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?

Well, I have had a tenner a week food budget for a couple of different periods in the past. One was when I was a penniless squatter in London, and I used to supplement my Kwiksave sliced bread and cheap cheddar with food from the Hare Krishna Van and vegetables I picked up off the street when the market was closing.

And the other was when DS1 was about 18 months old, and it was just him and me.

But now that prices have gone up? And for a family of 4? I'm literally not sure that you could do it- I'm not sure it would even buy enough rice and lentils for a family of 4 for a week.

That's Morrisons for you!! Absolute thieving bastards!

Nope.

You always have to have a well stocked condiments cupboard I notice when they talk about "a week" they only mean a Monday to Friday and its never three meals.

You can fed every one a jacket potato for lunch and 1/2 tin of beans with toast for tea .

65p ( 4 baking potatoes) x 7 = £4.55
56p ( 2 cans of baked beans) x7 - £3.92
2 x loaf of bread = 90p

£9.37 ( no butter mind)

A bag of oats to mix with water for breakfast is 90p. Which is over budget.

Definitely couldn't do it here.

Even eating porridge every day for breakfast, jacket potato for lunch and beans on toast for tea. At least this time of year you could get free apples and blackberries in a lot of places. In winter I suppose you'd have to get scurvy.

I've got extremely lucky in the past with discounted food but it's not reliable.

I'd be impressed with £10/day for a family of four. I often spend more than that for two people and a child.

Last year our budget was £10 a week as we had an unexpected bill (prior to this shelves were bare except for long life milk). I did it, personally but it was so stressful and we didn’t get close to 3 meals a day for 4. I was more like 1 meal a day for me and DH and 2.5 for DC

1. Week 1: I got a bag of cheap lentils (£3 for 3kg) and a bag of cheap rice when on offer (£5 for 5kg) to make khichdi, some cheap salt (£1). I had £1 left which I saved.
2. Week 2 with £11: I bought a bottle of oil (£2) and piled up on frozen and tinned veg that was on offer or reduced (ie bent tins etc). I had £3 left of my budget which I used to pay for chocolate for dsd and potato waffles for ds.
3. Week 3: More lentils. Rice was almost finished but there wasn’t an offer to buy more so I padded it out with the veg. I tried looking for roti flour but couldn’t find anything less than £5 so I saved it. DH and I shared our single meal a day so kids could eat.
4. Week 4: with £15 all I bought that week was offer rice, a small bag of roti flour, and longlife milk. At this point the Tesco cashier remembered me and suggested I visit a local food bank. I didn’t realise I qualified as I still had some money and our salary was high and tbh it probably saved my sanity.

Another thing is that often you can't get nutritious food in walking distance. I know you can get deliveries but most (maybe all) need you to spend £40.

Also lets be realistic about food, if you have 2 children and you want to give them a treat do you give them half an apple or buy biscuits that you can give them a treat over a few days.

That sounds very tough @AnIndianWoman

I’ve also been so broke that I’ve lived on lentils and rice. The problem is that it gets harder as each week goes by. You use up all your store cupboard ingredients and don’t have money to replace them. You get demoralised, are hungry all the time, can’t concentrate, think about food endlessly. It’s really grim. Soon you start to look unwell, your skin gets awful, your hair lank and you will lose a lot of weight. For those of you being creative with your shopping lists thinking you wouldn’t starve on £10 a week for a family of four, four actual people, you really would be very hungry a lot of the time. I don’t know how you think you would be able to work effectively or the children study at school. Poverty is grindingly awful. Not having enough food or any food of any quality is completely grim. It’s hugely shocking that food banks are needed in this country but I know many people rely on them so thank god they are there.

But benefits must be enough for a house /roof and food as lots of people don’t actually work. How are they living? Are you saying everyone on benefits only has £10 a week for food? How does someone working only the minimum hours per week feed their children?
I think people need help before they get to the point of having so little left to buy food. What can the public do to help people ? What can people do to help themselves ? Offering more money and food from a food bank is only a short term solution. We need to help people to escape the poverty trap.

