To not be able to food shop for cheaper?

[cheesetriangles]

I’ve tried all the supermarkets possible but can’t manage to get our weekly food shop for less than £100.

(£100 is inclusive of all food, toiletries, cleaning products, detergent, vitamins, kitchen/loo roll, tin foil etc)

It’s only two adults eating but we do have to buy some free from products in that. We don’t buy alcohol. I’ve been to all the supermarkets and just can’t do it for cheaper at any. We eat very little meat, maybe the weekly shop includes two meat products that’s it. I wish I could save on this but maybe that’s just not practical with the cost of living? AIBU?

If you are cooking meals from scratch for 2, you should be able to manage on less than that (taking into account cleaning/toiletries etc), if mostly vegetarian.

I should have said that I've been classified as moderately allergic to gluten so eat GF most of the time, though I can have lapses which don't make me seriously ill.

Mines 100 a week with 2 adults a 16 year old and 2 15 month olds, so nappies, wipes, etc. you absolutely could do it for less with just 2 of you.

We are 2 adults and don’t each much meat our weekly food shop is £70 from tesco BUT we do tend to eat out or get a take away once a week so it’s only 6 meals lunches and breakfasts we go to Aldi for our washing tabs and cleaning sprays etc though ( about once a month) and we find our vitamins last ages so not needing to buy them weekly?

I spend about £100 per week on two adults, one cat, and including cleaning products etc. I could get it lower if I had to, but equally there are some things I’m happy to pay for convenience or quality. I save money when I meal plan, especially if I cook once / eat twice, so using all or part of a meal on a second day.

Free from isn't food. Have you looked at the ingredients

Don't be ridiculous.

Have you looked at the ingredients of non "free from" food?

We are a family of 6 (4adults, two children) eating on £140 a week including packed lunches. I cook most from scratch. Son is Gluten free. We get his bread and pasta on prescription. We buy gf wraps, soy sauce, some biscuits ourselves

That's going to depend on what you buy. Durum wheat semolina, water, olive oil, salt. Or wheat flour, water, yeast, sugar salt, calcium proprionate.
Or very different for cheap sliced bread.

I spend around 70£ a week on our food shop, that's for 2 adults and a toddler. I meal plan so that everything I buy gets used up and means I'm not buying loads of separate things, apart from meat, I try to stick to buying things 2£ or under, so unless it's something like detergent, I don't buy if its much more than 2£.

Have you tried cooking in bulk so some weeks you know you already have food in?

Just for my education, is this poster saying that ALL of their food for the week costs £120/week, and that £120 includes "a lot" of Hello Fresh & Gousto deliveries?

YANBU

allergy tax (having to pay more for free from items) sucks.

inflation on food is ridiculous - and so many families are struggling because of it.

CowboyJoanna · 01/11/2023 19:40

I shop around rather than do all my shopping in one supermarket, pricing things up everywhere.

So if some things are cheaper at Home and Bargain, i get them from there.
Things that are cheaper at the ASDA, i get them from there. Also Aldi and Lidl are great.

Other things I do is I only buy the food we need, and if its something with a long date, i stock up when on offer.

That’s great-and £50 in fuel you haven’t considered! Honestly why do these threads always bring out the AldiLidl loving diehards as well. Can we start a thread, “sick to the back teeth of hearing how fantastic Aldi and Lidl are”? 😂

I only spend around that (not including wine!) a month for the 2 of us, both with healthy appetites. I do a lot of batch cooking and very rarely buy brand named goods. To spend that much a week there must be a lot of waste in your house or you're buying a lot of pre-made meals.

Honestly why do these threads always bring out the AldiLidl loving diehards as well

Because they're so much cheaper than the other stores. It's a no-brainer to shop there. There are maybe a couple of items they don't stock which I get from somewhere else, but that's it.

@jd1983 if it's any consolation I do none of my shopping there-and still spend less - I did far too many Lidl shops when we lived in Denmark- ate far too many things I didn't like with the exception of cold meat and cheese and found them depressing as hell- I do totally get if you have kids and like a very full fridge and have pack lunches to do and snacks etc they have their place but as we don't have kids at home and don't really snack or do pack lunches I give them a swerve

It might not be super fun to manage on £100 a week but it shouldn't be hard either. The fact that you mention vitamins sets off alarm bells though. 90% of people don't need them. What other pointless stuff do you buy?

@MrsTerryPratchett, if only one person in the household has the specific dietary requirement could be that. I use a fair bit because I cover my baking trays and grill etc as I can’t tolerate a crumb of gluten so it’s safer that way. You at least know it isn’t contaminated

@jd1983 depends where you live though!
I have Lidl within half a mile, Aldi and b&m next door to each other a mile away and Asda 1.5 miles
All on the same road. Definitely not £50 in fuel

I tend to use Aldi mostly and then Morrisons when I go to get my prescription for anything I need from there

The only shop we don't have is Tesco

@lljkk if you're wondering if that's reasonable with the gousto/ hello fresh I would say so.

We (2 adults and 1 toddler) use gusto which comes in around £60/week. Then a top up shop of around £40-60 / weeks depending on what we need.

That includes nappies, cleaning products and dairy free stuff for the toddler too.

We get a gusto box for 4 meals x 4 portions which means we all have the same dinner and there is enough for me and DS to have leftovers for lunch the next day.

DH takes sandwiches to work.

It works great for us as there is always 4 easy meals I don't have to think about and weekday lunches are pretty much sorted too. Then weekends will be a batch cook, something easy like sausages and mash or takeaway/eat out.

Im very confused how someone is struggling to get a shop for 2 adults under £100!! I know things are expensive now but it's absolutely doable if you eat fresh/cook from scratch, without even needing to scrimp that much.

Funnily enough, people who buy "free from" foods tend to have looked at quite a few labels.

Okay, here's the ingredients of Tesco Gluten Free Fusilli:

Rice Flour, White Maize Flour, Yellow Maize Flour, Emulsifier (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids).

I'm sure you'll jump up and down at the mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, but what that is is a tiny quantity of fatty acid compounds — which also happen to occur naturally in many oils people use in ordinary everyday cooking — which, when added to the rice and maize dough, makes it possible for the manufacturers to shape it into firm pieces that behave much like wheat pasta when cooked. I know that ingredients list might be off-putting to you because it has big words in it (or because you've been reading scare stories about seed oils and/or emulsifiers, which are in tons of mainstream food products anyway) but it's definitely food, and I'd rather be able to have "pasta" once in a while than care about your opinion on my food

Can you not get "free from" items on prescription? Here in Scotland, you get pizza bases, bread, crackers, cereals, pasta etc. That would save you money?

Any chemicals added to food go through a rigorous approval method. It doesn't make something not food if it has raising and binding agents or whatever. Those ingredients will also tend to be in small quantities, so even more innocuous.

I'd rather be able to have "pasta" once in a while than care about your opinion on my food

Right on. Orthorexia/pseudoscientific food paranoia is a terrible thing.

Again-zzzz and I assume you don’t work with time for all this nonsense to save yourself £4.82 weekly? Personally I’d prefer to have a life than trudging around crap stores to apparently save cash. Another thing no one mentions when on the Aldi/Lidl crusade is how much they spend on tat in that wretched middle aisle of clutter!