Food is too cheap ?

[Loveshelly]

Food has never been cheaper, meat is unbelievably cheap. Even with a conscious move towards less meat consumption it’s clear that huge consumption of cheap meat is going on.

AIBU to think that we all need to spend more on our produce, especially in the wake of brexit, we clearly cannot rely on cheap labour anymore. So we are going to have to pay more.

All I tend to see on MN is people desperate to get food bills down, then on another thread people fretting they can’t keep heating on all night.

Have we become totally skewed about what are the things we should be spending more and less on.

I think it actually would be good for people to go hungry for a while. It would make them appreciate more the food they have readily available but still moan about colour/shape/use by date. plenty of people are already going hungry. Do you live under a rock?

OP people are already struggling to afford the basics. Children will be cold this winter. You're proposing they go hungry too as their parents are priced out of being able to afford to feed them.

@FrenchBoule

Depends on how much is your food budget,what can you afford?

I’d rather eat less but better quality(and more expensive) than cheap shit,I’d rather buy mince from the butcher than supermarket (huuuge difference).
Saying that I’m still enough financially comfortable to avoid it(might be not for long though)

I have been in my life on absolute bones of my arse so I appreciate the luxury of still having a choice.

Different areas of UK will have different prices/wages, accessibility and affordability.
What really annoys me is the amount of processed shit in the shops and how cheap it is compared to more nutritious food.(packet of biscuits v pack of apples)
I’m not happy with the “beauty standards” of fruit and veg sold to people. Even so called “wonky” fruit and veg in the supermarket still doesn’t eliminate the waste that farmers compost every year when so many people go to the food banks.

I think it actually would be good for people to go hungry for a while. It would make them appreciate more the food they have readily available but still moan about colour/shape/use by date.

Right so I can’t afford to feed myself and my daughter. She eats at nursery and the cost of meals is packaged into the costs, so I can’t just feed her packed lunches and cut back there. It’s the only nursery around open 8-6 and I’m a university student so I can’t get a job.

In the past 4 days I’ve eaten a pasty. That’s it. That’s all I could afford. How much hungrier do you think I could get before it started to seriously affect me?

Yes food is far too cheap - it should rise about 30% so we don't have shit food and shit welfare standards

And obviously wages need to rise and housing costs need to come down so people can afford the above ^^

We need a massive affordable house building programme and businesses need to pay people more

The gap between the CEO and the ordinary worker used to be maximum 80% in the 1970's - it's now hundreds of percent

The rich have got MUCH MUCH richer

And that's why food is so cheap - a nice panacea for the masses with its corn syrup, poor health, cancers and obesity - so they can then blame YOU for it

So you get to be poor, shit food, cold and have poor housing - and then you can get told if you'd only worked harder you would have what they have

NEWSFLASH - you can never have what they have but they will show you the tiny percentage that 'pulled themselves up by their bootstraps' in that 'levelling up' conspiracy so that you can all then blame each other for not being able to

Your place is to always be in the wrong, it's always YOUR fault

Much of the new housing where I live has been purchased off plan by Chinese property investors. We have many properties that are empty, no intention of renting out as it’s a bank to the Chinese with guaranteed intruding prices.

They are exploiting out housing crisis for investment returns. Meanwhile we have homeless living in sheds. People can’t afford to rent and many of the homes being built are not accessible to local people let alone affordable.

Our biggest local agent has an office in China ffs!

This has a knock on impact on the whole property market and how much money people have left for food.

It’s a fucking disgrace. I don’t believe many countries would facilitate such behaviour?

Cheapless is relative to budget, time, facilities and cooking skills.

I don’t spend a huge amount on food shopping, but I have the luxury of both time and skill so I make the majority of our meals. Thats a luxury that isn’t available to a lot of people.

We’re at our little holiday home so I’ve done an aldi click and collect for the whole week, rather than my usual ocado, although I didn’t factor taking the frozen stuff home Sunday evening.

I’ve got
Olives 150g £1.59
15 Eggs free range £1.79
Dark chocolate 70% £1.49
Cannellini beans 45p
Kidney beans 49p
Black beans 49p
Green lentils 49p
Passata 64p
Oats 1kg 75p
Crisps x6 55p
Baked beans x4 96p
Penne pasta 29p
Garlic 39p
Butternut squash 95p
Cauliflower 79p
Sweetheart cabbage 47p
Broccoli 47p
Courgettes £1.15
Onions 1kg 50p
Grapes £1.06
Radishes 43p
Celery 29p
Peppers 92p
Toms 64p
Cucumber 43p
Bagged salad x3 £1.71
Sweet potatoes 1kg 89p
Potatoes 2.5kg 89p
Easy peelers 600g 69p
Pears 5 57p
Peas 900g 55p
Apples 6 60p
Bananas 10 £1.38
Fine beans 1kg frozen 55p
Veggie fingers 16 £1.39
Coconut milk 55p (this has got really expensive elsewhere)

That came to just shy of £32 before the £4 click and collect fee. It is a cheap shop, but only if you have the skills, resources, confidence and time to cook it all. I work part time, my husband works part time, I’m a good cook, I’m not stressed, I’m not worried about money, I have a fully equipped kitchen, I’m not in fuel poverty.

