Is food suddenly loads more expensive? Why?

[niketrainersarecomfy]

Ok. Panicking if it continues.
Just been to the local shop for tinned tuna and couldnt get it below 2 pounds. Corned beef 2. 50.
These were once cheap options for sandwiches. Now i see them as protein to be saved for an evening meal, and for sandwiches to be made from paste, marmite, soft cheese etc.
I have noticed my usual bread rolls go from 90p to 1.10.
Milk stayed the same. Squash much more money.
Is it just me? Yes i could have gone to aldi and not the corner shop but even so.
I honestly dont see how places like tesco are going to stay open if this continues, nor how anyone could afford to fill a trolley for the weeks shop.
Is it just me or is food becoming too expensive? Thats before tv license, water, petrol getting dearer each year.
How are we supposed to manage when wages dont rise at the rate of inflation?

derxa Different countries have norms of either fresh, UHT, or sometimes both. It doesn't always match up with hotter countries having all UHT either. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_processing#Worldwide_use

There was a plan just over 10 years ago to get the UK to switch to mostly UHT milk, in order to save energy on refrigeration, but it didn't take off as farmers rejected it
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3310444/Switch-to-long-life-milk-to-cut-emissions.html

I don’t agree that junk food is cheaper. If an individual lasange for one costs £3 or £4 I can make a family sized lasange for for the same price.

Derxa
Im honestly thick and dont know. There are 2 issues, the first being the difference in quantity. The second being the difference between fresh/uht.
Could you expand?

nike I didn't mean to be rude but you keep going on about how dear milk is compared to the UK. Milk producers here get fuck all for their milk. It's partly their fault for getting rid of the Milk marketing Board but now they're at the mercy of the supermarkets.

Thats rubbish, i didnt know that, although i think i only mentioned it twice and both were observations.
We go through 6pts a day in out house which costs 2 quid. Youre right, nothing. As a kid we had a milkman and 1pt a day was 4 50 a week 20+years ago

OK

Lidl tinned tuna steak was 82p last time a looked. Although they don't seem to have had it in for about a month now

We eat lots of vegetables. Aldi sell them very cheaply, Tesco do too now. I never buy them from the Coop, I never go to the Coop as it's too expensive.

I have tried growing various vegetables and herbs in our small garden with very little success - the slugs, snails and other bugs ate a lot more of them than we did. I don't know how to remove the pests???The cost of the pots, soil, seeds and gardening tools would have paid for a LOT of food in Aldi.

Of course. The pound dropped 15% immediately after the Brexit referendum and has not recovered. Most food is imported. When Brexit actually happens there is no reason for things to get better..

Quantitative easing wouldn't make the £ worth less if international investors continued to use it as a reserve currency. They are not now. So we are stuck - not appealing to investors, still recovering from the 2008 crash, about to give our economy another hard shock.

Good times, man.

Food can only get a lot more expensive after Brexit because either:

a. Brexit will be shit, our economy will tank, supply chains will be disrupted, transporting food will cost more and food prices will rise significantly.

b. Brexit won't be shit (highly unlikely), but everyone will use leaving the EU as an excuse to hike up prices anyway.

I heard leave voters talking about how shit the economy would be after Brexit at the time of the referendum, but they voted for it anyway because they don't like immigration.

Devaluing of the pound could affect prices of UK made products (those that are exportable) as well as imports, couldn't it?

Because it's not governments that export products, it's companies.
When logistics allow, companies will sell their goods for the best price they can get. So uk consumers will be competing with the purchasing power of consumers in other countries. And our purchasing power is decreasing.

Re UHT milk, those countries may not consume as much milk as UK so no need for fresh which spoils quickly. We use lots of milk in tea and coffee which other cultures don't.

I am as middle class as it comes and not a fussy eater but I fucking hate lentils. I'd rather eat a shit frozen pizza than a lentil lasagna even though I'm well aware that the nutritional value of the latter far exceeds the former. Fucking pulses.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_consumption_per_capita
The French consume more milk per capita than we do, and the Belgians only slightly less. Both use nearly all UHT.

My food bills haven't changed we buy and eat as much locally or British produced seasonal food as we reasonably can.

I now live in Australia but spent more than 40 years of my life in the UK first...my home country is England.

