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?

Not on a British diet. Asian food is very cheap. Though £10 seems impossible.

£10 or £20 a week for a family of 4 every meal is a load of crap. In the last year or so, my son was complaining so much about school dinners that we decided to take the £12.50 spent on that per week and spend it on packed lunches instead. We do pretty well with £12.50 for 5 filling and nutritious lunches for one sporty and hungry 11 year old boy.

I mean, yeah, the 4 people might survive on the budget for a week, but it's not sustainable.

Depends on the ages of the children. A family of four - consisting of two adults and two teens - would need 8,000 calories a day.

YANBU. This is what used to annoy me about Jack Monroe and the £10/£20 a week shop thing.

When you looked closely it was only possible because she had a big store cupboard to supplement her shop and her recipe portion sizes were tiny. It is playing into the right wing feckless poor bullshit.

For those who say it is possible, can you show us how?

2,550 cal man
1,500 cal woman (I've put her on a diet to make life easier)
1,300 cal 7yo
1,700 cal 11yo
gives 7,000 calories a day needed.
£10 a week allows £1.42 a day for food.
Can anyone find a way to even get near this number?

Supermarket saver ranges please, this has to be accessible to the majority.

It's actually surprising how many calories small children need (not far off woman) and teenage boys (just plain ridiculous quantities for a few years).

Yes you can . You can feed a family of 4 for £10 a week. You could buy one of those 50 lb sacks of spuds and they could eat those. They'd live.

Well, at least you admit that the purpose of the whole thread is for ordinary people who work hard (aka hard working families) to criticise the govt and not actually to discuss food prices 😂

School dinners in juniors cost more than £10 a week.

I managed on £20pw for just myself about 15 years ago. Cheap pack of mince beef was about £2 then, bag of rice and a pack of chilli con carne mix was another £1. That would last 4 nights for dinner. Then the other 3 nights I'd have pasta and pasta sauce. Loaf of bread and £2 block of cheese to make cheese sandwiches for lunch, cheap cornflakes and milk for breakfast. Bag of carrots for 30p, couple of peppers and a cucumber for some veg/salad and bananas and apples for fruit. Then I'd have a couple of quid left for some supermarket brand crisps or biscuits for snacks.

Not varied or interesting but not terrible.

It’s maybe technically possible but it would be very very dull food to eat and I don’t really think it would be sufficient food if you had to do it for more than a single week when you were particularly short

If you had to you could do rice with mixed frozen veg and some egg (less than 1 per person per meal) or pasta with frozen veg and tomatoes to make a sauce. You could do bread/toast with jam with cheapest bread and get porridge oats to make up with water.

£50 a week for a family of 4 for food you can probably manage fairly reasonably ongoing assuming you don’t have special dietary requirements, can afford to run and oven/hob/slow cooker, fridge/freezer etc & have access to them and you have access to shops with cheaper prices.

The issue is for some people you have lots of food in the house so spending just £10 one week could be a fun challenge that means you use stuff up. For anyone who needs to stick to that as an actual budget it would be horrible and they would be the least likely to have stuff in to use up too.

Not impossible but absolutely joyless.

Porridge with water x 4

Pasta and tinned tomatoes x 4

Lentil soup (lentils and a stock cube x 4)

If you ate that all week there might be enough money left for beans on toast on Sunday.

You've got me. I'm actually Keir Starmer, this is how I am planning to win the next election, by posting digs at the Tories on Mumsnet. And I would have got away with it if it wasn't for that pesky BloodyHellKen.

It's not 'impossible'. You can buy a box of cheap cereal for 75p (possibly less, that's just what I buy), a bag of pasta that does 5 portions for 50p (less if you buy bigger bags) and 2 tins of tomatoes for with the pasta for 64p (again, just where I shop). So if you have those kinds of things, and drink nothing but water, yeah maybe you can.

But is it a life I'd like to lead?

Absolutely not.

And the means to cook i, pans and fuel, and the means to wash up afterwards.

I'd like to stick one of these journalists and their family in a council flat for a week. Not a nicely decorated, one the state you have to accept it in with no carpets, curtains, furniture, cooker etc and see how long they would cope with £10.

Bugger, I've got to go to work now, but I also want to cost this up.
Itll have to wait.

I honestly don't think I could feed just myself for a week on £10. And I actually like noodles, rice, lentils, mushrooms etc.

Those journalists are so irresponsible. Even if I could feed myself for one week on the contents of my cupboards, what about in the longer term? You need protein, vitamins etc to sustain good health. Also what about cleaning products, washing tablets, toothpaste etc? It's just not sustainable.

No. It isn't. I've posted a shopping list like that on page 1 (ok, I did bread instead of pasta and chucked in a jug of milk and a bag of apples because my DC are little and do actually need some calcium and somethingfor breakfast) and it doesn't provide 84 meals.

I could feed my family next week for £10. Possibly even £0. All because my freezer and fridge are full! Otherwise no way.

So often they seem to resort to stuff they "already had" to make the meals and, as.you say, its rarely more than a small portion evening meal being described anyway.

Forget anything Jack M spouts, half of it is to bolster her narrative of being so poor she boils soap and uses solar light (thus increasing her massive Patreon and tip jar donations), and the other half is to bolster her other long-running narrative of ‘she does so much for The Poor’ whilst doing nothing much at all. She may as well be a Tory sleeper agent, adding to the feckless poor bollocks narrative of “if you just did XYZ you’d be better off financially”

I’m good at cooking, my kids eat whatever is put in front of them, we have no allergies and I’m good at managing money - no way on earth could I feed everyone well off 10/20/25 a week it is simply not bloody possible.

Sorry, but JM really is full of shit. I don't know why people pay attention to her. It makes me v cross that she is trotted out as some sort of patron Saint of the poor.

lop - It's not all meals, the article I read is for dinners only up to a family of 4, so 28 dinners maximum.

If anyone has read an article where it is for all meals for £10 a week can they provide a link please.

I am obviously not the only one!

I can't even do that for 1 meal, let alone a week!

That's what bugs me - it's how irresponsible it is. Tabloid journalism has nothing to do with objective reporting but about finding some bullshit headline and then making an article fit it, even if you have to bend the truth until it breaks to make it work. There's nothing sadder than selling your soul to Rupert Murdoch*.

*Other evil media billionaires are available.