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.

Oh and I’ve tried the milkman twice but had to cancel as they’ve unreliable.

Haha I wasn’t handing out a dinner recipe😁 I got my info from documentaries on poorer (and usually larger) people whose diets are bad, not judging, just saying they’re more expensive ways of eating.

Kids mealtimes is kind of defined by that place they go to all day between 9-3pm

please do not pedal all the keto rubbish I am sure there is another forum for all that nonsense where everyone who isn’t a scientist or doctor talks about their interpretation of science. People who are diabetic should worry about ketosis and those who are not should just focus on eating a balanced diet and not having an excessive sugar intake

kids are fat from processed foods, they aren’t nutritionally balanced, have too much salt and sugar in them. If you fed a kid veg and pasta every day this would be better than chicken nuggets and pizza every day.

It's not more expensive to cook from scratch and it sure as HELL tastes better if you are a semi-decent cook! Supermarket sauces etc are way too sugary, I can't bear them. My husband makes way better bread, pizzas and curries than you can buy except in a good restaurant. Suppose it depends WHAT you cook from scratch - we are vegan and used to being poor from a long time back so beans, pulses, lentils feature heavily. Parsley pesto from a bunch of parsley, oil, garlic. Do buy dried pasta but make it sometimes too. Make our own seitan and sometimes tofu. Naan, roti, chole, dal - all cheap to make. Chilli, stews, obviously. Home-made wheat tortillas and refried beans and a chopped salsa - with homemade guac if you're feeling like splashing out on an avocado - all expensive and less good premade.

I eat more varied now because DH is good at more things and can make them quickly, but I still cooked from scratch and ate healthily before I met him, just a bit more simply.

You do have to be able to get these things though, food deserts are real and not only that but some things are so much cheaper in the Chinese supermarket, Indian store etc and you pay a stupid premium for them in some locations. Costco has been useful for us and we can get stuff there that we used to have to order online (bulk flour etc) but it's largely useless if you don't drive/ have a car which is obviously a privilege in itself.

I still ate the same way before a car though, when I lived in little rural towns and shopped out of the co-op. Not so many dishes, but plant-based from scratch. It was the cheapest way to eat even then.

Haven't read all 8 pages so likely repeating other people. On another thread people were talking about their weekly food budget and mine seemed to be lower than a lot of others (£100 for amily of 5 ) I think part of tat was we cook from scratch a lot.
I can make three loaves of bead in the bread maker a week for about £1.50 , thee loaves store bought would cost more.
I can make 4 pizzas for about £4.
Of course It helps that I have a fully stocked store cupboard.

I've got my mother's old Be-Ro book too . It's the idea with Katie Stewart on the cover.

My mother was an adolescent during the war, so were some of my home economics teachers for that matter (or they were post-war generation - rationing went on until about 1952 I think?) Anyway, I've picked up good ecomical cooking habits from them and am always shocked when I see meal plans on here and people are eating different meals every night, especially things like salmon, followed by chilli, followed by chicken, followed by burgers. It seems really extravagant to me.

We unashamedly enjoy leftovers. (You used to get sneered at by some posters on Mumsnet for saying that!) Or we deliberately cook once and eat twice. And we usually make the protein element 'stretch" a bit. I don't think it's a bad thing if people have to go back to that. It saves on food waste for ine thing.

I'll just add my voice. Cooking from scratch isn't more expensive. Batch cooking will work out much cheaper than any ready meal or jar.

As always, those with privilege can't see it from the other side.

What if your freezer breaks and you can't afford to replace it? Boom - batch cooking is now out.

What if you can't afford to buy butter, sugar, eggs this week but can afford a quid for a pack of shit shop cake?

Comparing high quality shop cake vs home cooked is pointless. If you've got a fiver to buy 'cake, bread and fruit' you can't buy the posh cake - or afford to make a good one - that's the point.

We spend about the same for a family of 5. We get an Odd Box of fruit and veg, meat from a local farm shop. We do do some quick meals but by and large I cook from scratch. I thought £100 was quite expensive, so I’m surprised others spend more.

None of the cheap cakes you buy have butter in though.

Because it is much more expensive. Milk from the modern milkman costs 75p a pint and that’s about to go up. So that’s £3 for 2l vs cravendale which is £2.25, and cravendale is the more expensive supermarket milk, plus there’s a delivery charge added to the milk delivery.

My 8 pints of milk costs me £8. The same amount of cravendale will cost me £4.50.

As for things like pesto, home made pesto might be nicer, but it is extortionately expensive to make.

I make pesto with fresh spinach, avocado and sunflower seeds, garlic and olive oil which I have anyway as DD is allergic to nuts.

I think one key challenge is that making good tasting home-made cake (for example) would use sugar, butter, eggs. Making ultra-processed cake that PRETENDS to taste good, uses all kinds of emulsifiers, stabilisers, flavourings, which are not actually eggs or butter but are chemically manufactured so the mouthfeel and taste is similar.

