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?

That bolognese bake uses 250g of mince and says it makes 8 portions. So 30g of mince per portion??? Bollocks. I'm on a diet and I still eat 100g of mince when I make a mince based dish. My 15 year old DS would eat that in one bite!

You wouldn't even be able to see the mince.

Oh my last msg was meant to be in response to saying that they would struggle to feed a family for £40/£50 a week and that it would include no fresh fruit or veg.

I have no idea who comes up with these stupid numbers. I do follow someone that does budget meals for a fiver which does feed 4 and a normal sized portion at that. But that is ONE meal, theres absolutely no way i could do my weekly shopping on less than £80 and thats using frozen veg instead of fresh.

When you say 'feed a family' do you mean just dinners? Or also breakfast, lunches, snacks, etc?

What a load of crap

100g cheese between 8 people as well, so just over 10g each. They're taking the piss!

On todays prices at Aldi its tricky but if I only had £10 to feed my whole family I would buy:

Everyday Essentials Medium Sliced Wholemeal Bread 800g 1 £0.45
Everyday Essentials Sausage Rolls 480g/8 Pack 1 £0.95
Highgrove Lard 250g 1 £0.50
Dairy Pride Semi-skimmed Longer Lasting UHT Milk 1 Litre 1 £0.69
Quixo Chicken Stock Cubes 120g/12 Pack 1 £0.59
Everyday Essentials Peeled Potatoes In Water 560g (360g Drained) 1 £0.38
Everyday Essentials Chopped Tomatoes In Tomato Juice 400g 2 £0.70
Everyday Essentials Spaghetti Loops In Tomato Sauce 410g 2 £0.38
Everyday Essentials Porridge Oats 1kg 1 £0.90
Everyday Essentials Garden Peas 300g (185g Drained) 1 £0.28
Everyday Essentials Baked Beans In Tomato Sauce 420g 2 £0.56
Everyday Essentials Penne Pasta 500g 2 £0.82
Worldwide Long Grain White Rice 1kg £0.52
Nature's Pick Mini Apples 6 Pack 1 £0.69
Everyday Essentials Parsnips 500g 1 £0.55
Everyday Essentials Brown Onions 1kg 1 £0.55
Nature's Pick Carrots 1kg 1 £0.50

£10.01

Best I could do and I am still a penny over, no drinks – you could probably drop the milk and the stock cubes for something with more calories but here is how I would manage it

Breakfast – porridge all round every day with 1 grated apple split over 4 bowls

Lunch – use half of the carrots and parsnips 2 onions, chicken stock and white rice to make a soup – every day – you could make a big batch for the week

Dinners:
Tomato pasta you could add caramelised onion x2
Spaghetti hoops on toast
Sausage rolls and veg – use the peas, carrots and parsnips
Roast potatoes and beans
Veg fried rice x2

The portions would be small and the meals bland but it would do if you absolutely had to – I would cook all my rice pasta etc in the chicken stock and use the lard for frying and roasting. I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old and it leaves no wiggle room for bin bags, nappies, san pro etc.

Pixie sized portions.

I had a great deal of trouble keeping this week’s shop below £100 for me, one teen and two small dogs.

It wouldn’t mean starvation I suppose but it would lead to ill physical and mental health and a shorter life. No life improvements can be made trying to survive on cheap carbs.

The Workhouse diet is working out to be about a fiver for Sunday, at Tesco cheapest price matched to Aldi. I've not added in the children's milk allowance yet.

Since when did a workhouse diet become aspirational?

Feel free to prove it then.

I still call nonsense on this. Honestly £45 is nothing these days when it comes to shopping. I'd genuinely love to see your menu for the week and costings.

With the bulk meals I've built up in my freezer and my (very full) store cupboard I could quite possibly keep us going with £10 for fresh fruit along with the addition of berries that I've frozen from either the garden or our blackberry foraging sessions (live rurally, there are no cars where we blackberry, worst we have to worry about is dog pee or deer scent marking).
As it is I spend maybe £30-40/week, because I insist on keeping my store cupboard full and like to add at least one or maybe 2 new batch meals to the freezer.
I'm also a vegetarian, so no expensive meats for me, and when batch cooking I use dried legumes rather than tins. We also have a small veg garden and I blanch and freeze anything we can't eat on the day. I regularly scour the reduced section for veg, either freezing them or using them in batch cooking. Meat for the rest of the family is whatever we find reduced and yes I do make the most of whatever we buy. Chicken carcases are used to make soups/stews, the bones are used to make stock (along with vegetable peelings). Potatoes are part baked and frozen. If absolutely necessary I can make my own flatbreads etc. Batch cooked meals with meat in are if possible bulked out with veg and legumes. My kitchen windowsills are full of herbs in pots

Unfortunately my children are autistic so yes we do have nuggets, sausages etc in the freezer (I make a wicked burger). Again if I find them reduced (my co op will occasionally sell off this type of thing for really stupid money, like 20p for 8 sausages) I stock up.

