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?

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

@LuckySantangelo35 And the kids? That would be around 7500. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes, it's very annoying. I'm on a FB group that's about saving money generally every week someone posts their budget meal plan for the week and prices, and every week I look at it and a) I shop at Aldi and the prices on their budget are way below even that, so no idea where they are shopping/what kind of meat they are buying for like £2.50 for a chicken b) the amounts they use would be tiny portions for two adults and two children like they claim c) some of the stuff is just a bit grim, like school dinner in the 90s.

We spend £100 a week on shopping for four, which I think is okay really, and that's homecooked food most nights from scratch. £10 a week, not a chance unless we were eating plain pasta or pasta/rice and tinned tomatoes every night. It's just not possible to hit nutritional benchmarks as well as offer children a a varied range of good quality foods for that little.

There's also the question of where is this food coming from if it's so cheap. Where is the meat coming from in particular?

So that's 4500, leaving 3000 for the 2 children between them, who may well be teens that eat more than the parents.

How much would you allocate?

And all this 'one savvy mum's tips' bollocks normalises it all too. Let's change the narrative to 'parent forced to feed family unnutritious cheap shite for £10 a week due to cost of food, energy and everything else'.

This reminds me of people who say oh I could live on benefits. It’s all okay until your washing machine breaks down, or an uninsured driver writes off your car or your window needs replacing or your boiler goes. It’s possible to live on little money for a year or two if everything is working okay. For 3 years plus it’s harder.

Same as the £10 challenge - I have store cupboards full so I can supplement the meagre food and make it appetising. Until I need to replace my store cupboard. Then I’m fucked.

You also need a Costo card at what £35? Transport to get to Costo
And a way of getting a card.

I'm not actually convinced Costo is much cheaper than elsewhere, you have to make that £35 saving before you save anything.

YANBU. £10 per week was my weekly budget when I was a student over 30 years ago and it was tight then. It’s ridiculous to say you could feed a family of 4 on that for a week nowadays.

I hate this kind of thing. People should be able to eat, reasonably and healthily.

Yes, it's very easy to play at being poor. I could feed my family for £20 or so this week probably. We'd eat boring meals and probably be hungry and ratty and tired but we'd live because it's a week and we'd know it was a 'fun' experiment. But every week with no hope of change or improvement? That's a whole other (very depressing and exhausting) ballgame.

The nhs website say 2800 to 3100 for teen boys at the 15, 16, 17, 18 end of teenagedom.

I think you could not starve to death on £10… it would get you (for example):
1.5kg pasta
2 cartons of chopped tomatoes
2 loaves of bread
Jam
Margarine
2 boxes of cornflakes
2 pints of milk
3 tins of beans

i hope we don’t normalise this sort of diet , no one should be eating this and thinking well at least we are not starving.

Mother spends life wandering between between shops and hanging about in the reduced aisle hoping it will be replenished with something which can be cooked with minimal energy so her kids don't starve in scenes that make I, Daniel Blake look like a lighthearted drama.

Thirty five years ago I was feeding two of us for £16. It didn't seen too onerous at the time, but looking back at some of the stuff we ate, it wasn't ideal. We did eat lots of vegetables and fruit - neither of which were cheap in Scotland then. I remember a cauliflower for 75p in the greengrocer and this was 1987.

Agreed! I might even go with 'predominantly female parents forced to feed family unnutritious cheap shite for £10 a week due to cost of food, energy and everything else because the CMS and HMRC, both government departments, can't organise a bit of child support from some self-employed blokes with very nice lifestyles'.

I made a start with the cheese.
23.5oz per week per person which I make 2679 grams. Aldi sells a block of 900g for 4.99, so it’s three of those less a couple of slices, not far off £15 before anything else is taken into account.
I dare say there are cheaper ways to eat, and that cheese was a lot cheaper back then, but the 1901 workhouse diet can’t be done for £10 a week now.

First part of my post should have been in bold as it was a quote from @LuckySantangelo35

When I got married in the eighties our weekly shop for 2 was £15...plus top ups because we couldn't carry everything...plus canteen food for my husband.
The workhouse diet is interesting...I assume they bought sacks of things and benefited from bulk buying.
A costing of ww2 rations would be good too!

Oh, and a special shout out to fuckers who suggest it's for the best that poor kids are priced out of fruit - because it's just sugar anyway - they should be first against the wall.

It's evil and pathetic to say that it's possible. It comes from the idea that poor people shouldn't be suitably nourished. It might be possible if you ate rice and porridge for every meal. But everyone deserves a well balanced diet that won't give them scurvy.

Really? I could fairly easily feed a family of 4 for £45 pounds a week with a fair amount if fresh fruit and veg. Not using any deals.

I still can't believe someone thinks this is enough food for a family of 4 a week

1.5kg pasta
2 cartons of chopped tomatoes
2 loaves of bread
Jam
Margarine
2 boxes of cornflakes
2 pints of milk
3 tins of beans

So each person for a week gets
375g of pasta
1/2 carton of tomatoes
1/2 loaf of bread
1/2 box of cornflakes
1/2 pint of milk
3/4 tin of beans

or per day:
pasta 53g
Tomatoes 28g
1 slice of bread with jam and margarine
a few cornflakes
1/5 of a small glass of milk (17ml)
42g of beans (couple of tablespoons)

To be honest I'm not sure how many days I could live on that for. And actually I think my teenagers might actually starve.

You’d need a magical mumsnet chicken to feed a family of four for a week

The question is could you do it on a tenner. Probably not.

What would you leave out your £45 trolly?

That's nearly five times more than a tenner for the WHOLE FAMILY though.

I could feed them for a week on home made soup. It would be the same soup every day.
They would survive if not thrive.

TBF the poster was only saying you could technically live off it - ie not actually starve to death. I don't think you'd be out running marathons though. Tudor prison diet (well, ish).