To think that cooking from scratch is becoming more and more unsustainable?

[AlternativePerspective]

I have always cooked from scratch, and I will be the first to admit that cooking from scratch has always been more expensive than buying e.g. jar sauces etc. However as things currently stand food prices are going up so much that cooking from scratch is becoming more and more unsustainable for many people who are struggling to make ends meet.

And in an era where we’re being told to live healthily, to cut out additives where possible, and to use the healthiest ingredients, while this has always been hard to sustain, right now for many it’s unsustainable from a financial perspective, and people are going to be forced to eat jar sauces, ready meals and various other foods with additives they didn’t want or need.

I’ve just cancelled my milkman because I can no longer justify spending the money, and it’s going to take a lot before I will ever eat ready meals or cook from a jar. But compromises are going to have to be made, and in many instances for some people, it’s not going to be possible to compromise.

In what way do people starve from eating ready meals?

Katy - I expect that there will be those at the sharp end who are left with little more than this for a weekly shop.

If they are to feed their families more than pot noodles what are their options?

this is about prices increasing that much that those struggling with money will not be able to sustain making home cooked food

But not so long ago, there WAS no alternative. People coped. Children ate what was given to them. Previous generations also spent a much higher percentage of their budgets on food. But times have changed and we are where we are. It's a shame in a way, because so many people have become used to instant cheap plentiful food and haven't needed to worry about it before. It's a shock to a lot of people.

Now I’m hungry so off to do some batch cooking!

@Maggiethecat , at that level, I don't imagine you are talking about meals as such, just food, if that makes sense.
In all honesty, without thinking too deeply about it, I would probably buy:
2 packs of baking potatoes @ 42p each = 84p
1 pack of baby potatoes @ 81p
1 bag value rice @ 45p
1 pack of spaghetti @ 20p
1 loaf bread @ 36p
1L long-life whole milk @ 80p and water it down 50-50 (that's something I forgot I did when I made my list earlier)
1 bag oats @ 75p
= £4.21

Then I would buy:
20 sausages @ £1.25
2 tins baked beans @ 20p = 40p
Pasta sauce @ 39p
Frozen mixed veg 69p
15 cheese slices 75p
2 tins tomatoes @ 28p = 56p
15 yorkshire puddings @ 50p
Jam @ 31p
Tea bags 55p
10 fish fingers £1.20
Bag chips @ 99p
Stock cubes 55p
2 tins fruit @ 70p = £1.40
2 onions @ 10p each = 20p
1 jelly 70p (to set in small tubs for lunchboxes)

That lot comes to £14.45

And with that, I would just try to make as many meals as I could, a bit like ready steady cook.
This assumes I have oil, flour, S&P etc in the house, which I might well not have if my budget was only £10-£15 per week.

There's quite a bit of convenience food in there, but there would be, because it's cheaper

If I had the budget, I might add a pack of mince @ £1.89 to the mix.
It wouldn't be easy, and there is certainly no room in that budget for bulk buying anything, no matter how much cheaper it is in the long run.
The range of value items is tiny compared to when I relied on them in the past - there's only about 20 lines, whereas you could pretty much get a value version of anything reasonable 4 years ago.
£10-15 is quite an extreme budget for a family though - a single person would fare a lot better, which perhaps some little bulk buying options in there with clever management.

@Katypp do you mind me asking where you can shop at those prices? Pasta etc has shot up in price recently.

They were all off the Tesco.com website this afternoon @Billandben444

@Katypp - I wasn’t thinking of school lunches included (presumption that kids would get free school meals).

I’d probably replace the fish fingers and chips with mince and try to stretch that to 2 meals - use one portion to make a bolognaise (use one of the canned tomatoes and get another pack of pasta if you’re going to use the other pasta with the jar pasta sauce) and the other half of mince used with canned beans for chilli to be used with the rice.

Since I had rice I’d try to replace something- Yorkshire puddings/jelly perhaps - with lentils to make daal which I could get a couple of meals out of.

Trying to mix in a few home made ‘more nutritious’ meals is daunting but not impossible.

I did say it was a very quick go @Maggiethecat
Dahl would be a good call, but my children would not eat that, unfortunately. I did factor in lunchboxes, but if I didn't have to accommodate them, I would go crazy and buy the lentils as well as the mince!
Looking at the lentils, there's a good example of bulk buying. 500g is £1.15 (£2.30/kg) but 2kg is £3.50 (£1.75/kg). It's so frustrating knowing you could save money but just not being able to afford to do so. £3.50 would take far too big a hole out of a £15 budget, unless you have a family who would eat dahl for a few days a week so you didn't have to buy other things (I wish ...)

We had spag bol on Weds. Sainsbury's ready meals 85p each= £3.40.
1kg spaghetti 46p = 12p for 250g
2 tins tomatoes = 56p
Smallest bottle of oil = £1.70 for 250ml. So that's about 7p but you have to have that much to get the bottle.
Onion £1/kg so maybe 20p for one
Garlic 25p per head, so 5p
Mince - Pork mince is on offer or plant based mince is also £1.75 for 500g
So that's £2.75 if you have the money for the bottle of oil and don't want herbs.

Can people really feed a family of 4 for £10-£15 a week. Isnt that about 18p per person, per meal. I'm struggling to do a serving of porridge with watered down milk for that.

No they cannot and there’s various studies and procurement documents around the demonstrates that actually you can’t feed prisoners or care home residence for less than 40p per meal per person it wouldn’t be legal.

It must be exhausting having to budget down to your last penny for long periods.

