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?

Junk food is defitently cheaper. I wrote my dissertation on this. Even just stuff like the higher fat content mince is cheaper than lean mince. It’s cheaper to buy a bag of oven chips than it is to make a chicken salad. Or even cheaper to buy chocolate and crisps!

A lot of people who are strugggling may not have cooking facilities, may not have an oven or saucepans, etc. It’s all very well saying you can make a cheap lasagne.....but how many of the ingredients you use are store cupboard basics which you don’t need to buy that day? So if I make a meal I don’t need to buy any herbs/spices as my cupboard is full......that’s unrealistic and seen as a pointless waste of money by some people who are in poverty (understandably).

All the slightly smug grow your own veg, buy a trug for £200, we should eat less junk food....ignore the reality of the kind of working life most people have, finances with little or noth8ng spare and that frankly, I like red peppers and tomatoes .... both hard to grow year round in the U.K.

We import most of our food😮

I find that if I nip in Tesco for food for the day, the bill comes out at about 30 quid. We have a running joke that Tesco charge an entrance fee.

But

If I do nonthly online shop at tesco I can get a months shop for a couple of hundred for myself and two teenage lads.

I have refused to buy them pizza now at 4-6pound each. It's so much tastier and cheaper to make

Convenience stores including the Co-op are rip-offs, compared to large stores or online.
It's definitely not as easy as smug types say to eat healthily and cheaply. Those people should try living payday to payday with no 'store cupboard' stuff, and limited space, facilities, worrying about affording gas and electricity etc. Also poverty is exhausting. Try walking everywhere as you can't afford transport, day after day, it grinds you down. I doubt they'd be whipping up a nice lentil stew but would reach for crisps, pot noodles and chips too.

Cheap healthy cooking when you are tired and limited its space and resources is so boring too. Lentil mushes of various types get dull. Eating on a very tight budget is dull. Depending on where you are - well loads of the worlds poorest people eat the same every day. We are used to more variety nowadays.

Dh is away this week, so its just me and a fussy toddler.

I've really struggled cooking from scratch this week as a result.

I've either made too much and ended up eating more than I should or I've done too little and ended up snacking.

Normally if DH is away, I tend to stick to ready meals and/or something like baked beans on toast rather than cook from scratch

I don't batch cook in advance as I have a stupidly small freezer which really limits me.

I think that its particularly hard to cook from scratch if you are a small household and you have to invest more in cupboard items for a decent meal or are paying more for smaller packages more appropriate to your household size.

Im sure if I was doing it for longer I could get better, but the hassle and cost for a small family or lone person just lends itself to mean you are far more likely to eat crap.

Its much easier to cook properly for more people.

Those of you suggesting cooking roast veg and lentils, take a trip to farmfoods and see how astonishingly cheap frozen processed food is in there.

Absolutely pie is the sky to suggest poor families should cook mainly veg meals from scratch when you can get twenty burgers and a bag of frozen chips the size of a sack of coal for under two pounds

I go to Iceland and Farmfoods regularly and I know the food they sell in their and how much it costs. Minced beef in Aldi is £1.99, a tin of tomatoes, onion, carrot, stock cube, milk and a little cheese would take the costing to about £3 to £4 (I make this regularly so I know the costs). To be honest though if I was cooking on a budget I wouldn’t be making a lasagne. People like jack Monroe have demonstrated time and again people can eat healthily on a budget. I am surprised this is still in contention.

In there not in their.

I do my main shopping at our local Co-op supermarket because I take my mum. She has limited mobility (she's 86) and can manage to do her own shopping as it's a small store and she enjoys being out and about. She couldn't manage at any of the other much larger supermarkets. The co--op also has a good ethical policy but it's very pricey.

It's also the time you assume all the poorer families have, we had lasagne 2 days ago, I started on the sauce at 2pm so it could bubble away and dished up at 6:30pm. A frozen microwave lasagne would cost a fraction, and could be on a plate within 5 minutes of walking in the door if you've worked long hours.

Yes, you can get beans on toast on a plate in similar timeframe, but it gets boring only eating 2/3 evening meals. Spending your weekends batch cooking is a nice idea, it rather assumes your happy to not spend time with your kids after a week working, or don't have a second job at the weekends, assumes you have no hobbies or interests beyond survival, and assumes you have freezer space.

I think lasagne is one of the fattiest and time consuming meals to make. There are thousands of meals that are healthy, cheap, nutritious and quick to make and personally I would rather give my dc those than a ready made lasagne, but I realise other people are different and that’s fine.

Faffiest.

We moved back to the UK Mar last year hence knowing our figures. We shop at Aldi mainly, our main weekly shop has gone from £65 to £100, only difference is we now buy their Angus meats.

I want to try an asda weekly shop to compare but don't want to do it in store because there is too much choice and I know I'll end up with stuff I don't usually buy, may take a chance with online as most is fresh stuff that we buy.

Healthy food doesn't have to be a lentil salad. It really doesn't.

I like red peppers and tomatoes .... both hard to grow year round in the U.K

Kinda the point isn’t it? We shouldn’t really be eating red peppers in December.

I was amazing at how cheap my big bag of veggies was in the Turkish food centre the other day - even checked receipt to make sure I’d been charged correctly! Then I remembered it was summer and height of growing season.

I've either made too much and ended up eating more than I should or I've done too little and ended up snacking

You can put the left overs in the fridge and eat them for lunch tomorrow.

“I can’t cook from scratch because I’m shit at portion control’ is a pretty lame excuse.

Also totally agree re lasangne, it’s a total pain in the neck and needs multiple pans and an oven.

One pot, simple hob meals based around cheap carbs (rice, pasta) and lots of seasonal veg are the way to go for cheap plus some cheap protein.

No I haven't noticed food going up really. Maybe some items slightly but why would we expect everything to stay at the same price? Food has been very cheap in the UK for years.

Me and DH are both vegetarian so eat loads of veg, fruit, lentils, different beans, chickpeas etc. We buy big sacks of onions, lentils, chickpeas, spices in indian supermarkets. It means a bit of a drive but the saving is enormous. A massive bag of onions for £1.99 and 25kg bag of chickpeas is £30 but lasts absolutely ages. It works out at 12p per 100g whereas 100g bag of chickpeas is 78p!

We are lucky that we have room for storage though. We are not that well off so are always aware of prices. We spend about £40 a week for both of us but cook just about everything from scratch. I menu plan and bulk cook. I am also good at spotting bargains.

We shop in Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury, Farm Foods and occasionally Lidl. We like Sainsbury the most. Nice clean airy stores and their veg lasts well. I don't think they are expensive but it depends what you buy.

I always input my shop into "mysupermarket" and most times Sainsbury is the cheapest with Asda usually being the dearest.

We do a large shop about every 6 weeks and then shop weekly for fruit and veg. We usually try and buy the bulk of it in markets. Yesterday we bought a large cauliflower for 80p. It will go in 3 meals - cauliflower and potato curry, cauliflower cheese with roasted veg and with lots of other veg in shepherds pie. We got a large bag of carrots in Morrisons for 39p so if you look around there is cheap food.

Me and DH absolutely love lentils. One of our favourite meals is egg and lentil curry, easy to make, delicious and very filling.

A loaf of Kingsmill 50/50 was £1 in Tesco this week - used to be 70p. I don’t know how it has increased so much for a British made product - it feels like greed.

Iceland. Costs us £60 for a two week shop that would cost £120 min in Tesco