Assuming 1900 kcal energy requirement per day per family member (say moderately active, average between adult / child and male / female), for 7 days and 4 people it is 53.2K kcal to be provided. With a budget of £10 for all, it should be 18.8 pence for 1000 kcal energy density. The only foodstuffs (assuming full prices, not reduced or "too good to go" veg boxes from Lidl/Aldi) offering this is cheapest plain white flour, cheapest plain white rice and cheapest own brand spaghetti, even cheapest sugar, oil and lard are more expensive this. So, impossible unless the whole diet is flatbreads and plain boiled pasta.

Increasing the budget to £15 starts entering the minimum viable survival territory, assuming one knows how to bake (sourdough, flatbreads, basic scones with lard). The diet will be mainly pasta with tomato puree based sauces, rice with beans, lots of very basic home bakery, potato salad with cheapest mayo, very basic onion-carrot-garlic for flavour.

On £20 I could probably manage a week so that no one complains much, assuming I can use (non-calorific) spices from my cupboard. But not it is not sustainable long-term at all.

There's a channel on youtube called atomic shrimp, where the guy does challenges like £1 for three full meals per day, with shopping and all. Quite inventive.

But benefits don't meet the minimum requirements for living as part of society. Did you see the guardian's recent articles and letters on deep poverty? Universal credit for a single person without dependent children doesn't meet basic subsistence in many cases.

Mobile shops?

Subsidised mobile shops with fresh fruit and veg to go in to areas where there is only a corner shop, it could be similar to a food bank / community fridge / community shop.

@foolsgolddigger I do like Atomic Shrimp but even he is saying he needs more money for the challenges and he has time, is able bodied, has a full kitchen and knows how to cook.

He also knows how to forage, I could probably recognise a blackberry but I couldn't risk mushrooms.

Even if you can get 28 portions out of two boxes of cornflakes, you’re definitely not getting 28 portions of milk for them out of two pints.

1.5kg of pasta and 2 cartons of tomatoes isn’t going to make 28 dinner portions either.

Stop normalising poverty!

Not everyone on benefits will be living on £10 a week for food. Each individual situation is different. Rent costs are the biggest variable.

Each local authority has a maximum they will pay in benefits towards rent. In my area, for a 2 bedroom place it's around £540pm. Now, I have a housing association property so my rent is £500pm for a 2 bedroom flat. I work full time but if I lost my job then I would get my full rent paid.

But a private rent cost for a 2 bedroom place where I live is £700+. So if somebody was in a private rent and lost their job, benefits would only pay £540 and they would have to pay the rest themselves out of JSA or whatever they were getting, leaving not much left for other bills and food.

Bloody hell. We probably spend more than £10 for the 4 of us most days. If have thought it impossible to do a week on that

Also we don't eat meat so I assume it would be more if we did!

Also puts my back up that they are looking for "savvy mums"

Do dads not plan meals? Or are they too busy at their Big Important Job... that obviously only earns enough to give Mum a tenner 🙄

Having published articles like this the media can then vilify those who are struggling. You'd have £300k for a house and not have to scrounge off your betters if you stopped your profligate spending at Aldi type stuff. Meanwhile their overlords are quaffing champagne and caviar without a care in the world.

No I haven't it wasn't relevant to the point I was making. A poster was saying the £10 a week feeding a family wasn't only in the right wing press and quoted the JM article as something the left wing Guardian printed. I pointed out the article was 18 months old so not a fair comparison with current articles as prices have gone up dramatically in 18 months plus JM was quoting £20 not £10.

I have no interest in her recipes having grown up in the 50s some of it when we still had rationing and was a mother in the 70s and struggled with the inflation we had then so I know how to make a cheap meal but that doesn't mean I can't point out that saying X paper says you can feed a family on £10 a week in 2023 is the same as Y paper saying you can feed a family on £20 at prices of early 2022.

I think this is the 3rd of 4th time I've explained that. Hope that makes it clear.

@foolsgolddigger I do like Atomic Shrimp but even he is saying he needs more money for the challenges and he has time, is able bodied, has a full kitchen and knows how to cook.

I agree, that's what I said as well. I grew up in the third world, and can make twenty different meals out of potatoes, cabbage and water, including dessert and a cocktail. But these are skills that have to be learned.

