To be struggling to budget my food shopping

[Toomuchtooyoung01]

We are spending a crazy amount on food shopping each week and its not sustainable. We don't eat anything extravagant, are both teetotal at home so not spending anything on alcohol, toiletries wise we only buy the absolute necessary basics (shampoo/conditioner, shower gel, handwash etc) so its not like I'm filling the trolley with a £10 pot of this or a £10 tube of that, its really frustrating as we easily spend £150-£170 a week and I feel for that money we should either have alot more than we do or we should be spending alot less for the very normal, non flashy food/products etc we are buying.
The only brands we buy are Pampers nappies (large pack a week) and every few weeks I'll stock up on Childs Farm bubble bath etc when its on special offer! All food is own brand.
Breakfast is cereal or toast with fruit sometimes pancakes or brioche for DD or sometimes mini bacon sandwich. Usual meals are a roast, sausages with veg and mash, fishcakes with veg, one or 2 nights might have oven food (9 months with baby 2 so not doing as much cooking as would usually). Lunches are usually sandwich/tin of soup/DD has things like chicken gougons if not eating the same as me.
Typical food shop - fresh fruit (apples/bananas/strawberries/raspberries/ oranges) fresh veg (brocolli/carrots/potatoes), miscellaneous staples like houmous, yoghurts etc as well as meat mentioned when listing typical meals. I do often make a chilli/a large tuna pasta bake etc which theoretically should see us through for a few days but never quite does, as OH often comes home for lunch so will heat up a portion of this etc
Please can anyone offer advice on where I'm going wrong & how to make some savings?! Thanks!

Mine must be eating the toilet roll we use one a day. X

It’s a fallacy that it’s always cheaper to make your own sauces etc. It might be better for you, as you know what’s going into it, but it’s not necessarily cheaper. Tesco tomato and mascarpone pasta sauce is 64p for a 350g jar; there’s no way I can buy the ingredients to make it cheaper than that. Same with a curry sauce, my family aren’t bothered about authentic flavours, they just like a different one every time so it would cost a fortune to keep the mix of herbs and spices to hand.

So many people have it in their heads that Sainsbury's is so expensive. As I said before, I put my shopping list into "mysupermarket" and quite often Sainsbury's is the cheapest. Also quite often Asda is the dearest of the main supermarkets.

This article says Sainsbury's were found to be the cheapest of the main supermarkets by Which magazine
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51153285

@gingersausage if you’re talking weight for weight no you wouldn’t do it for the same price but you would make more and freeze it and that would be more economical.

I tend to find home-prepared food more sustaining. It isn't bulked out with sugar/salt to make it feel tasty but in a way which doesn't last. So there will be less snacking after a meal that has been made from scratch.

Herbs and spices can be bought cheaply in bulk from Asian grocery shops in most cities and towns.

Also a lot of economical home cooking is about using up leftovers. Left over veg/potatoes/pulses become soups. Meaty main meal leftovers can be turned into casseroles. Bits of chicken can be added to a risotto.

So learning how to cook and adapt recipes is part of eating on a budget.

Difficult if one has fussy eaters and little time, but making soup or chucking things in a pot to make stew is not a long job.

I find the same as @albertatrilogy, processed food isn’t as filing at all.

I fry everything in beef dripping you buy in a jar too, not processed oils.

It doesn't cost a fortune to have a well stocked herb and spice store, you don't buy it all at once! Buy a jar a week, or better yet, get a bag a week from an ethnic store.

Pasta sauce also doesn't need to cost much. The amount of mascapone in that 350g, 64p jar, will be tiny, maybe 1 or 2 tablespoons. A 400g tin of value/basics tomatoes is 30p, or a carton of pasatta, a chopped onion or a teaspoon of onion powder, add a couple of spoons of mascapone (use the rest to make a dessert, or increase the quantities of tomatoes and make a bulk batch), a sprinkle of Italian herbs, salt and pepper, and you've got a 430g pasta sauce for a similar cost.

If you have to go out and buy every single ingredient for a recipe, it can be expensive. The trick is to build up a well stocked store cupboard, and savvy shopping (bulk buy items when on offer).

@Toomuchtooyoung01are you coming back?

I saw that article too but it’s not what I experience at all doing real life shopping.

With nappies, buying them weekly is the worst way you can do it if you’re buying pampers. We always bulk buy when there is a discount.

We are guilty of overspending on food and the main things for us are out of season fruit, expensive cuts of meat etc. You have to decide what you’re personally willing to compromise on or not and work around it. Realistically, start by trying to drop it by £20-30. You’re never going to go from £175 to £50.

