to think it's impossible to feed a family of four for a week for £10

[horseyhorsey17]

On one of the forums where journalists look for case studies recently there was a call from one of the right-wing tabloids for 'savvy' mums who are able to feed a family of four for £10 a week. This got a few people's backs up (including mine) as I see this as normalising poverty - and the only way anyone can feed a family of four for a week is by using food banks. This isn't 'savvy', it's desperate - I have friends who run a food bank and the bank is on its knees and might actually have to close due to the massive pressure of increased demand, so it's immoral to normalise their use.

I also Googled a few of those 'I feed my family for a tenner/£20 a week' type articles and they're all highly disingenous, the portions are tiny (would at a stretch feed two adults and two babies but not two adults and two hungry teens), were really only one meal a day, poor nutrition and didn't include snacks or drinks. TBH I spend more than a tenner a week on food for my pets - as they don't just get the cheapest food out there as I care about their health - and that isn't weird or profligate. It boggles my mind that people think actual humans can be fed healthily for less than that.

Am I wrong? Can it be done without resorting to food banks/begging for food on local forums (something I am also seeing a lot now)? Is it OK to describe this as 'savvy' rather than a sign of the poverty that's now endemic in the fifth richest economy in the world?

You’re not wrong
it also doesn’t account for people with dietary needs like allergies, the free from foods and alternative milks are expensive

YANBU OP. Just right wing muck spreading.

I'd struggle to do a week of lunches for my teen on £10, never mind feed a family of 4!

That's what I think. It made me a bit ragey.

Yup. And almost all of those £10 or £20 a week recipe lists always include stuff like buy a packet of something, only use one out of it that week and save the rest for another week. So, you might be eating £10 of food but you need more money than that to buy the packets of stuff which you then save for the next week. So, if someone genuinely only has £10 then they can’t even use those menus.

You couldn’t do it even if you bought all basics. It’s ridiculous to say anyone could. Also the cheap basic stuff isn’t the most healthy either.

Even when I was a student 20 years ago, a £10 weekly budget (for one) was very difficult. Not possible unless you have a well stocked dry goods cupboard already.

I managed to only spend £110 last month but I also grow a lot of fruit and veg, which goes a long way (for one adult). No idea how you’d halve that but need quadruple the amount of food.

Agree OP

I don't think £10 a DAY is enough to feed a family of 4 a healthy balanced diet consistently

YANBU. School lunches cost about £12 a week. That gets five meals for one child. Why would anyone think it possible to provide twenty-one meals for four people, including adults, for less money?

And if it is possible to provide eighty-four nutritionally adequate meals for less than the government spends on five meals for a school child, why is nobody campaigning to cut the profligate waste on such luxurious school meals?

Yes! They'd portioned it all out, so it was 10p worth of a (eg) a bag of flour instead of a whole bag of flour. Of course you can't buy 10ps worth of flour, you have to buy the whole bag. And they also assume you already have stuff like condiments, sauces, oil.

It's all such absolute nonsense.

I think impossible and I’m VERY good at both cooking and budgeting.

they are wrong you cant feed a family of 4 for £10 a week. but what these articles do is make people think about how they can make their budget stretch further and give them good ideas about stuff. so many people bin things the minute the sell by date is reached rather than looking at the food, smelling it etc. There are a significant number of people who just dont cook from scratch and buy stuff like preprepared veg. also eating beans and pulses, buying in bulk items like pasta and rice when you can. making leftovers stirfries and soups. I belong to a diet group and over half the group dont cook from scratch. its a huge issue.

Absolutely not unreasonable. It's not achievable and I'd argue anyone managing to feed 4 on £10 a day is doing well let alone stretching it to a whole fucking week.

It's not possible OP, but I don't understand why you and @longwayoff are thinking this sort of nonsense only comes from right wing sources.

What about Jack Monroe who tends to appear in the Guardian? Isn't this the sort of tosh she comes out with?

Also this from the Mirror which I think is a Labour paper isn't it?:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/household-bills/how-cut-family-food-bill-26244799

That's absolute bollocks. Not a chance.

I could probably do it if I made a vat of lentil bolognaise that we eat for the entire week.

I think you could not starve to death on £10… it would get you (for example):
1.5kg pasta
2 cartons of chopped tomatoes
2 loaves of bread
Jam
Margarine
2 boxes of cornflakes
2 pints of milk
3 tins of beans

It’s not a good diet by any means, but it’s not starving. And it’s certainly not aspirational.

But actually being properly fed on £10 a week does seem impossible.

I was a student in 1993-6 and used to budget £10 a week for food. Out of curiosity, I went onto the Tesco website recently (as that's where I used to shop) to work out what roughly the same shop would cost me now. It came to about £35. I am vegetarian and lived off pasta and jacket potatoes with beans during my student days!

Actually, it costs more than ten pounds a week to feed my small dog (allergies). Nobody can feed a family of four people a healthy diet for a week on that amount it would lead to severe vitamin deficiencies, scurvy, god knows what Disgusting to even suggest it. Nobody take the suggestion seriously please.

Yanbu
I see £50pw influencers and think that they've done well. Their kids are usually primary aged which helps keep the cost lower.

Yes - I suppose that would be enough for a family of 4 not to actually starve but it isn't enough and it's not what I'd consider the article title to mean by 'savvy mums feeding a family of four for a tenner a week'.

Pasta with tinned tomatoes, mmm, yummy.

That list isn't enough for 4 people to eat 21 meals though is it and saying you wouldn't starve is madness. Not starving to death isn't a the bar anyone should be aiming for.

You’re totally right.

If you were really really strapped for cash you might be able to manage it for a week to get you through to payday by using what you already have in and buying two loaves of bread/one big bag pasta/a couple of tins of tomatoes/ 8 baking potatoes and a couple of tins of beans. But it would be a really really shit week.

We’re a family of 3 - 1 adult 2 primary kids. I usually spend about £100 a week inc treats, cleaning products etc but no kids lunches - if I was really stuck I could manage on £45. If I regularly had less than that I would be looking at other solutions.

It could theoretically be done (7 packets of 30p spaghetti, a big bag of lentils, three or four cheap loaves and a jar of cheap jam) but there would be very little nutrition, taste, or feeling satisfied. The websites promoting this sort of garbage assume ‘store cupboard’ ingredients and a herb garden - ‘just add some fresh basil and a drizzle of Tuscan olive oil, or add some organic courgettes from the neighbour’s allotment’ sort of nonsense. And of course food is only part of the shopping bill and they also fail to take account of things like milk, tea bags, toilet roll, bleach, washing detergent, etc. not to mention the cost of the energy cost of cooking pasta and lentils 7 days a week.

Total crap.
A family of four needs about 7,500 calories a day. Sugar is probably the cheapest pure calorie source. It would cost £16.80 just to get the basic calories and no nutrition.

Any one who comes up with these ridiculous idea has neither shopped or cooked in decades.