Having said that, working just 1 hour extra per week on min wage by one of the adults would have doubled the food budget of the said family, so that's what I would be looking as my first option, health and other circumstances permitting - instead of spending the same hour kneading dough or foraging for wild garlic.

I've often seen that this type of thing is actually £10 each when you read it. The eat for £10 is just a headline. With 2 coeliacs in the house it would probably cost over £10 just to provide porridge for breakfast and beans on toast for tea 😫

This is really sad 😞

I guess a lot of it is aimed at single mums. Instead of actually making absent dads pay child maintenance.

For £15 I could do much better but this wouldn’t include nappies, binbags etc.

This shouldn’t have to be done but it is possible and if someone is struggling and sees this and thinks oh I have £15 I can make it work for one more week then I hope it helps.
Also agree with what everyone else has said about pantries, cooking skill, availability of cooking equipment etc.

Everyday Essentials Medium Sliced Wholemeal Bread 800g 45p
Everyday Essentials Mozzarella 200g (125g Drained) 69p
Lard 50p
Dairy Pride Semi-skimmed Longer Lasting UHT Milk 1 Litre 69p
Everyday Essentials Everyday Essentials Rice Pudding 400g 25p
Bramwells Spaghetti Bolognese Mix 44g 36p
Bramwells Chilli Con Carne Mix 50g 36p
Everyday Essentials Tuna Chunks In Brine 145g (102g Drained) 2 £1.10
Everyday Essentials Spaghetti Loops In Tomato Sauce 410g 2 38p
Everyday Essentials Red Kidney Beans In Water 400g (240g Drained) 33p
Everyday Essentials Plain Flour 1.5kg 69p
Everyday Essentials Strawberry Jam 454g 39p
Everyday Essentials Peeled Potatoes In Water 560g (360g Drained) 76p
Everyday Essentials Chopped Tomatoes In Tomato Juice 400g 3 £1.05
Everyday Essentials Porridge Oats 1kg 90p
Everyday Essentials Garden Peas 300g (185g Drained) 2 56p
Everyday Essentials Baked Beans In Tomato Sauce 420g 2 56p
Worldwide Long Grain White Rice 1kg 52p
Everyday Essentials Carrots 1.5kg 60p
Everyday Essentials Parsnips 500g 55p
Everyday Essentials Brown Onions 1kg 55p
Everyday Essentials Fish Fingers 250g 80p
Everyday Essentials Pork Sausages 907g/20 Pack £1.50

Breakfast – porridge, with jam every day

Lunch veg soup made with half the carrots, 1 parsnip and 2 onions, add 100g of white rice and 1tbsp of flour to thicken – and a spoonful of one of the seasoning mixes for salt and a bit of flavour. Make a big pot at the start of the week, It will be a thin soup but there should be enough bread to have with it on some days

Dinners
Pizza -Make flatbread from the flour and water – there are loads of recipes on line, use one of the tins of tomato half an onion and some of the spag bol mix to make a sauce top with mozzarella and one or two of the sausages cut up for a topping - serve with parsnip wedges
Fish fingers - one of the tins of peas, one carrot, and one tin of potatoes – I would roast them in lard but its up to you
Tuna pasta – both tins of tuna one tin of tomato all the pasta – I would use a bit of the spag bol mix here for flavour
Meatball chilli – defrost 4 sausages, cut them open and roll into 4 small meat balls per sausage, brown in a pan before adding an onion the last tin of tomatoes, some of the chilli seasoning mix and the kidney beans serve with rice
Sausages, one tin of peas, one carrot and potatoes – 2 sausages for adults one for children roast the potatoes in lard
Spaghetti hoops on toast – I would use the rice pudding for desert on this day as the meal is particularly small
Cowboy casserole – both tins of beans, any of the left over veg and 2 sausages per adult – defrost and chop the sausages into rounds and brown with an onion, add in the tins of beans and any veg left over bake till everything is cooked serve with rice

this also doesn't account for food intolerances, allergies, picky eaters etc. etc.

Also that came to £14.95 but I couldn't find anything in Aldi for 5p