I've noticed here, that most of the food I buy is grown in Australia. That's why food here in Australia is expensive.

BUT....wages are higher so you can afford to buy it.

That doesn't mean that you're better off obviously because you're paying more per week than you would in the UK.

But I don't mind....supporting the farmers here is seen as an important thing to do. People also have more chance to buy local here...it's very much encouraged. If I go to the local supermarket here in South Australia, the potatoes they sell were grown here in state. Same with a lot of the fresh produce. Also the milk, eggs etc.

...supporting the farmers here is seen as an important thing to do. People also have more chance to buy local here...it's very much encouraged.

Is that for everyone, rather than here where it's only rural people, plus some middle class people in cities?

Penny It's a thing you hear about in the media a lot so it's in the public consciousness. But I do accept that not everyone lives in a small market town and has the luxury to buy locally.

Another thing is that whilst we don't have as many choices of sweets, chocolate and fizzy drinks in supermarkets, obesity is still a huge problem. Especially in South Australia. We're the 'fattest state' apparently. And I put that down to the fact that nobody walks, everyone drives everywhere and there are a LOT of fast food places.

Like America I suppose.

Our local Waitrose has been giving out free fruit recently. Bananas/apples/satsumas in an enormous box with a sign saying “free for children, please help yourselves”.

I don’t agree that junk food is cheaper. If an individual lasange for one costs £3 or £4 I can make a family sized lasange for for the same price

Really? I cook fresh, non processed food every day for our family of 4 + a couples of mindees a few times a week.

We are 1 vegetarian, 1 pescatarian, and two eat anything household. I make all my own soups and sauces, bake rather than buy treats, even make my own pasta sometimes and I definitely could not make a family sized lasagne for 3-4 quid using ingredients from Aldi and Tesco. And I'm pretty sure that the lasagne the post referred to was probably a family sized one. (I had a look, family size 800gm for £3)

I rarely buy meat these days, we tend to eat veggie more often than not with fish sometimes for protein and my shopping basket has rocketed this year. Fresh fruit and veg is not cheap food. Nor is growing your own, it takes time and money to set up and time and money to maintain. Until last year we had a greenhouse growing all manner of stuff but still not enough yield to feed a family of 4 two meals a day.

I buy all "throwaway" items (loo roll, washing up liquid, cleaning stuff) from Aldi and the rest a mixture of Aldi and Tesco and my shopping bag is still at least a third (if not more) more than it was this time last year.

Or you could do what my teenage son did tonight, he shopped locally at 9pm and brought home a whole chicken, 3 packs of sea bass fillets, a pack of lamb steaks and a plethora of teenage snacky stuff and he spent the sum total of 1.75 - yellow,stickers are the way to go!

I don’t agree that junk food is cheaper. If an individual lasange for one costs £3 or £4 I can make a family sized lasange for for the same price

I don't think people in poverty buy individual lasagnes. They go to Iceland and buy massive bags of frozen chips and some frozen burgers and that sort of thing. It's all about amount for money when you're low on cash.

People in that situation need to provide a certain amount of meals for a certain amount of money....they're buying poor quality food in big bags and then when they have a bit extra then they can buy a "treat"

We have a huge fruit and veg shop near our home (Scruffy area of London) which sells big bowls of veg with short life span eg 4 large aubergines, 10 onions, 5 avocados, 5 cucumbers, 15 tomatoes or 6 courgettes for a pound. But you have to use that within 24 hours so you need to be organised, have freezer space and be good at batch cooking to make it worthwhile unless you have a gigantic family. Snooze and you lose the bowlful.

If anyone has read Cider with Rosie, they might remember the description of the big pot of lentils Laurie Lee’s mum cooked every day for her large family to fight over (no dad, rural childhood early 1900s)

Maybe we will go back to a much more basic diet with meat and dairy as expensive luxuries. But we will see childhood illnesses increase and disparity between the diets of rich and poor become even wider.

I’ve got an allotment and I’ve grown veg in pots in the past.

It’s not easy. Pots is expensive as compost to grow any significant anount and fertiliser isn’t cheap.

What you end up growing is food in season when it’s usually cheap in the shops anyway. To feed a family consistently all year takes a lot of work...preserving stuff for the hungry gap in March. Freezer space.

Otherwise it’s a lot of cabbage and brocoll in March.