If I look back to about 12-15 years ago, I didn’t have access to a proper kitchen, I had two jobs, I was at university, funds were very very short, I was stressed, I didn’t have any cheaper local supermarkets. Lunch was generally tesco value supernoodles minus the flavour sachet and some frozen mixed veg.

Yes, food is generally cheap, but the people needing the cheaper food often don’t have the resources, time etc to take full advantage of cheaper food.

I do think in this country we don't like to spend a high proportion of our wages on food. I see it on threads about how much people spend on their weekly shop and you get people saying they have plenty of money but proudly only spend £40 a week or whatever. I think we should be spending the most we can afford.

However, YABU because food is not cheaper than ever and if it were any more expensive then many would t be able to afford to feed their families

Food may be cheaper here than elsewhere and there are still lots of offers however alot of food has increased in price. I have noticed it when doing my online shop - sugar snap peas now 1.20 at my local big store up from 1.00 very recently.

For me, I can afford increases as I've room in budget. For many others, they can't. This is why the country is full of food banks and community organised schemes. Rather than judging people for their priorities why not just be thankful that you don't have to worry

@EagleOrIgel

Re a £22 shop - depends if it was 'yellow label' or not when we were in food poverty I was going to the nearest supermarket at mark down time most days to buy as much as I could for 10p each. Loaves of bread, veg etc Ok, I understand that. But do you not see that a loaf of bread for 10p cannot be feasible if you think about what went into it's production? You wouldn't get anything for 10p where I live. The cheapest loaf of bread on mark down is about 50p.

I feel like you have massively missed the point. Obviously bread does not normally cost 10p. But someone spending very small amounts of money on food is probably doing so due to eating practically everything at expiry date, either as a moral choice to reduce food waste or due to poverty. They aren't buying full price food for such little money. So the fact that they've done it on such a small amount says nothing at all about the cost of food generally or how much they think it should cost.

YANBU and we should not expect to buy food so cheaply that the people in the food production and supply chain cant earn a living wage and/or work in reasonable conditions.

Might have been better if you’d said other costs need to come down so that food prices can come up.

That I agree with

I am absolutely not proposing people go hungry. I think it’s a disgrace people will have to chose between heating and eating.
I think it’s a disgrace that people have to use food banks.

We punish the poor in this country.

But if we paid food processors a decent wage, then they wouldn’t need UC top ups. The jobs would be filled, but the food would cost more.

I agree with a couple of people on here that we want a lot of cheap things, and are fine when the production doesn’t affect us. But it’s going to now.

Also that the gap between rich and poor is staggering. Yet we all have to eat, we all shop in roughly the same supermarkets.

As a country we spend one of the lowest amounts per household on food. That’s not simply because we are poorer than all the other countries we are not. We are much richer than many of them.

You can I take conscious choices to support the industry so that people who can't afford to don't have to.

I buy my milk from a local dairy. It's far more expensive than the supermarket, but most dairy farmers make a loss on milk that goes through the big supermarkets.
I buy my meat from the online retailer Field & Flower who supply local high welfare meat, pay good prices to their suppliers and contribute to food charities in their local area.
I buy eggs direct from local suppliers.

Not everyone has this choice so those of us who can, should.

@Maskless

Whether people consider food to be cheap surely depends entirely on how much their income is, where their priorities lie, and a great many other variables.

Two years ago I had a lodger who repeatedly whined to me that the dole didn't give her enough to live on, and once or twice she even went to the food bank.

One day when she was out I put a lot of time and thought and effort into researching food prices (using online supermarkets) and then working out a week's menu for her that would cost her no more than £25.

When she arrived home I approached her to give her the printout of the menu and budget, and saw that she had a Chinese takeaway swinging in a bag from one hand and a bottle of wine in her other. She'd blown £10 on one meal plus £8 on the wine. When I remonstrated with her, she said £18 "wasn't all that much" for a meal she really enjoyed.

And the moral is we all see things differently! Our priorities are different, our judgments and values and upbringing, etc are all different.

There is no way I would waste £8 on a bottle of wine, because I don't like it. For a treat I'll buy myself a £3 pack of smoked salmon, and someone will comment that I'm being "extravagant".

That was the type of question I was trying to propose, was that what are their perspectives and spending habits on the current food purchases. Me personally I always prefer yellow label products when ever possible.

@Loveshelly

Food has never been cheaper, meat is unbelievably cheap. Even with a conscious move towards less meat consumption it’s clear that huge consumption of cheap meat is going on.

AIBU to think that we all need to spend more on our produce, especially in the wake of brexit, we clearly cannot rely on cheap labour anymore. So we are going to have to pay more.

All I tend to see on MN is people desperate to get food bills down, then on another thread people fretting they can’t keep heating on all night.

