what we need for the week. Then top up milk and bread as needed.

I buy microwave rice as I hate cooking it. I buy it on offer or supermarket own brand. It's brilliant! But dh and I share one. Didn't know mn had such an issue with micro rice!

The point with the micro rice was it was meant to be costing them loads.

Spending 200 for 5 adults isn't that outrageous imo, yes it's generous and could be cut but it will be more than people with young children. It depends on your lifestyle and what you eat. 329 I just don't believe that's what they were spending, as others have said you buy olive oil once every 3 months not weekly.....

I've spent 150 this week, but some of that is for entertaining. I usually spend 120 for 4 (including 2 young children, dh and I both wfh) but tbf that includes 3 bottles of wine which could obviously be cut. I also work 4 days per week, dh full time and I need it delivered for quality of life so can't use Aldi.

£60 a week for 2 adults and a 4yo here. Ds has cooked school lunches now but even before that we spent the same amount. I actually have no idea how a family could spend £17k per year on food - presumably loads gets wasted?

i would say my sister spends that on food a year.
They can afford it it, but, God, the waste! :(
She throws out bin bags full of meat, fish, veg, fruit.....heartbreaking.

I cannot resist chipping in with my iwn holier-than-thou pov, but I also find this program fascinating.

I spend around £100 at Lidl and £30-40 at Waitrose a week (2 adults 2 teens 1 dog cleaning stuff, beer and toiletries included).

For that we eat lamb, chicken, salmon, nice veg, lots of nice treats (olives, cheeses, cake, crisps), olive oil, fresh rolls, we eat really nice food for that. So I don't know how one could spend twice that!

cooking rice is so easy and quick (boil 6-7 minutes, drain, return to pan and leave for 10 minutes to steam dry).

Microwave rice seems bonkers to me

They were a lovely lovely family, very sweet with polite cooperative children. Mum had a cupboard full of fancy health foods. There was probably enough food in the house to feed them for two month so- they weren't,t actually eating £300+ each week.
They naively thought that eating well meant buying premium brands and neither adult knew how to cook.
Dad actually looked a bit food phobic to me. He seemed quite anxious.

I didn't see the program, but £325 per week doesn't sound impossible for a family of 4. If the kids are too big for free school dinners, and everyone buys lunch rather than makes it, that would be around £60 accounted for. Assuming you eat out a couple of nights, and spend £70 each time, that's maybe another £140. And maybe have Saturday brunch out for another £30. That leaves £95 for the supermarket shop.
Obviously, if they were struggling for money, then it would be very easy to cut that right down, but if not then it's their choice.

pourmeanotherglass £325 was spent on the supermarket shop alone.

Neither adult knew how to cook and they spent hours in the supermarket just bouncing around from one shiny branded product to the next saying 'ooo' and lobbing it in the trolley. At the end of the shop the only veg was two small packets of prechopped veg.

It was bizarre but prob not that unusual.

Oh, I saw this and I was just absolutely gobsmacked. I mean, it's not like they're even eating that well. I get the impression they're just eating a lot, and what they're eating is branded convenience food. What a waste.

The bit that had me shouting at the telly this week was the teenage girl saying something about not realising that eating vegetables was good for you on the inside.

There was a thread about this show before. I'm sure they overspent knowing that their receipts were being counted.

For what its worth I spend 300+ a week, but that is on organic and speciality ingredients. I like my raw chocolate,aramath, medial dates, vanilla pods, speciality mushrooms, perfectly ripe avocados, kale crisps. I'm under no illusion that I could switch to budget stuff and have a healthy diet for 50 a week

The boy lying about likingf rainbow chard was funny though.

Oh and if anyone else knows what it was, i remember greg saying something bloody stupid that i would expect a greengrocer to know better too, but i cant remember what now

Off topic, but Greg has gained all his weight back now by the looks of it. He must be wasting a lot of food.

He's so annoying, especially that fat dance he keeps doing.

A friend of mine spends that a week on food but all her fruit and veg is organic, her meat is grass fed and her fish is wild. She eats fantastically well.

What annoys me is the new improved total spend is still a shocking amount of money.

Yeah i thought that was funny too eedon and i was amazed at how quickly the veg phobic kids were transformed. I wonder if it was all staged.

We spend £4-5k a year on food, drink (soft drinks, wine and spirits), household stuff, nappies etc (stuff you buy at a supermarket) for 2 adults and a small child and I think we spend a lot! We eat very well and mostly cook from scratch.

Things that make it cheaper
We stock up on stuff like tinned tomatoes or baby wipes when there's a good offer. We buy short dated fruit to make into crumble or stewed fruit yo have with yoghurt or porridge. We buy as we need for meat and fish so throw very little out. We use leftovers - so we bought a short dated brisket which gets slow cooked and then the leftovers used for cottage pie. We both like to cook and we do all our own baking including bread

I do like Eat Well For Less. It makes me feel much better

Funny images of people eating wild fish now!!

Yeah the dcs on this show are always remarkably reasonable and compliant