To wonder if people actually spend 200+ on a weekly shop

[pleasemothermay1]

Watching eat well for less and I just can't believe people actually spend 200+ a week on a food shop

One lady was giving a teen 20 a week to get chips and chicken 😟

We have 6 in our family

One baby
One toddler
One teen
Me and hubby
And a cat

I spend £65 a week including nappies and toiletries

This gose up to £90 during holidays and the teen is eating at home not collage

It's mad what are these people feeding there kids

My children have breakfast lunch and dinner I don't encourage grazing all day they can have fruit in between meals and I cook from sctrach pretty much 5 days a week junk on a Saturday then roast on a Sunday

I use a lot of frozen/chopped veg. I have a chronic illness that means food prep is really hard, so to be able to knock up a tomato sauce without needing to chop stuff for example is a real lifechanger. Definitely worth the extra cost :)

I used to spend over £150 a week just for myself :) It was great. I'm on benefits now, and spend half my income on food. It's not what everyone would do but it's important to me. I sacrifice other things.

Mind you, I've never watched this programme but all the threads about it seem to say people are spending it on pizzas & ready meals. You could easily burn £200 or more doing that, if you're buying better quality ones. If they need to cut back they'll either have to get their ready meals from Aldi or learn to cook.

How on earth can you spend 65 pounds on a weekly shop And that includes nappies and wipes!!! I'm not being vascious I am genuinely interested.

I honestly don't know how much I spend on a weekly shop. I visit sainsburys maybe twice a week, marks and Spencer's once (we don't have waitrose here) I would say easily 3-500 (including our meals out) per week. 4 of us plus baby. I don't meal plan because, really, I don't have the time nor the inclination. We eat out approx twice per week. I'm a SAHM for the next few years at least. Food and drinks is not something we scrimp on.

I have not read the whole thread but please tell me the 12 meals from one mince pack is a joke. If not then I feel sorry for you. I really do

I have a chronic illness that means food prep is really hard

Me, too, Cagliostro! I sometimes have a fridge full of fresh food, waiting to be cooked for the freezer, and then I can't. I end up throwing it all away and eating ham sandwiches all week.

I must be one of the few Mumsnetters trying to train myself to buy more ready meals.

*Today 01:37 Alasalas2

I am watching the Welsh family now. All I want to do is go round to clean,
declutter their house and shove vegetables in their mouths.
I can't believe how appalling their diets are. Nice family though. Lovely view from their dining room. To die for*

They enjoyed the ready prepared soup so much that I decided to buy some and all I can assume is that they've never had homemade soup in their life.

The ready made stuff was just a bowl of nothing.

Problem with threads like this are the "we can easily spend 200 plus a week" then go on to say wine, cider, bbq stuff yada yada

Alchol and entertainment is not essential, therefore not a weekly grocery bill.

2 here and never below 100. Sometimes can be closer to 200- mainly on the weeks when toiletries, detergents etc.

Jeez 🙄 when did grocery shopping become so competitive...

I think what goes wrong with slow cooker meals is that people can be inclined to just chuck things in and walk away which in my opinion is why the food tastes bland snd you can end up not knowing what you're eating.

I use mine about twice a month and I always start things off on top of the stove. If you take care of the food prior to it going in the slow cooker the end result is very different to a meal that's just been chucked in from the start.

Is there anyone else besides me who doesn't get the Waitrose love?

Shopped there a few times and to be honest, most of the food with the Waitrose food is rank and the named brands are the same you get in Sainsbury.

Also, not nearly as exciting, but the Waitrose own brand cleaning products were among some of the worst Which haa ever tested.

So I've never seen the point... What am I not getting (or not buying).

Thanks

A lot of it is down to ready meals and preprepared foods versus preparing it yourself. Take something like Hunters Chicken - takes no time to prepare it yourself and the portions are more generous than the ready prepared portions for a lot less money. Personally I'd rather spend the five minutes to prepare it but some people can't be bothered or don't have the confidence to cook even though I picked something very easy as an example.

Snack food is also very expensive compatatively speaking -but if you are eating three proper meals a day - you shouldn't need to snack much if at all.

*food with the Waitrose label

I don't get Waitrose either- the only benefit I see to shopping there is that they are a partnership rather than a PLC so socially is potentially more benificial

Trafalgar - but as someone with, compared to others on here, a very high shopping bill, I hardly ever buy ready meals. We eat loads of stir fry in our house - quick and easy and everyone can make their own. For that I like good quality chicken, steak and prawns. I also make a fish pie most weeks. I've made it with fish from morrisons, sainsburys and asda - none of it is as nice as the fish from marks (in my opinion) so that's where I buy it so it's not cheap. To feed 5 people, 4 of whom are very active/sporty, I probably spend about £15-20 on fish. Add in the potatoes and enough fresh green veg - must be pushing £25.

Spending a lot on food doesn't always equate to buying loads of ready prepared stuff.

We easily spend about £220 a week. We are a family of 4 - dh and I, dd aged 13 and ds aged 4. We don't drink alcohol or smoke at all and ds has severe asd and learning disabilities so we are busy being carers a lot of the time (when dh isn't at work, I'm at home) so eating is the one thing dh and I really enjoy and we love to snack! Probably very unhealthy and all that but neither of us are hugely overweight and in the grand scheme of things having once "vice" isn't so terrible.

