To be shocked at the rising price of food?

[AbsentmindedWoman]

I do a fair bit of my grocery shopping at Aldi and Lidl, but dip into all the big stores very regularly as well for certain items I like when they are on offer to stock up, and also for yellow sticker bargains.

My bill has gone up by about a quarter in the last six months or so for the same products. Aldi and Lidl don't seem all that cheap anymore - although to be fair I don't know what doing my 'main' shop at Sainsbury's or Tesco or Morrisons.

I'm a little shocked at just how quickly the prices are going up. I knew they were going to rise but kind of expected a much more gradual increase. Silly me.

Has anyone else felt like this? Or does anyone else feel alarmed at not knowing when prices will level out and slow down?

And not everyone has a garden or allotment! I would be hard-pressed to support a family of 5 on what I could grow on a windowsill....

For the love of vegetation, are people actually suggesting that 60 million people can be self sufficient with a few thousand hectares of allotments?

Your diet would be as restricted as those in the so called 'third world' if you decided to live off the land.

Next up:

AIBU to suggest that ration books are a great idea?

For the love of vegetation, are people actually suggesting that 60 million people can be self sufficient with a few thousand hectares of allotments

I don't think so. We grow quite a lot of fruit, vegetables and cereals on farms in the UK too, plus all those salad crops etc in giant glasshouses.

I do sometimes wonder if I could survive in a post apocalypse (aka Brexit) type scenario.

I think with co-operation with a few neighbours, one of us could turn our garden over to fruit trees, with a few pigs living beneath. One of us concentrate on breeding rabbits in the garage (hmm: what will they eat? and more to the point, what will the pigs eat...I will have a think about that) and a chicken run with lots of laying hens. Then someone else has an intense allotment with legumes, green leafy veg, root veg. Green beans, peas and tomatoes can grow up the fence. Everyone can have window boxes for salad. Is there some sort of vine I can grow over the roof?

Can we cultivate edible snails? If things get really bad?

Could we all cultivate mushrooms in our front rooms?

Maybe we can forage for things like sweet chestnuts.

Concerns: none of us have garages, for rabbit-farm. I suppose a good shed and run would suffice. We need a lot of rabbits. Experience is lacking.

I've read, think was in a book about early explorers to South America, that a diet of rabbit alone isn't good for us. As in a whole group starved to death because all they ate was rabbit. If they had eaten the plants around them they would have survived, apparently.

So I would go for chickens instead, and pigs if space permitted, and every type of veg I could use or share. I've tried growing peppers this year and will try other veg.

Actually that might have been in a museum rather than a book.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning

Elendon you are the voice of reason

Ration books have supposedly already been printed as part of contingency plans Contract if indeed this is the case didn't have to go through OJEC as it's a matter of "national security" and the company that did it may or may not have been the Royal Mint

Prettybird.

Thank you for the rabbit info. Very interesting.

Can anyone suggest the best way to bring down a deer in Hampton Court Park? I only have gardening implements and a basic household tool kit.

You could try Fenton: aka Jesus Christ, the dog who chases deer in Richmond Park.

OMG!
Naughty Fenton!

There's so much talk of the amount of food wasted in the UK - 25% of all food bought, or something like that - maybe higher prices will stop the wasters wasting it.

We waste virtually nothing, so someone else must be wasting our 25%, too.
I don't suppose many MNers waste much either. Though I do seem to remember some poster once thinking she had to chuck out bacon that was one day past its sell-by, or the packet had been opened a couple days, or something equally daft - I dare say that sort of daftness accounts for a lot of it.

My sister who's lived in the US (Boston area) for many years is always amazed at how relatively cheap food is here. By 'food' I mean proper food, not processed crap. She has visited just recently, shopped at Waitrose (not with me, I do most of mine at Asda) and still thinks it's cheap.

I love Fenton

I tend to keep receipts so I can compare prices but also to give me some ideas/reminders as to what to buy for a change.

So, in October 2015 Sainsbury's own brand butter was 85p, in October 2016 it was £1.10 and in October 2017 it is £1.60.

Why is your Sainsbury's so much more expensive than mine?

posie

Its very expensive but i do love butter

We buy anchor butter at £1.75

At sainsburys

Butter at my Sainsbury's is £1.30

Youve got a bargin there M4

PosieNarker

Apologies, you're right and I'm wrong, just checked for myself. I think I'm getting shops mixed up.

I've planted a pear tree already so we'll have some fruit if it all goes pear-shaped (no pun intended). It's a really interesting one grafted with 3 different varieties so no need for second tree to pollinate. Tiny garden so we could only have one tree.

We could always 'eat cake' - except that eek in my local budgens yesterday, one small small pack of ground almonds was £3.05😡

Go and read The Mandibles by Lionel shriver. Brilliantly scary account of what happens in a first world country when the currency crashes and everything falls apart. (The house-jacking incident freaked me out the most). Ironically shriver supported leaving the EU, but it's still a great read if you can bear it. I read it thinking 'brexit,brexit,brexit' ...

Ive read that figment

Youre right...very scary i thought