To think it's too much?

[Ellatreetop]

We spend £400 on our weekly shop, granted we have a family of seven, shop at Ocado and try to stick to organic fruit/veg/meat but still it seems ridiculous!

How many people in your family, where do you shop and how much do you spend?!

For 2 adults and a toddler and we spend about £100-130 per week depending on whether we need essentials like household stuff, wine, nappies etc. We order from Waitrose and sometimes get top ups.
We generally buy organic fruit and veg and small amounts of the best meat, fish, poultry, eggs etc we can get which pushes the price up - if we got caged eggs, basic meat I could get it very much lower.

One adult 2 children £300 a month including pets - lots of healthy food, decent meals and luxuries included, I could probably half it if I bought only bare essentials.
£400 food shop is almost my income. Try Asda or aldi as a one off shop and see how much cheaper it works out. Bulk cooking rather than convenience food will bring it down too. Or have a chat with the Radford family I’m pretty sure they don’t spend that much a week they might offer you some tips

I spend at OP's levels but I don't think its a mystery why I spend about £300 a week for two adults, two tweens/teens and two cats. For interest here's my receipt from Waitrose today. I've got a shoulder of lamb in the freezer for Sunday.

And the rest!

That's not mad shopping is it?

These give a general idea of what my shopping costs me per week. I don’t buy alcohol or juice, chocolates etc
I usually have one or two meal components already at home so I base my meal plan on those too. I don’t have to budget per se, we are well off but I don’t like to be wasteful.

From your first photo apart from the cat litter cost £1.55 Lidl
The scourers 60p and chickpeas (I think about 50p Tesco or Sainsbury’s)

There is nothing else I would buy on that part of the list.

Don’t drink alcohol or cola, don’t eat fish (or meat)
Wouldn’t buy a food magazine for £3

I think that is where savings are made

Even if money was no object I still wouldn’t buy those things as it is stuff we don’t eat or drink

£400 seems a lot. I meal plan, do a weekly shop at Sainsbury’s and a couple of top ups at M&S and Waitrose and probably spend no more than £100 per week on an average week. If my husband does the shopping (rare) he seems to spend a lot more.

I had seven and probably spent about £200 on the weekly shop. Tesco.

Lipper, that's not three meals a day for four or seven people through. No way. That's just a few things.

I don't believe anyone who claims to sensibly feed a family of four for 50 quid a week actually does it.

I know I spend a lot but I do think a base-line of about £100 is the minimum to healthily feed a family of four for a week, with a decent variety, which is needed to get a good spread of micronutrients.

Which is around a quid per meal. If I was strapped I could feed us all cheaply on lentils, root veg, cheap meat cuts, homemade bread and a very seasonal diet with little variety.

But I like food, and can afford all the stuff.

@ILikeyourHairyHands- Wow! This is the shopping I would do if I was shopping in complete abandonment- no meal plans- just chucking in whatever I fancied regardless of cost- You paid almost £16 for a chicken! FFS! My shopping isn't even this extravagant at Christmas when I feel I throw caution to the wind a bit! Do you really get through all this in a week?

Oliver's, I'm not asking how to make savings.

The magazine is free with the Waitrose card.

I quite like coke.

Cheap cat litter is clumpy, shit, and smelly.

And it's fine to be veggie.

Anyhoo, I'm not OP and I wasn't asking you how I could reduce my grocery bill.

But thanks for your imput.

Yes Freak, and I do meal-plan!

Ahem INPUT

@ILikeyourHairyHands the meal plan for that week is below, the 55 receipt was a particularly low week because as I said I had quite a few components already at home!! Like the rice and pasta and a few other things! Yes I already had cereal too... I don’t buy cereal every week either. The first receipt is probably more average for me. I can guarantee that is not “a few bits” I only went back to the shop once that week for milk at for approx €2

And I have a family of 4.

I don't believe anyone who claims to sensibly feed a family of four for 50 quid a week actually does it.

Of course it's doable. Plenty of families up and down the country will spend that much. It won't be organic and probably is a mostly vegetarian diet, but it's definitely doable.

Lippers lists are similar to mine. We buy a lot of fruit and veg and then batch cook. Meals are bulked out with lentils, beans etc.

I've posted a typical week of meals above. Quite often we eat the same thing 2-3 times per week but we don't mind. Stew is nutritious and we'll balanced.

LIpper- your lists look like the basis for for some good meals- but there's lots of things missing that most families would need. There's no cheese, not much for making sandwiches or toast, no yoghurts, snacks, milk, cereals. There's no replacements for household items- cleaning, washing products, toiletries, toilet roll, etc. no store cupboard items like ketchup, oil, butter, flour, not much bread etc. It might be that you have some of these items already- but surely they need replacing or you must have already spent on these in previous weeks. Still not buying it. I'm with HairyHands- I'm still not convinced you can feed a family and run your household on much less than £100 a week. Your lists just aren't convincing!

Actually now that I look at the receipt I did buy pasta and rice, most of the components I already had were the freezer items like fishfingers and waffles, I had wraps for the pizza, and the chorizo, I may have had a tin or too of tomatoes also. And yes it’s breakfasts lunches and dinners. There’s soups on there which I buy every so often for work and then I eat leftovers too...my dc have packed lunches of wraps, olives, cooked meat, cheese, peppers, fruits and yoghurts etc.

Family of 4(2 adults, 2 teens), shop at Aldi, cook from scratch so not much processed or ready made food. £70-£80 pw.

I don't believe anyone who claims to sensibly feed a family of four for 50 quid a week actually does it.

I agree.

The meal plan above only includes 1 meal a day, not fresh veg and fruits, no milk or yogurt, and nothing else.

@FreakStar there’s yogurt on both of those receipts.

I don’t buy cheese EVERY week... we don’t eat loads of cheese at all. I get grated Parmesan every so often for the spaghetti bol. We don’t eat sandwiches, there’s pittas there for toasting, no I don’t buy ALL of those things every week, Timor’s ketchup probably every third week, cleaning products- I already went through that up thread
The receipt for 65 includes toilet rolls and tea bags and coffee!
It all evens out the following week I may have bought oil and ketchup but not pasta or rice 🤷‍♀️

Where's your receipt OP ?

So today we had paella, which was the prawns, clams and chicken drum fillets (and peppers and onions).

Tomorrow DH is cooking crab salad, followed by roast chicken with potato and mushroom pie, then chocolate fondants.

Sunday is shoulder of lamb with all the bits.

Monday lamb byriani, popadoms, a few home-made chutneys.

Tuesday, chicken noodle soup with the rest of the chicken, green salad and cheese for those who want it.

Wednesday, freezer stuff! Things we have frozen from previous meals.

Thursday, fish pie, from fish I have on the freezer and the rest of the spuds.

I also make a fruit salad every day for breakfasts or just to dip into.

There's also lunch ingredients there. I make a big salad every day, enough for four people and we'll all fill a lunch-box. So this week we're having black-bean, corn and avocado, chickpea tomato and spinach and prawn noodle.

And the bars are for lunch boxes.

I think that's it!

@josefKeller I don’t put the lunches on the meal plan as they vary.
Yoghurts get eaten every day at lunch by my dc. Alongside fresh fruit and veggies- peppers, carrots, olives,tomatoes etc
They eat wraps and crackers at lunch time also. Then the odd day they bring in soup etc.
they eat porridge,eggs, French toast in the morning for breakfast...I buy eggs 20 at a time ( neither of those shops include eggs as I’m guessing I had enough for the week ahead!)