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?

Ah, I see it now. This whole thread is another veiled left vs right one and aren't the Conservative govt terrible etc etc. FGS the election hasn't even been called yet. Please can we give the canvassing a miss until then?

Also, yes the Jack Monroe article I linked to was 18 months old so that makes it less relevant to today (especially as it was in the left wing press where she usually resides so it doesn't fit into the evil right wing press narrative) - thank you for pointing that out @Iwasafool

In an emergency you could stop a family of four from going hungry with a tenner a week. But it would literally mean eating porridge made with water for a week. You could feel quite full on that and it would be nutritionally better than pasta. You could probably afford to add some sort of tinned or frozen veg for at least half the days, to avoid scurvy. But that is clearly not any way to live.

Those articles infuriate me as well.

Like those Tory tw*ts with their subsidised restaurants, endless freebies from brown nosers and well stocked wine cellars have a bloody clue.

Christ I'm a family of 2 (me and my son) and absolutely could not feed us on £10 a week. Let alone a family of 4

That's totally unrealistic unless you eat a bag of pasta a week.

Who wants to eat the same thing every day though? Try to convince the kids to have spaghetti 7 days in a row.

It's dreadful this is even an idea or a topic of conversation.

As a pp said I don't think £10 a day is enough.

I’m bored so just did a quick experiment on Asda website…I now feel very privileged and sad for people who actually have this budget 😥. I’m sure I could be more creative. So for £10.67 you can get : 2 big bags of cheap pasta shapes, 3* big jars of pasta sauce, 2 loaves of bread, 1 packet of ham, 1 big bag of potatoes, 2 packs of cheap cheese slice, 1 pack of frozen veg, 1 jar of cheap strawberry jam. It can be done but bread and jam for brekkie everyday (and maybe lunch), no snacks, drink water, and variations of pasta and sauce/potatoes with veg chucked in for dinner. My kids would soon tire of this and I would be VERY hungry. No money left over for salt, pepper, butter…and not a good diet 🙄. How depressing.

Who do these scum bag journoes suppose is subsidising/stocking the food banks?!

And yes I'm well aware labour and those ruddy turncoats the yellow Tories also often take advantage of people lobbying and subsidised grub. But anyone who is still refusing to admit the damage the Tories have done since 2010 to every aspect of our lives for ordinary people us either delusional or has spent 13 years in a box or a bubble.

You're definitely not wrong OP - £10 for a week for 4 humans is bonkers. But I would say that feeding your pet the cheapest possible food is fine, if the pet is healthy - I feed my 8 year old lab the cheapest tins and kibble from PetsAtHome and she's doing really well. It works out at about £1 a day.

Monroe explained on Twitter "I get an A4 sheet of lined paper and divide it into 4 vertical columns: proteins, carbohydrates, fruit and beg, and the end column is split into two, flavours and snacks."

Great typo in the Jack Monroe quote in that Mirror article.

There's a page on FB - https://www.facebook.com/groups/155365141797826 - which aims to provide suggestions for a person living on 50p a day for food. There are plenty of good suggestions, although they stress this is an emergency diet, just to keep people alive, not a nutritional or healthy one. They've more or less accepted this is impossible now... although there are still lots of good suggestions. But 4 x £3.50 does NOT equal £10 even if this is possible short term.

Fucking right wing press and government.

Isnt that 11p per meal per person.

I suppose you could prevent starvation with that, but not give a balanced nutritious diet longer term.

Just because something is possible, doesn't mean it should be done. I can't imagine what a miserable existence it would be to try to feed 4 people on a tenner a week. Gruel anyone?

it is possible.. lentils, rice, pasta, different legumes ..

If you don't like it, you can always scroll on by. You know why there are loads of threads like this? It's not because Mumsnet has been infiltrated by Labour activists, it's because ordinary people who work hard and are massively being ripped off are sick of being ideologically manipulated into putting up with sh*t. Are we supposed to just put up with it and shut up? No thanks.

Hello Labour!

YANBU. I've survived on £20 a week before just me and that was doable, but £10 a week for 4 is ridiculous.

When I was a student 10+ years ago there was a guy who used to spend £20 a week on groceries and I was amazed. Turned out he spent £20 at the supermarket and ate all lunches + quite a lot of dinners out of the house.

I shop at sainsburys because I get cash back and would struggle to feed myself for £10 a day. Let alone including pets who I wouldn’t buy supermarket food for.

I’ve also seen some of these articles and as you say the portions are incredibly small. It also seemed like they left off the “per person” part of the headline. £10pp is very different to a whole family for £10. If you’re struggling for money I guess selling a story would get you a few hundred ££ for more food

Work house diet 1901
Think it might come to a wee bit more

YANBU.
I follow a great Facebook group called Feed your Family for £20 per week.
So twice as much as your journo thinks is possible.
Even then, most of the advice on there, do now assume you'll be spending more than £20 (although still thrifty).
There is an "Emergency £20 a week plan". It does look like it will just about get you through a week.
But it relies quite heavily on egg mayonnaise sandwiches and "things on toast".
It doesn't look like fun and even the person who wrote it doesn't recommend it long term.

You could just about not starve I think. 28 portions of porridge made with water 90p (35g serving)

7x 500g pasta (£2.80) with a sauce made from 1 tin of chopped tomatoes (£2.45) plus a carrot and an onion (approx £1.40).

2 loaves of cheap bread (£1.50).

That leave 95p I think if you want something on your bread (value jam 39p) but you have no drinks other than water, no oil, salt or seasoning for the pasta meal, no sugar (or even salt) for the porridge. You could ditch the carrot and onion for salt and oil maybe. You could get 2 bags of porridge and have it for supper too. One of your meals is dry bread and water and you get quarter of an onion, quarter of a carrot and quarter of a tin of the cheapest tomatoes as your 5 a day but you could stretch to a weekly banana each with the 95p change. There is no meat, fish or dairy at all and no plant based protein either but there is the precious 95p that could provide some pulses. There is also no fat (you could get dripping and have bread and scrape but dripping is about double the price of lard so that would be better). You can’t have salt, oil, jam, pepper, dripping, banana, pulses, extra porridge, a third loaf, but you probably could pick one. You would be hungry and poorly nourished but you would not die. It’s extreme poverty, not aspirational savviness.

horseyhorsey17 - These articles aren't just in right-wing newspapers. The Mirror have published one about a cook, who I think is called Claire Mortimer, who is a mother of one and puts recipes on her Instagram account. The article is very misleading as the headline is "feed family for £10 a week" but when you actually read it, it is only dinners that come out at £10 a week, and it states "up to a family of 4".

So I would take these articles "with a pinch of salt" (pun intended). Like with the majority of newspapers they need a headline that will grab attention.

No one is expecting you to feed your family for £10 a week.

@Itisyourturntowashthebath

A family of four does not need 7500 cals
A man needs 2500 maximum and a woman 2000 maximum

Wow! That's fascinating. I am tempted to cost that out at modern prices but definitely reckon it would come to over a tenner for that diet for four people.