But could I do this without already having everything stocked up, not a chance. Many years ago, thanks to an error I had £10/2 weeks to feed myself with, and because I didn't have a stocked cupboard or freezer, it was extremely tight. I had to plan every meal down to the last morsel and at the end of the 2 weeks would often be left with the choice of a cup of tea with either milk or sugar but never both.
I lost a lot of weight quite quickly over this period, which ok I could afford to lose, because I had no choice but to eat food that was filling but had little in the way of nutrients or pleasure. I didn't taste chocolate for almost a year because I couldn't justify spending the money on it knowing it wouldn't fill.me up.

The fact that these cunts have got some people feeling like they’ve achieved something great if they can prove they can feed a family on next time nothing is ridiculous. They’re encouraging people to see poverty as normal and some sort of fun challenge.

Living on such a low amount of crap food will leave people deficient of nutrients, hungry and I imagine it would be depressing af.

next to nothing

I could comfortably feed my family for £10 this week. That's because I have more than a week's worth of food already in the house and I could use the £10 to splash out on luxuries like milk and fresh fruit. The idea that anyone should be expected to do this on an ongoing basis - and not only not have the store cupboard basics pre-bought but literally never be able to buy them because there is never going to be a week when there'll be leftover in the budget to afford flour or herbs or even cooking oil - is horrifying. And utterly mad. It just can't be done with any semblance of a balanced diet. At a push, it could be done in a way that just about wards off starvation and merely stores up long-term health problems. Great.

There's only a few meals I can feed 4 adults for £2, and they will get repetitive after a bit. Cheapest of all is dal and rice but that's nearly doubled in price (I buy whole grain basmati, gone from £7-12 a sack plus size reduced from 5kg-4kg!

Yup, give it three months and they will all be back to preen about how cold they can run the house in the next installment of how fun it is to have no money and it's all just about mind over matter.

Well it will be possible... healthy and good is an entirely different thing but 'possible' yes.

I was homeless and I lived off bread, spreads like lemon curd, cold tins of beans/spaghetti and poundland multi-packs crisps for periods of time because they dont require a fridge and are cheap. At another point I lived off instant noodles because I had access to a kettle, warm food was nice.

My friend wasn't homeless but she and her mam where broke and ate similarly, often they would get bread and a block of cheap cheese and eat cheese sandwiches single day. For a bigger meal they would get a bag of potatos and cook chips.

It was fairly easily done and we didn't starve to death but no I wouldn't recommend it as a balanced and healthy diet its just what we could get to eat. People have been living like that forever though, its not 'new'.

Same. I'm a pretty good, thrifty cook but I'd struggle to feed our family of 4 healthily on £60 a week, generally I'd spend double that (2 older teen boys).

Race to the bottom incitation from the Tories

I've done it before. Here is my Sainsburys shopping list.
Potatoes 2.5kgs £1.95
Sweet potatoes 1.25kg £1.36
Garden peas 910g £1.45
Free range eggs x12 £2.60
Carrots 1kg 50p
Onions 1kg 95p
Cheese 400g £3
Chopped toms 4 tins £2
Oats 1kg £1.25
Milk 6pts £2.15
Kidney beans tin 63p
Green lentils tin 67p
Olive oil 250ml £2.60
Garlic x2 48p
Bananas 1kg £1
Apples £1kg £2
Fast action yeast £1.30
Bread flour 1.5kg £1.30
Tangerines 600g £1.50
Broccoli 1kg £1.92
Butter £1.79
Peanut butter £1.50
Jam 99p
Large chicken 1.9kg £4.99
Mayo 750ml £1.70
Brand x4 tins £1.70
Basmati rice 1kg £1.85
Red Chillies 65g 54p
Curry powder £1.25
=£46.92

So a little over £45 but still under £50.

Brand was beans!

That's nothing to do with what I posted. The poster was using an article by JM to show that these, "feed a family for a £10" articles are on the left and right. The fact was the article was 18 months old, food prices have drastically increased in the last 18 months and JM was suggesting feeding a family on £20 so not remotely the same thing. So regardless of her being full of shit it wasn't some reasonable comparison.