The exercise above was just an exercise for me and I don’t know how many people are on that kind of budget. But I expect that a lot of people are turning their hand to feed their families in ways that we can only imagine.

@Onionpatch It's theoretically possible but not much fun. I think it's pretty extreme to be honest, although it was an interesting challenge @Maggiethecat .
It also illustrates how much you spend on bottles of this and jars of that - the things that turn ingredients into meals. On £10-£15 a week, all of those would go out of the window, so your Bolognaise would just be mince, onion, tomato and a stock cube possibly. I would normally add carrot, celery, mushrooms, tomato puree, garlic, wine and sugar to mine, but that would just cost far too much.

Onion - that’s if you’re considering 3 meals/day for 7 days. Kids are probably on school meals and porridge/diluted milk is going to cost a lot less than 40p person each day.
But it’s likely that parents are skipping some meals (lunch or dinner) so that their kids can eat.

Of couurse not, you can not feed a family of four for 10-15 pounds a week (unless you're very, very lucky with yellow stickers). But the point of this thread should be if you're so desperate and have only that how to make that money last longer and not spend it all on one realy meal dinner.
I'm lucky and have enough to feed my children, but my mother was one of those who had to stretch that money to last long enough.

She'd probably buy things like
potatoes - 36p/kg (4 kg - 1.44 pounds)
chicken drumsticks 1.89 pounds /kg (2 kg - 3.78 pounds)
frozen broccoli & Cauliflower 89 p/kg (2 kg - 1.78 pounds)
onions 1 kg - 49 p
long grain rice 0.45 p/kg
one chicken 2.89 pounds
bread 0.65 and jam 0.90 for breakfast
15 eggs 1.29 pounds
plain flower 1.5 kg 55 p
milk 1,2 l 1 pound

I remember she used to make us pancakes a lot because they were cheap and they were are dessert.

I'm not saying this is the way it should be, but she tried to strech that money. And yes we had oven, fridge and cooker.

The only spice she used was salt and pepper and those lasted a lot, I remember.
She would buy sunflower oil to cook. And she would buy everything on sale.

We’re saying it’s extreme but if you have families on that budget then that’s what it is. We hear talk of food poverty but what does that actually mean in pounds and pence to the people at the sharpest end?

Kids havent been on schools meals in the summer traditionally, although I dont know if Marcus managed to change that. And some people on the threshold dont get help at all.

I priced up porridge and 50/50 milk and it was 16p a serving with no sugar/fruit/cinnamon/tumeric etc. I cant see it being very nutritious longer term.

I worry threads like these make people believe it is almost desirable to make dinner for 20p and its just laziness and lack of skills that makes it cost more and it keeps benefits low.

I believe that a balanced, nutritious diet that keeps you full costs quite a lot of money to be honest.

Onion - not at all. As I said , it must be exhausting to constantly have to budget within an inch of your life.

But if you have a family to feed you have to find ways to do it.

Porridge oats is nutritious and filling although ideally added fruit would be more balanced. But at least your child would be able to concentrate a bit better at school without an empty tummy and with a slow release of energy.

I used to have a stand off every morning with one dd over porridge - she hated it and I felt it was a good start to the day (not because she couldn’t have had cornflakes etc).

I eventually gave up but she wouldn’t have had much choice if I was cash strapped.

Yup, several carrier bags of animal feed destined swedes donated.....

Previous generations also spent a much higher percentage of their budgets on food.

in the 1970s a third of homes were council, with council rents at a fair price

food might have taken more out of our smaller disposable income, but the rent was much cheaper

"Then I would buy:
20 sausages @ £1.25
2 tins baked beans @ 20p = 40p
Pasta sauce @ 39p
Frozen mixed veg 69p
15 cheese slices 75p
2 tins tomatoes @ 28p = 56p
15 yorkshire puddings @ 50p
Jam @ 31p
Tea bags 55p
10 fish fingers £1.20
Bag chips @ 99p
Stock cubes 55p
2 tins fruit @ 70p = £1.40
2 onions @ 10p each = 20p
1 jelly 70p (to set in small tubs for lunchboxes)"

I wouldn't buy any of that except tins of tomatoes and onions and probably 1 more of each.
3 tins of tomatoes 84p
Onions 1 kg 49p
chicken thighs £2.40
beef mince about £2.60
Carrots 40p
Courgette 40p
Cucumber 50p
Cream cheese £1
Flour 70p
12 Eggs £1.85
2 tins of chick peas 80p
Tinned tuna £1.25

Sorry ignore my previous post. I misunderstood the original post and thought £15 budget was for after the pasta and rice etc.
That would obviously be a more generous budget!

A very large bag of rice means your per portion price is about a quarter of your Tesco price. Proper red curry paste is cheaper in a larger tub and stronger so you use less. Coconut milk cheaper etc etc. - you are assuming people on a very tight budget are happy to shell out a fairly large amount of money for very large bags of rice and large tub of curry paste. I don't know the cost of these things at an Asian grocer, but if I can assume for a moment, £10 for rice and £5 for curry paste? That's £15, which is a chunk of cash for someone on say, £50 a week budget. It is cheaper in the long run, obviously, but many don't have that luxury - I didn't.

Another thing you may not have if you live in poverty is a safe place to store your large bag of rice / chickpeas / lentils.

If you are living in poverty you are probably renting and not all landlords are good, so you may well have vermin accessing your home, or you are a family of 4 sharing a room in a B and B or shelter and your only storage is one cupboard in a shared kitchen or your bedroom.