Agree with Motoko, all you need for pasta sauce is a carton of passata and some oregano/basil and garlic granules (or whatever combination of herbs you prefer). Jars of herbs cost very little in Lidl or Aldi (or Tesco own brand) and they last ages. No way is a jar of processed pasta sauce cheaper than that.

I buy my toiletries/cleaning products from B and M/Home Bargains etc. I don't buy the named stuff like Flash so I use Astonish and Star Drops ( Bought before Mrs Hinch started endorsing them). Think I spend £10-15 a month on cleaning and toiletries.
Soup is really cheap to make. Costs a quid ( almost) for a tin of soup, and I can get around 6/8 portions of soup for same price making at home.
Shop in Aldis, with a brief top up in Morrisons for the odd thing I can't get in Aldi. Four adults here,and we eat well ( meat eaters), and we are around £60-80 a week on food a week. I really don't understand how it can be £170. But then I find Sainsbury's eyewateringly expensive.

Same goes for curries, a jar of curry paste will last for 3-4 meals, just add a can of coconut milk each time (which you can get for about 50p).

Echoing what everyone else says about Lidl. In my experience, Aldi often doesn't have everything, but Lidl does. Might not get 5 choices for each item, but you get the item.

It is significantly cheaper and their meat is better quality.

You could also consider making some changes to your meals to make them go further. for example, instead of buying fishcakes to have for one night a week, spend that money on ingredients for a fish pie and make a larger one. you should have more than enough to freeze half for the next week.

Stop doing sausages and spend the money on steak mince instead Make one large Spaghetti Bolognese (or similar) - you can add in the veg to the sauce. Freeze half for the next week. Now you've spent the same amount of money on four meals rather than two, and you have saved yourself cooking two nights a fortnight.

We’re also a family of three. Myself and two teenage boys (so basically three adult appetites). My top tip is online grocery shopping. I typically spend £60-70 from Tesco per week for food / toiletries / household stuff / cat food and litter. I’ll then maybe spend another £20 on fresh bits or extras later in the week. I just find I’m less distracted by things I don’t need, and it’s easy to compare prices when the price per gram or unit is right there on the screen. We do eat meat and fish, but I’d rather have smaller quantities of higher quality, and we usually have a couple of meat free meals a week. I also try to buy staples in bulk; I like a particular brand of loo roll for example, but a 16 pack on offer is half the price per roll of a 4 pack that isn’t. (I know not everyone is in a position to do that, I certainly wasn’t always.)

In my experience, Aldi often doesn't have everything, but Lidl does.

Funnily enough, it's the other way round where I live. I have two Lidls near me, Aldi is a bit further away, so it's frustrating as Lidl is so much handier. Wouldn't stop shopping there though.

We are spending £30-£40 a week for an adult, a teen and a cat, including lunches. Plus an extra £8 a week for milk, and laundry detergent and Simplycook on subscription.

I cook enough for 2 or 3 nights at a time, mostly vegetables, grains and pulses, and chicken with one dinner (2 or 3 nights a week). I do a cooked breakfast on the weekend. Breakfast on other days is granola, porridge, or cheese on toast. My teen usually takes foods like a falafel wrap, yogurt, peperami, nuts, fruit and raw veg for lunch.

There's loads of good tips and questions on this thread, what a shame the OP hasn't come back. I know no one has to update but it would be interesting to know if the OP finds any of it useful.

Sainsbury's may be more expensive but I like it to shop online as I can see the price as I go along. I would go to aldi/lidl if I didn't have autistic child as I used to love shopping in lidl. So for me now I do stick to online shopping so I can easily see how the op is spending that much.

Lidl and Aldi are overall very good, but they have different managers and are different sized stores, so you will get areas or times when one is better than the other. Our local Lidl is fairly small, so stock will be limited, especially in comparison to the Lidl I went to when on holiday, which was huge.

I've never had a problem with Aldi's fruit and veg going off quickly, so I suspect that might be down to management and stock control at individual stores.

It's a shame OP hasn't engaged with her thread. People have spent a lot of time, giving detailed answers to try to help her, and on threads like this, I feel the OPs should engage/update, or why bother posting in the first place?

I just hope that the thread helps others who might be in the same situation.

Well I am just back from Aldi's. Super 6 at 39p this week include Leeks and Carrots, so for a pound or so, I can make 2 huge pots of soup ( Leek and Potato) and Carrot and Coriander. A chicken is £3.99, big pack of Steak mince is £4.49. 4 tins of tuna in spring water is £2.69. It's not hard to eat healthily on a budget.

It does take time and commitment though, and that is what is lacking in many households, due to various factors.

Judging by this thread I think there are a lot of men only getting a tin of soup for dinner so they're eating loo roll to fill up.

I changed from tesco to asda and food bill dropped by £30 a week