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?

Mine is mainly producing courgettes - I currently have enough of those to feed several families for a while but my kids don't actually like them!

It's an interesting thought experiment on how little you can survive on, and good to know if you need to get out of a hole or save rapidly for some reason. But it's clearly not enough for long term, especially not for the duration of a childhood, where I'm sure you'd see a noticeable reduction in average height.

Ridiculous, stupid claim!

In theory I suppose if you all ate plain pasta every night of the week and a few cans of the cheapest beans etc you wouldn’t starve, but no way anybody could feed 4 people a healthy, balanced diet for that money.

No one could eat for £10 a week for 4. Why do we entertain these daft notions?

Half a packet of mince for 90p? Where is she buying her mince please? Mince used to be one of our staples as it was relatively cheap, tasty and versatile but now I cannot find it for much less than a fiver.

I could for myself. Unfortunately this involves a huge cost to the NHS as I'm tube fed. When you've starved attempting to feed a family for around 12p a meal, the NHS will step in and spend tens of thousands a year to feed you at zero cost to you...problem solved.
Which fucking idiot actually believes this is possible?

It's not possible, maybe it's a very old article.
One thing people are not mentioning much is porridge oats - they're very cheap and filling and can be used for breakfasts and puddings. We're not budgeting but my teen uses them a lot for either overnights oats or porridge for breakfast, with fruit or as a protein shake in the afternoon with peanut butter and banana. You could do it with cheap market fruit, or plain even.

I think that anyone having to subsist on a diet like that for any length of time would be storing up long term health problems due to inadequate nutrition. Vitamin deficiency would have the potential to affect bone density, muscle development in children, let alone what it might do to growing brains. The lack of adequate amounts of protein would affect growth, and of course there is the effect on emotional wellbeing of having such a boring and limited diet with no treats.

I am impressed, however wouldn't a more true reflection of cost also include a percentage of what was spent producing the vegetables and meat you ate - I am presuming there was an outlay at some point!

I am old and was poor in the 1970's so became quite good at managing BUT I had a large garden, access to free wood for solid fuel cooking and cheapish produce from a local farm. My children say they didn't realise they were poor.
But now having retired on a low income I realise what a struggle just existing can be. A few months ago for various ( not self inflicted!)reasons I lived on about £10/15 a week for a few months.And no ,apart from eye tests and prescriptions ( which touch wood I do not currently use) there is little " free" ! I have slightly more to spend now . I hardly eat meat,some fish mostly veg. But I recently noticed how dry my skin is ,how my hair is falling out and how much a chronic health condition has worsened . I think I am paying the price of such a poor diet recently. . £10 is not enough for one person. I worry about anyone trying to live on that for 4 people. We are all aware of the importance of cooking skills ,but can't all afford the fuel to cook. I wonder how this crisis will affect the health of pregnant and breast feeding women,the unwell,elderly,and most of all growing children . I await ( once all the diseases of poverty return with a vengeance) being told that we are wasting our money on booze and takeaways. And that we could all be rich if we were more ambitious, got on our bikes, took a second job or whatever. Totally ignoring the sheer slog and anxiety of just scraping by week after week .

Ask that mum, who uses food banks but can afford a two week holiday to Cyprus, how she does it…

If i. Had loads of free time, made judicious use of discounted items, foraged, shopped the Super 6 and didn’t buy any fresh fruit/veg - I might be able to do it for £40/50 a week. Maybe.

It's impossible. Maybe twenty five years ago, you could have scraped something together for about £30 a week. The idea of spending £10 a week in 2023 is just laughable. It's suggesting that, as a single person, you could feed yourself for £10 for a month!

I wish!!!

You could just about cobble together enough calories for £10 by buying lentils, flour, potatoes etc. But it would be horrible and a recipe for disease and malnutrition in the long term.

I'd struggle to feed a family on £10 a day.

I will read the replies in due course as I always find topics like these really interesting but I completely agree with you.

We've been up against COL like everyone else and it soothes my anxiety to try and plan, and was thinking how cheap we could get things if push really came to shove. I was thinking it would be really tight and basically no healthy snacks, fruit or veg, we could get by on just under £40 a week for 5 of us. But that would be eating the cheapest cereal, plainest sandwiches and pretty unappealing dinners with almost no variation.

We would get enough calories and not be starving on that and I've tried to include foods which meet a wide range of nutritional needs (eggs, milk, potatoes) but there is simply no room in the budget for meat, fruit or veg.

It would be a depressing and restrictive way to live and I completely agree it's wrong to normalise eating in such an impoverished manner.

I could do it for this on Asian vegetarian food, if I bought in bulk and with my current store cupboard full of spices and condiments.

I guess you could have nothing but rice and beans and survive. But it would not be possible to get a diet with adequate nutrition. Especially if you factor in any energy costs for cooking food.

No. As if. The school dinners alone for one child is £15/week - that's gone up almost a fiver in the last year to account for food inflation.

Not possible.
Even a diet of budget lard will not give you enough calories for £1.42 a day.

@fearfuloffluff

I bought individual baking potatoes in Aldi this week, they aren't massive, they were 23p each. So that's nearly a pound for a single and incredibly basic meal - not taking into account beans or veg to go with it. I have no idea how anyone could feed 4 people on £10, maybe one basic meal a day??

It costs me 12.50 a week for my 7 year olds school lunch!

I honestly don't think I could feed my family of 2 for that much healthily...we need fresh fruit and vegetables so how on earth is that possible on a tenner?? Oranges from Tesco are almost 2 quid for 4/5...this is bollucks.

I was thinking that too. Our primary dinners are £2.25. High school similar but canteen style so depends on what they pick.

4 people at £10 a week, must equate to loads of cheap carbs, pasta, rice, bread, but very little protein or veg.

And they wonder why kids are over-weight.

You're so right OP, and not only is it next to impossible to feed a family of 4 for a tenner - why the hell should we? healthy nutritious food should be accessible to everyone, surely eating 3 decent meals a day is a basic human needs.

I saw one of these 'savvy mums' do this on instagram, and one evening meal was chicken burgers, she used four bread roll and two chicken breasts and a bit of pesto! so they had 1 bread roll and half a chicken breast as their main meal - for most that isn't enough food for a meal anyway, but its not exactly nutritious is it??