I think there is this weird thing on mumsnet about spending as little as you can on the food shop otherwise you are wasting money but if you can afford it does it matter? The same site has people spending £200 ish on a dress in the style and beauty section which I wouldn't dream of doing! I guess we are all different.

For us the bulk of our shopping spend comes from the fact dh and I don't like the same meats / meals so I tend to end up cooking two separate lots of things most nights. For example I will have two curries on the go - one with lamb and one with veg or just chicken as I hate lamb and it's his favourite and he won't eat chicken etc. Dd eats some of each. Ds has a very restrictive diet and literally lives on pasta, bread and cheese which is quite common for children with asd (he sees a dietician and has prescribed supplements).

I do also spend a lot on brand name cleaning products, snacks like crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks for dh (dd doesn't like them anyway which is a bonus!) and I enjoy lots of fresh bread and cake etc. We do eat healthy meals at night, it's all the extra stuff mainly!

If our income suddenly dropped the last thing we would cut back on would be food. We have had some very low income times where dh has been off sick and we have been on income support and we have managed on less but when we don't have to we really enjoy spending more on a big food shop.

Can't stand carrots and celery in a slag Bol!

Onions, actual garlic, peppers, mushrooms and courgette gets chucked in on this house.

Completely missed the point of the thread! 😄

Approx £160/180 a week for dh, me and 9mo ds and 5 cats. No alcohol in that. I cook from scratch. We don't have to budget so we don't. I'm obsessed with cleaning products. Use Pampers nappies and Huggies wipes. No formula as I'm at still bfing. We have nice steaks, land shanks, fillet strips etc. I was once in the position where I had to chose between buying food, putting petrol in the car to get to work or paying my council tax. That was shit. I'm glad I'm not in that position any more. I love a bargain but I don't need them

I've spent £47 on a sainsburys shop, this should do us apx 10 days and I will top it up prob on Thursday with fresh bread & milk so less than £50 in 10 days. There is me , 2 x DC (7 & 9) and 2 fussy cats who love chicken. I used to spend hundreds and I mean hundreds on shopping but now I meal and snack plan and bought a slow cooker my life is way cheaper! I cook all from scratch as ready meals pump the costs up, I get a lot more out of a whole chicken / veg/ pack mince etc ....quite pleased with myself to be honest at the amount we are saving and really kids don't even seem to notice the lack of 'crap' in the sweetie box they prefer watermelon /mango pineapple etc now...result!

How much do you need to earn for £200 pw to be acceptable ? We earn about £150k, but the food bill is very rarely more than £100. We don't eat a huge amount of meat ( 2-3 times a week) and convinience food no more than once, but this is for health not budgetary reasons. There is nothing very healthy about having red meat every night. I find £200 pw shocking over a year that's £2,000 more than we spend- which is a family holiday or an awful lot of new clothes- just how wealthy do you need to be that that doesn't matter to you ?

You don't have to be super wealthy to afford £200 ish a week. Just prioritise differently. Our household income is way, way, way below £150k!

Stillwishihadabs. I don't think it's about earnings, it's about priorities. Also are you catering for a family of four or for two?

A family with £150,000 coming in might have far less disposal income (mortagages, nursery fees, leased cars, etc.) than a family with £60,000 coming in.

As I've said before we like good food and probably that comes to about £200 pw, including wine and beer (8 cans, 2 bottles), cleaning and toiletry stuff. It doesn't include mine and DH's lunch.

We don't have "luxury" food every night either, one night is always what I call a cheap night (egg, chips, beans or omelette), one night is always an easy night (Fridays which is Sainsburys Indian or Chinese or Fish & Chips) and there is always a "pasta" night (spag bol, carbonara, etc). But we also tend to have good meat at the weekends, salmon fillets or steak with a stir fry during the week, etc.

It really isn't a case of let's see how much I can waste at all but neither do I skimp.

In the uni holidays I cater for DS (21), DD (18) still at school, missed a year, DH and me. Today DS has a couple of friends coming who will eat with us this evening - we were going to have a chicken with new potatoes and salad, so I'll probably get a leg of lamb instead and serve it with a huge Greek Salad and small mountain of new potatoes ................and half a ton of strawberries with vanilla icecream and flake.

Do you know how much young me of 21 eat?

So what do you get for your "extra" £2000 pa which is worth more to you than a (nothin perhaps)family holiday ? Really interested as I have a bit of a disconnect here.

We have 2 adults and ds (12) and dd (9) . I grant you I am not feeding several young men, which would obviously cost more, your meal sounds like something we would have, probably only one meal with a lump of meat like that though, other meals would be less meat heavy ( omelet, risotto, home made pizza).

Those with teenagers, especially boys will have huge food bills, if DS(23) lived at home, I'm sure ours would nearly double. When he stays with us for s few days the amount of extra food I have to buy seems massive.

Also thanks to the posters who said the good things about the slow cooker

We spend up to £200 a week. We do 2-3 shops a week as otherwise we simply couldn't fit it all in the fridge freezer. I don't think that's bad considering there are 11 of us in our house and a dog. 3 of the kids (2 teens and 1 very tall, big built, almost 11 year old ds) eat as much as me too. That's doing online shopping at tesco and sometimes ocado depending on what we want.