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?

I don't know anything about benefits but I hope if it was a family of four they'd get more than that. Hard enough for a single person.

It depends on the set up and the earnings et c etc

But Benefits do have different elements for Adults and kids etc.

So let's say a 40 year old mum has 3 kids she'd get the standard £340 and then an element for her kids, the first 2 anyway as there's a cap on how many you can claim for. It's about £315 for first kid then £270 for second.

But, and hers the kicker, there's also a benefit cap to make sure you're quality of life isn't very good. It's a weird sort of punishment and was a vote winner to please the people that like to see uppity poor kids being starved to the point they can't do well at school in case they somehow wanted to better themselves. Some schools step in with breakfast club that make sure the poorest kids get at least a bowl of cereal. 2023 folks... people literally want kids to starve... 🙄

Horrible isn't it. We shouldn't have people living in misery without enough food.

Cost: £2.57 in total, or 32p per person.
Ingredients

• Half a packet of celery (14p)
• Tin of chopped tomatoes (28p)
• 1 500g packet of Pasta (65p)
• Half a packet of Mince (250g) (90p)
• 100g of grated cheese (60p)

Todays prices
Celery =28p
Tin chopped tomatoes=35p
599g of pasta=75p
"50g of mince=£1.32 (1/2 pack of Asda pork and beef mince which is the cheapest they have)
100g grated cheese=56p

Total=£3.26

Or 1/3 of her budget for 5 days, and that's assuming no oil or herbs to disguise the taste of all that celery!

The thing is, I could do it for one week or possibly two- but as soon as I ran out of store cupboard basics I'd be screwed. And if you have to feed a family of 4 for a tenner, you're probably not going to have much of a store cupboard. Or the time and energy to faff around with budget meals. Or the fuel.

yep. There is aproximately £5 worth of cheese in this diet, for one person.

You're not wrong.

It IS possible - I have done it - but it's not admirable or long term safe. We ate rice, daal, porridge, salt, apples, potatoes, and lard.

Over time you get weak. I don't recommend it.

Not to mention the reality that the savvy mum would be going without her meager share so her children got more.

I could not feed myself for £10 a week. The price of basic ingredients has gone up so much. I also have a dog, and her food alone costs more than that.

And the suggestions to 'grow your own'. It requires knowledge, a lot of initial outlay. If you manage to bag a cheap council allotment plot for £10 a year, you still need to make the beds, get compost/soil, all the tools, maybe a shed, poly tunnel, netting... and then you have an ongoing battle with the local wildlife eating your produce, or people nicking stuff when some fool leaves the gate open. Prolonged hot spells will see your potatoes turn to mush in the ground.
I have a large garden and try to grow things, but I have a black thumb and awful issues with executive function. I can't live off tomatoes and courgettes.

I saw a suggestion on MN once... that prolonged fasting (to trigger autophagy) could be an option for people struggling with the cost of living. Absolute madness.

Selling stuff to raise funds could help if you are in a pinch and your situation is temporary. For some, like those with disabilities/long term sick... once you have sold everything you don't use, then what? Sorry, but I refuse to sell stuff I still use. When it is gone, I wont be in a position to replace it as my lot is not going to improve.

We are a family of 4. We spend £6 a week on milk alone. 8 pints full fat for kids and 8 pints semi for me and DH.

No way could we do £10 a week.

Yeah that's what people don't realise until they are genuinely going without for a long time. You get very tired, very emotional, very drained, you feel shaky, you're in constant low level pain from hunger, medical conditions get worse (so if you get migraines, you'll be getting those every day), you catch every bug going, you sleep poorly, you lose your social life because you can't afford to go anywhere and you don't have the energy, you can't think straight, you certainly can't exercise, you feel panicked constantly at the sound of envelopes hitting the mat, you go into a shop and feel truly overwhelmed at the prices, and life just generally feels incredibly futile.

It's no way to live. And yet many people consider this a just punishment for daring to be unemployed.

Yanbu, food and nutrition is SO important. I'd rather go without a holiday than give up eating and living well. It has such a huge impact on who you are as an individual. People avoid learning about nutrition properly because it adds pressure to getting it right but health is wealth and without it you truly have nothing in the end.

Yup, all of this and more.
You look grey, your skin is shit, your hair is lank.

You walk to a big supermarket with your £30 to do all of Christmas, toys, food, wrapping paper, cards, decorations. You see another woman buy a poinsettia and want to cry because theres just no way you could have something so pretty in your house and you simply cannot afford it. You sit outside the shop rejigging the money to see if you can buy a two quid poinsettia. No you cant.

