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

Sometimes the cheaper ones are nicer, sometimes not as nice, but how on earth people can fail to taste the difference is beyond me.

Tinned tomatoes is one that's often cited. But with cheap tinned tomatoes you have to either simmer for ages or add tomato puree, and often need to add sugar or even bicarb to cut the acidity a bit.

£200 a week sounds a lot.
Only 4 of us in the house, but two adults and two teenagers who eat more than me.
I'm not careful about prices etc.. As such. We have meat everyday a well fish etc...
But we spend around £120 a week.

The big difference IMO is that we cook from scratch and never have anybody take aways. We rarely go out to the restaurant either.

Wow there really isn't any need for snobbery here. We all like different things and do things differently. It's a discussion. No need for insults. I actually really like tinned toms. And everyone makes spag bol differently I grate carrot into mine too.

Is this going to descend into one of those competitive how little the weekly shop costs threads, hope not.

Doesn't bolognese usually have meat (or a vegetarian protein eg pulses) in it?

I made bolognese the other day. Minced beef, carrots, onions, celery, tomatoes, garlic, dried oregano, fresh basil, olive oil. Parmesan to finish. Was quite cheap and cheerful, certainly cost less than £1 per head for 5 of us, even when you add in the cost of the pasta and salad that went with it.

If the sauce didn't have meat in it is there any point in cooking it all day in the slow cooker?

Not picking, just genuinely curious.

poppy you are not alone in pondering the powdered garlic... & the lack of meat too?

PS: We have a lot of love for our InstantPot and use both the pressure and slow cooker functions, but meat cooked from frozen is truly horrible.

We probably spend £150 of you include school lunches, coffees and sandwiches occasionally st work, takeaways every now and again, endless top up shops of blueberries and raspberries. Literally all food for all four of us inc cleaning stuff and cat.

I don't know how you spend £65, honestly. Anyway, we can afford £150 and we have a nice life and eat lovely food so meh

I agree with sparklingbrook everything tastes 'slow cookered' - as in all the same, sloppy overlooked veg turned to mush with some soft greasy meat!

To also add, I don't want to eat a slow cooker spag Bol on a hot day like this.

7 of us here , and I could easily spend £200 a week if I felt like it . But then that's essentially 5 adults and 2 tweens . If I go to our local butchers , then that's easily £60 of meat, say a duck , a chicken , a large piece of beef which is about £30 - 40 , but that's three meals catered for , plus mince and sausages . Easy . Plus about 70 on normal food shop , including toiletries , dishwasher and laundry stuff , including about 20 on fruit . £20 on large veg box , plus wine , local eggs and extra milk , and there you go . Just under the £200. . And that's mainly scratch cooking . If it's affordable , why not ? It's when it's not affordable there's a problem . And we have zero wasted here .

I ended up throwing my slow cooker in the bin as everything tastes the same in there gloopy, watery and flavourless. So I'm always surprised to see them recommend, I must have been doing something wrong!?

We spend far too much on food, going down to one wage soon so will be cutting back.

We spend about £80-£110 per week on everything - 4x packed lunches per day, all cleaning products, drinks etc. 2 adults, 2 teens who ea more than we do)

We are very happy with what we eat - mostly home-cooked, quite veg-heavy, puddings for high days and holidays - but it wouldn't suit everyone. As a general observation, i would say we eat much less meat than the norm (as flavouring mostly, so a pack of mince will do 3 meals) and we throw almost nothing away because I meal plan very tightly. But as that is our 'norm' it is easy, whereas for someone else to swap to our habits would be tricky IYSWIM?

DH and I don't stick to a food budget. We just go to the supermarket and buy what we feel like buying (mostly healthy unprocessed stuff).

And STILL, we would never manage to spend that much. NEVER. We average around £40 a week for both of us.

I reckon we could go down to £25/30 a week if we had to watch every penny!

Has the magical mumsnet chicken been mentioned yet?

Apparently it feeds a family of five for a month. If you include the nights where you boil the bones and grate them over a bowl of locally-sourced worms for extra protein. Or something

If I had the cash I think I could do that easily.

We have two adults and three kids (9,6,4), and in the summer an exchange student. Usually spend just under £100 a week, which includes a couple of beers, some treats and a decent fruit bowl for snacking.

There are 4 of us and we probably spend a bit more than £200 pw but we don't go out more than once in a blue moon so this figure includes our "entertainment budget" as it were i.e. wine and beer. We have the income to cover it so I don't see the problem. If we didn't have the income we wouldn't spend so much. I know plenty of people who would blow a head gasket at the thought of spending £200 pw but then they spend tons more than us on going out, cigarettes, foreign holidays, new cars etc which we don't view as a priority. I suppose what I'm trying to say is, you pick what you spend your money on.

We spend about £90 a week all in, 2 adults 2 kids and a dog.

Meat and dairy from one farm shop, fruit and veg from another. Groceries from wherever we are nearest to at the time.

If I run out of time, we do this shop at Aldis or Waitrose.

Slow cookers are really great for some things. Casseroles, pulled pork, curries etc. And it is really convenient to have it ready when you get home from work. But some things don't work as well as others unfortunately. I once managed to burn meatballs in a tomato sauce in mine

Great for making Christmas puddings though!

We spend a lot on food but confess I don't know how much . I know how to spend less there was a time I spent £50 a week for a family of four but confess I'm disorganised and hate doing meal planning and weekly shops. Tend to shop daily and just buy stuff according to what we all fancy on the day. Will often cook seperate meals for the kids too which probably is costly. I wish I could motivate myself to become organised with it all again.

I don't really keep count of what I spend but can easily spend around £20 a day rather than do one big shop. I do have 4 kids though and 3 of those are huge teenage boys so really it's like feeding 5 adults. The boys can go through a £1.50 pack of bagels as a snack in the evening !! Also the kids are fussy and don't like eating the same things that dh and I do so I will often cook 2 different meals which I know is not ideal. We also tend to buy quite a bit of bottled water and sports drinks for when the boys go to the gym and it all adds up. I'm really trying to be more conscious of not wasting food. I try to shop mostly at Lidl to keep costs down and get most of our bread reduced.

Bert I think I once mentioned a meal using chicken stock from said mythical chicken wasn't a meal. Ie if I threw an oxo cube into something I hadn't made a meal from it. I was wrong.

Who really cares what other people spend as long as you can afford your own shopping though OP?

I enjoy EWFL as I enjoy seeing the taste tests / what the families make of the cheaper alternatives without the packaging - we use a lot of the cheaper products in our household

This week is the first week after pay day so the biggest shop. £30 at butcher's had bought mince, chicken breasts and steak - enough for two weeks meals at least. £42 in Aldi for the bulk of the shopping, and then £45 in Asda for the things I can't get in Aldi including hair dye, face cream and dh's favourite beer.
For the next 3 weeks we will spend about £100 a week in total for 4 adults. I cook from scratch and work full time.

I had strangers commenting on my trolley this week - big DH, me and DC 8, 5, 2 who were not going to be at school/nursery being fed there, so 7x3x5=105 meals (also included snack stuff like chocolate biscuits) for about £105. The trolley was brimful.

But we buy almost all own-brand or value-brand, and only really getting name brands on offer. Swapping to branded and adding a trip to the baker's for nice bread a couple of times would easily take it to £200.

OP - we buy our cat food online which saves us a fortune. Our cats are fussy buggers who get stomach upsets on anything other than what they were first weaned on to.