Ultimately it is cheaper to produce the pretend food than the real food

Ditto the pretend meat, and the pretend cheese.

You don’t have to put all those in. 😀

Banana cake with very ripe bananas that you might not eat uses hardly any butter and only one egg. Just saying.

As always, those with privilege can't see it from the other side. What if your freezer breaks and you can't afford to replace it? Boom - batch cooking is now out.

There are other ways to cook cheaply, for example you can batch cook to a degree by storing things in the fridge although obviously you'll have to use them up more quickly and that may well mean eating the same thing (or a variation of it) again.

What if you can't afford to buy butter, sugar, eggs this week but can afford a quid for a pack of shit shop cake?

Then buy the shop cake if that's what you want, it's not a competition as to who can eat the healthiest or who can go the longest without ever eating anything less than ideal. The scenarios you mention are quite specific, and I think one of the threads that runs through this conversation is that flexibility is one of the keys to the issue.

So don't have pesto. Make a veg curry or a bolognaise instead.

Having a milkman has saved me money in unexpected ways.

I don't need to pop into our local shop as regularly when we run low on milk and come out with a dozen other things I didn't go in for!

We don't drink as much as I'm careful it lasts till our next delivery. We only get deliveries three times a week.

It has cut down our plastic waste massively.

I like the taste and pushing down the foil lid on a fresh pint.

Shrugs shoulders and shuffles on in search of a milk monitor badge...

I think quite a few posters have acknowledged that you need a functioning kitchen, a fairly well stocked store cupboard, and a reasonable basic income , with accessible local shops, and spare time in order to be able to prepare good nutritious but fairly economical meals. I've lived in rented accommodation in the past with an electricity meter and running an oven is extortionately expensive in those circumstances.

3WildOnes

I think cooking for more becomes cheaper per head, so cooking for 5 is cheaper than cooking for 2 proportionally

making 4 pizza you can but several toppings & use them all on the 4 pizzas. But cooking two pizza you need to be more restrictive to get the same value, so less choice iyswim

i used to whip up a pizza dough in bread machine for Dd and make her a simple quality pizza for under a £1 but use frozen ingredients to give variety

a loaf of bread made each day was approximately 50pence but that was 6/7 years ago using flour from a mill which charged £10 for a sack of bread flour 12.5 kilo ( just looked it’s now £13.50 for same size, so still cheaper than supermarket) and they’d deliver the flour locally

i liked the roasted Mediterranean vegetables ( freezer department of Sainsbury) for putting on pizza, with goats cheese or feta

I think - as is usual on threads about cooking from scratch - a lot of posters are missing the point here.
I haven't read the full thread, but I have read up to page 4, and the usual things are being trotted out:
Bought stuff is:

1. Not as healthy


2. Not as tasty


3. Not as good quality

That's not what the OP said. She said it was cheaper to buy than cook from scratch, and I think, in general, she is right.
We're not talking about whether a Charlie Bingham fish pie is more expensive than your own deluxe fish pie with king prawns, monkfish tails and salmon (it probably is), we're talking about - I think OP? - day-to-day items that fill up your family when cash is in short supply.
Every thread about saving money always features someone airily saying make homemade cakes and bread because they are cheaper. A loaf of bread can be bought for 65p and a box of mini rolls for £1.30. I don't think you could produce a loaf of bread or a cake that cheaply. I know homemade is better etc etc etc but in absolute terms, the bought item is cheaper than the homemade equivalent.
To take an example on this thread: 'Making tomato sauce is always cheaper than buying it' and 'Making your own pasta sauce with a tin of tomatoes an onion some garlic and dried herbs is cheaper than the equivalent jar, surely?'
Bought: Tesco Chunky Vegetable Pasta Sauce 500g 70p
Homemade:
Tin of tomatoes (cheapest) : 28p
Half a red pepper @ 48p = 24p
Half a courgette @ 40p = 20p
Half a yellow pepper @ 48p = 24p
= 96p, without adding olive oil, tomato puree, garlic or herbs and without factoring in the cost to cook it, not just heat it up.
I think there is a tendency to completely underestimate the cost of home cooking, but if you do the costings (which I have from time to time) you will get a nasty shock, I guarantee.

I think quite a few posters have acknowledged that you need a functioning kitchen, a fairly well stocked store cupboard, and a reasonable basic income , with accessible local shops, and spare time in order to be able to prepare good nutritious but fairly economical meals.

agree with this ^

plus knowledge of how to cook, where to get ingredients

it would be great to have community kitchens where cooking could be completed, taught, learnt and shared

Katypp There are a few TikTok showing meals under a £1, where the extra ingredients are limited due to cost. Jack Munro’s cookery was based on not having anything but basics as they were living on benefits & didn’t have the extras

Completely agree, I cook from scratch and it's not cheap.