Your asthma is never controlled but you tell your dr it's fine, because you simply cannot pay the prescription charge for an inhaler. You wheeze through the years.

Your only thought every day is christ I'm hungry. You dream of good food, bad food, any food.
You check any notices in any windows as you walk past, like the library has a coffee and cake morning, you go cos it's free, you hang around until the end and pray someone gives you a bit more cake, maybe the last of the cake, so you can take it home so your children get a bit of cake.

You oddly get fat, because you eat shite, dont move much because that requires energy you dont have. And your not too far from starvation levels.

Your kettle breaks, you cry because you dont know where you'll find a tenner for a new one, its water boiled in a pan until the 50p a week you have left most weeks reaches enough to buy a kettle and bus fares for getting the kettle (this was pre internet)
You'd catch the bus to town to buy your kettle and wish you had a few quid more to spend, look at the bargains and sigh with depression. You dont have any money spare to buy a coffee even.

When your fridge breaks, you just give up. Itll take years of saving your 50p a week, but it's also going to cost more in those years to buy milk daily.

I have always said, benefits is enough to live on, until you need an expensive item. When my fridge broke, I applied for an emergency loan from benefits, I got it and they took £6 a week off me until it was paid. I didnt have 6 quid spare. I went without something else instead. My abiding impression of being so very poor is always going without. If not food, electric, gas, we didnt have TV for a long time. I got caught by TV licensing and fined £300. I had to pay that at 1 pound a week. I could not afford to do that again.

Be this poor for long enough, it will fuck with your mind.

Oh and a good friend at the time, also as broke as me, her parents bought her TV licence. I cried that night. Sobbed into my pillow.

The depression from being so broke for so long takes years to go.

We had a period of having very little money but nothing like as bad as the ten pound food budget. My dh had a good job but had to travel a lot and waiting for expenses to pay his credit card bill was part of the issue...which sounds crazy in the context of having no money. But cash flow can contribute.
Having to restrict food shopping is very boring and not at all healthy. Five a day is impossible. A variety of fruit and veg fresh or frozen. Food pyramid...all out the window.

Articles like that annoy me. It's like a race to the bottom and assumes people are just spendthrifts and do not think to budget. No one could feed a family on £10 a week. I've just bought 2 pints of milk and if was £1.25 so that's over a tenth gone.

I used to spend £30 a week for DS and I 20 years ago and food has increased markedly since then.

The feed your family of 5 for £5 also does my head in because there's very little protein or vegetables.

It's poor blaming with the added insult that poor nutrition is good enough for them whilst they have subsidised meals and expenses.

Yanbu, food and nutrition is SO important. I'd rather go without a holiday than give up eating and living well.

People aren’t generally trying to live on £10/week so they can go on holiday, it’s usually because after utilities that’s what they have left.

@RandomButtons I know this is completely irrelevant-but how do you get through 4 pints of milk a week each??

Apart from anything else-how can we describe ourselves as an advanced, civilised society when there are people trying to feed a family of 4 for a tenner a week? It's fucking outrageous!!!

Yeah that's fucked, even so just making the point that I'd rather go without a holiday than scraping on food, because nutrition and a good diet is so important.

I genuinely don’t know! Kids have cereals a lot for breakfast, we drink a lot of tea/coffee then I’ll often cook with it - white sauce, batter, cakes, puddings etc.

I often see people buying a lot of milk and imagine they have strapping teenagers having big glasses of milk with huge hearty dinners .

Ds2 gets through about 2 pints a day, bw cereal and drinks. He's 15 and has grown 4cm in the past 4 months and put on 6kg.

Eat, drink, sleep grow, rise and repeat.

@queenofarles I use250g plus some soya mince to make a pan of bolognese to feed 2 of us!!! Or 500g plus soya mince if I've got guests and4 of us!! It would be very meagre portions indeed on the basis of that recipe.

Think it depends how you're using it
So meat sauce with pasta on its own vs a pasta bake with the meat, plus veg in it, plus some garlic bread and salad on the side
Smaller bits of meat go further then
I buy 500g mince and that does 5 portions of cottage pie for me

The original recipe upthread only uses celery, mince, tomatoes, cheese and pasta. 250g mince between four, which would be a stretch with extras but there aren't any. If you had more money for extras then you could just buy enough mince.