Have we become totally skewed about what are the things we should be spending more and less on.

Where are you shopping? At the 3 big supermarkets I use food is going up and definately not cheap

Of course food costs are going up.

But why do we not blink at a house being worth 90k in 1990 and then 700k in 2021

But we are all up in arms about milk being more than 44p a pint when in 1990 it was 28p pint

Food used to cost us 30% of our income, we had sustainable food production and decent wages. Now food costs us 10%

I do think a lot of it is cultural. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Yet we spend one of the lowest amounts per household on food.

@HalzTangz its a matter of perspective. If you think about all the inputs it takes to raise, slaughter, package, transport and display a chicken how can you reach the conclusion that chicken meat is anything but cheap? Even if its reared in disgustingly cruel conditions and slaughtered inhumanely the price doesnt add up.

But why do we not blink at a house being worth 90k in 1990 and then 700k in 2021.

Plenty of people do. But by definition the ones who can afford to be on the side that gains are the ones with the power to change things and people rarely voluntarily put themselves at a disadvantage.

Food is reasonably priced in this country its true .However many people are struggling ATM its probably a little insensitive .I think you didnt mean it quite like that . So many people are relying on Foodbanks as well . What would they do if food becomes completely out of reach? If you are lucky enough to cover your bills, (and I grateful I am ) then it seems condescending to say food is "cheap". For a MC family maybe ,but SM, low income families ,pensioners ,to name a few would struggle even more surely

@Loveshelly

Food has never been cheaper, meat is unbelievably cheap. Even with a conscious move towards less meat consumption it’s clear that huge consumption of cheap meat is going on.

AIBU to think that we all need to spend more on our produce, especially in the wake of brexit, we clearly cannot rely on cheap labour anymore. So we are going to have to pay more.

All I tend to see on MN is people desperate to get food bills down, then on another thread people fretting they can’t keep heating on all night.

Have we become totally skewed about what are the things we should be spending more and less on.

I agree with you op.

Food is cheap. Too cheap. And as a result we all eat too much, animals suffer because of the demand for cheap food, and we're ruining the planet to boot.

Increased cost will be for wages - fair enough. But not because we'll have higher animal welfare standards. If anything, those will be compromised for trade deals with US, India,China and Australia.

I find a lot of middle class middle income people are happy to pay £100 for a pair of trainers and yet will buy value meat.

I am again not talking about people who have to use food banks. I think it’s a fucking disgrace that in a country as wealthy as our we even have that issue.

The point is, that it can't be sustainable at very low prices.

I just priced up some of simonjt 's list and took the cheapest, supermarket own brand, non organic versions. This is what I would pay:

Olives 150g £1.59. ------- £1.90
15 Eggs free range £1.79.-----£5.95
Dark chocolate 70% £1.49.--- £2.34
Cannellini beans 45p --£1.90 (500g)
Kidney beans 49p
Black beans 49p
Green lentils 49p. --£1.98
Passata 64p. --£1.11
Oats 1kg 75p --£1.51
Crisps x6 55p
Baked beans x4 96p
Penne pasta 29p --£0.67
Garlic 39p. --£0.48 for one
Butternut squash 95p --£5.20
Cauliflower 79p --£3.09
Sweetheart cabbage 47p
Broccoli 47p --£2.50
Courgettes £1.15 --£6.74 per kg
Onions 1kg 50p. --£1.55
Grapes £1.06 --£1.75
Radishes 43p --£1.35 for 150g
Celery 29p
Peppers 92p --£1.55 for 500g
Toms 64p. --£4.17 per kg
Cucumber 43p. ---£1.55 for 1
Bagged salad x3 £1.71 --£1.55 for a 210g bag iceberg
Sweet potatoes 1kg 89p --£3.17
Potatoes 2.5kg 89p --£2.54
Easy peelers 600g 69p
Pears 5 57p. --(£2.46 per kg) around £1.75 for 5?
Peas 900g 55p
Apples 6 60p --£2.14
Bananas 10 £1.38 ----(2.06 per kilo) £4.12 for 10?
Fine beans 1kg frozen 55p. ---£3.01
Veggie fingers 16 £1.39

Yes, food is too cheap. Farming is barely a sustainable industry in the UK. Corners are being cut, livelihoods lost and standards slipping.

But food is one of our biggest living costs and most people can't afford to pay more.

I'm not sure what the answer is.

Remember how we were worried about a US trade deal meaning lots of imported lower welfare meat ? People on low incomes need to eat and I fear that the only food they'll have is even worse than the situation now because local farmers will have gone under and it will be a tempting carrot for Brexit negotiations.

But if food is only 10 % of our income it’s not one of our biggest expenses

If we genuinely have to cull 150k pigs because their cost of production is clearly unsustainable post brexit then we are heading down a dark hole.

What I fear is that the small farms will close. Bought up by huge conglomerates who can afford to lobby the government to lower even further welfare standards.

And people who can afford to spend more on meat especially. Will be happy that the cost of their chicken hasn’t gone up.