to spend £280 a week to feed a family of 5?

[TempleOfBlooms]

I spend about £280 a week on food. This includes my work lunches which tend to be salads from places like Leon plus coffees etc. The rest is food eaten at home.

Breakfast for all five of us tends to be things like Bircher muesli or chia based stuff with fruits and nuts. Fresh juice too.

Lunches in summer are usually a selection of dips and cheese and meats and salads.

Dinner is usually fish or chicken with a selection of salads and grilled veg.

So fresh food but not caviar or ridiculous indulgences.

It seems like everyone else on here can feed a family of four on tiny amounts. How? We certainly could eat more cheaply but that would mean fewer veg, fewer fruits, less fish etc.

Is it really so unusual to spend so much on food? I never see anyone else admit to it.

I buy biscuits every couple of weeks. Big pack of Asda own brand custard creams for 45p. Plus we always have ice lollies and crisps in the house no perfection here. I always like to make home made meals from scratch but we're not as healthy with our snacks!

I think a lot of the differences in food cost on here are explained by the fact that food is cheaper in some areas of the country and also depends on what supermarkets are nearby. We don't live an Aldi or Lidl and I haven't got time to spend scouring butchers etc. They are usually more expensive than the big supermarkets anyway. I do cook "from scratch" due to allergy and I don't think it is any cheaper. Most of the recipes mentioned by posters sound fine but I would be a bit bored with the lack of variety.

To be fair my meat comes mostly from musclefoods - including various offers and discounts we spend £82 for it every 8 weeks then just need to buy mince from the butchers, bacon, sausages and fish. Fish is frozen from iceland/farmfoods - £10 for 3 packs and actually decent quality we also have a couple of discount shops that sell end of line and a heron, fultons, bm, LIDL and tesco 10 minutes walk from home.

The recommended protein requirement daily is based on the ideal body weight. It’s around 0.45 to 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram body weight per day.

Mine is around 65 to 110.

100 grams of chicken breast = 31 grams of protein.

To be fair my meat comes mostly from musclefoods - including various offers and discounts we spend £82 for it every 8 weeks then just need to buy mince from the butchers, bacon, sausages and fish. Fish is frozen from iceland/farmfoods - £10 for 3 packs and actually decent quality we also have a couple of discount shops that sell end of line and a heron, fultons, bm, LIDL and tesco 10 minutes walk from home.

In my area low fat mince from the butchers would cost a lot more than £4 for a kilo and certainly more than supermarkets. There are no discount shops, LIDL, ALDI etc. Just Sainsburys and Waitrose.

Wow, 10 pages in and no comment from the OP. Is she/he coming back or just dropped the bomb and walked away?

Dropped the bomb DavidB. I said this about 5 pages ago... it does annoy me when OPs do this

@Dungeondragon15 That's what you get for living in a posh area We're lucky with the shops but we are in one of the more deprived areas and have to go right into the city for waitrose even then it's a waitrose local but within walking distance we have ALDI, LIDL, Tesco, Morrisons and the local market town.

I agree about the cost of baking, but you're not comparing like with like. Buying good quality baked goods from a farmer's market, costs a lot more than buying factory produced items that have a shed load more ingredients to act as stabilisers and preservatives.

I always used quality ingredients, like my own chickens free range eggs, and butter instead of margarine. My bread had only 4 ingredients and tasted far superior to supermarket bread.

But, whatever I made, they were certainly cheaper to make than buy something of a comparable quality at the farmer's market, because they need to add on the cost of labour and overheads.

Out of curiosity, and because my meeting this morning was cancelled, I put Motoko's shopping list upthread, which came to just over £60, into MySupermarket for the only supermarket I have access to. I only chose supermarket basic range, except when a brand was the only choice (and I think the gravy granules were the only time that happened), and I kept to quantities, although with some of the weighted stuff there's either slightly more or less on the odd item. I also, from my knowledge of both my own supermarket, and Aldi and LIdl, suspect that some of the items in my basket will be lower quality.

Anyway, for me it came to £98. And it would have been well over £100 if the free range chicken hadn't been in an offer this week. So where you live really can make an enormous difference.

The only way to cut down on the amount spent on grocery shopping is to cut down on the amount of visits to grocery shops.
When I was taken unexpectedly into hospital, my DH spent well over £100 per week because he was popping to the supermarket virtually every day, picking uo things he liked the look of, and not checking what he already had at home.
Shopping every day for that night's dinner - unless it is planned - is chaotic and haphazard.
The only way is meal planning, starting by looking at what you already have that needs used up, and basing your meals on that. Tedious but true.

MySupermarket is a great site, which is why I used it to work out that list, although I also had to use the Aldi site, as for some reason MySupermarket had hardly anything for Aldi.

But I often use it to find out which supermarkets have offers on the few branded items I buy, like the Tassimo pods, (all the non branded coffee capsules seem to be for Nespresso machines).

I told my husband about my list and he said how come our shopping is always more then? So I pointed out that he doesn't like meal plans, and it was for food made from scratch, which now that I'm unable to cook due to my illness/disability, he has to do the cooking, and mostly uses convenience food. He does cook from scratch sometimes, things like spag bol and chilli, but he usually just wants to bung something in the oven when he gets home from work.

I really miss cooking, and eating, good food.

Anyway, for me it came to £98. And it would have been well over £100 if the free range chicken hadn't been in an offer this week. So where you live really can make an enormous difference.

Yes, that doesn't surprise me. If you want to eat "basic" brands (I don't think they are generally as good taste wise) the price is even higher. Not everyone lives near an Aldi or Lidl but even if you do my experience is that the food is not always as good quality wise and they don't have so much variety compared with some other supermarkets.

If you don't want to eat "basic" brands

But I often use it to find out which supermarkets have offers on the few branded items I buy, like the Tassimo pods, (all the non branded coffee capsules seem to be for Nespresso machines).

It surprises me that you use pods at all if you are into budget shopping. I make coffee the old-fashioned way i.e. ground coffee and filter.

My experience with Aldi and Lidl was the opposite, Dungeon. Often their stuff was superior to economy brands, so the price comparison really should be to more expensive ranges sometimes.

I gather that the quality of fruit and veg can vary a lot though. We were lucky that both of our local ones had decent stuff.

My experience with Aldi and Lidl was the opposite, Dungeon. Often their stuff was superior to economy brands, so the price comparison really should be to more expensive ranges sometimes.

I wasn't impressed at all although I'm probably not comparing with "basic" brands of Sainbury's , Tescos etc. The fruit and veg also didn't last as long although perhaps I was unlucky there. Some things were very good e.g. Aldi 30 day mature steak but they were certainly not cheap.

I love lidl. The meat nd cheese is great. The bakery is the best around. They sell the best raspberries and really good green veg. Their jam is excellent.

The pizzas, ready made food and potatoes are all horrid though!

We never bought the ready made stuff really. We liked in particularly the low-GI seeded cob, the torchon ham, the cheese (included breaded camembert), the fruit and veg - I'm making myself sad. We didn't buy much meat and fish there because we used butchers and fishmongers, but the occasional thing we got was fine - nothing special but OK. I certainly don't feel that my current supermarket's goods are 33% better!

I didn't buy ready made stuff as can't eat that usually anyway due to allergies. I just didn't find the other meat/fish/cheese etc as good apart from the premium brands. That's not the reason I don't go there (too far away for regular visits) but I certainly don't feel the cheaper stuff was very good. Great if other people do though as it saves them money!

I love the OP. Usually I feel like a lazy extravagant cook but the OP has made me feel like a paragon of housewifely thrift and healthy eating. I buy meat and fish (high welfare/organic/sustainable where possible), I shop on the day, I buy prepped main dishes when I can't be bothered to cook anything fancy, I have no inexpensive local shops or markets, and I like posh treats. And I probably get more waste than the OP because we're a smaller family so more things get half-used.

But I still don't spend anything like what the OP spends per person.

OP, if you restrict your family dinners to fish and chicken then it's no wonder you have to spend a fortune on fancy deli ingredients to liven them up. A basic pasta bol or a veg curry every few days would make a tasty healthy change for you all - and cost a lot less.

It surprises me that you use pods at all if you are into budget shopping.

I'm not necessarily into "budget" shopping, but I don't like paying more for something if I can get comparable quality elsewhere.

I bought a pod machine because I like frothy coffee, and it's easier for me with my disability, to make a nice coffee with the Tassimo, than with our original coffee machine, where you have to froth the milk separately. With this one, I just use two pods (one coffee and one milk) and can sit down while it's doing it's thing. And I opted for a Tassimo machine, rather than a Nespresso one, because I have to drink decaff, and there are more decaff options than Nespresso offers.

We spend similar amount. Low carb so not a lot of jacket potato or pasta to bulk it out... free range and organic mostly. That's what it costs. If you can afford it then YABU.

We spend similar amount. Low carb so not a lot of jacket potato or pasta to bulk it out... free range and organic mostly. That's what it costs. If you can afford it then YABU.

What's wrong with jacket potatoes?!

What's wrong with jacket potatoes?!

Nothing wrong with it per se, but it does not fit into a low-carb way of eating.