Weekly food shop… AIBU or is it still costing more?

[Foodshopthoughts]

Can’t get it under £100 for two of us. We shop at one of the cheapest supermarkets. That does include every meal though, and all toiletries etc. I don’t eat meat and DH rarely. Family of 3 but baby won’t be adding to the cost us for a while due to breastfeeding. I thought prices were supposed to be coming down yet it seems to be going up and up?!

Interesting conversation. I've just added up what we've spent this week on food alone, and it comes to £105.

There were splurges there. We mainly cook from scratch. Don't eat meat but eat fish, our meals hugely vary week by week. I think prices have absolutely gone up but I personally don't find it hard to cook cheap meals that keep. We batch cook a lot and use it.

We make a lot of things with beans, eggs, lentils. Fish is usually about four times a week but there are some weeks we don't touch it if we're bored.

I think prices have gone up on tinned beans and pulses. I buy them dried a lot of the time now, for more bang for buck. Tomatoes are shit even in the summer so we grow our own or grill/fry them if they're bought. We've eaten like this we were students, really. Now we buy nicer fish. So there's an increase but I don't know how some people are getting up into the hundreds a week.

I think if we put our minds to it, we could easily eat off £60 a week. We shouldn't have to. But we could. Possibly less.

For example: Veg soup. Probably cost me £5 and I'd have a pan to last us two days.

Ful medames. £3 two days.

Fish stew. Maybe £8, again two days.

Then fish, potatoes, peas and tomatoes. Probably closer to £10.

Lunches: cheese sandwiches. I make my own bread, not sure the cost but it works out cheap. Cheese and cucumber.

Breakfast: Omelette/toast with tomatoes, mushrooms, whatever.

I think a big key is not to waste any food. Use up everything you have.

We try to use everything and one meal a week is using leftovers, I.e. using up spinach that is going off in an omelette, turning old bread into French toast, use vegetables in a stew, check the fridge for things with short shelf life and devise a recipe around this. We have had nice meals this way and prevented it going in the bin.

This all sounds great but then I dont see how you are getting a varied diet with everything you need eating cheese sandwiches. So I am always sceptical of the I only spend £60 a week boasts.

The best ‘£60 a week boast’ I’ve ever seen on Mumsnet was the one where someone said by shopping in aldi she could feed a family of 5 on £55 a week. Someone asked her to share a receipt and meal plan which she did but the meal plan had eg pork roast but the receipt had no pork and the meal plan had jacket potatoes with beans and cheese but the receipt had no cheese or beans etc. When people questioned it she was saying oh I had that in, I bought that last week, we still had some in, we get a veg box delivered etc 😂

How is it not a varied diet? Cheese sandwiches were one example. I could have soup or egg or all sorts. Mostly we have rice, soup, or quinoa.

I'm not going to list every single thing I could eat because I'd be here for ages. You do also know you can add things to sandwiches?

So I posted earlier on the thread- we spend around £100ish a week for 4 adults or £65 is for 2 adults when kids are back at Uni. And for that we eat really, really well.

Today DH and I did a "Souper Sunday" where we audit all the bits and bobs that need using up, then look up soup recipes (we have a fab box set of New Covent Garden soup recipes books that we picked up in a charity shop for £3).

Main things that needed using up were a lot of cherry tomates that were going a bit wrinkly, the leftover sweet potatoes from a bag I bought for a recipe, some carrots that were past their best and some excess parsnips. I also had a few half used pots of cream/crème fraîche/sour cream that I used in other recipes earlier in the week.

So we made Tuscan Bean soup, sweet potato, onion and corn chowder, carrot & ginger soup and parsnip and apple soup. About 24 lunch sized portions. Healthy, delicious, cost pennies and prevented food waste.

But as I said previously, I have the luxury of time, skills, headspace, storage space, no intolerances and no fussy eaters.

We spend about £75 for two of us in Lidl but I do tend to be in the office for 2 or 3 days and don’t have breakfast or lunch at home those days (free at work). We also don’t eat a huge amount of meat - maybe 2 or 3 meals a week.

We live in Channel Islands so whilst we have lower tax rates, our food is extortionate! I’ve definitely noticed it’s got much more expensive. We are now 120-150 a week (2 adults, 2 kids aged 4 and 6) and yet we cook from scratch and grow lots of our own (we have a greenhouse, polytunnel and large plot). Definitely need to cut back here but not quite sure where.

We're about £70 a week for 2 adults, my partner bulk buys household items though so that generally doesn't include them, only the weekly food.

I can't get mine down to much below £200 a week. Two adults, two teenagers (16 and 18 so adults too really) and a 4 year old.
Prices have gone up but in our case DS is no longer at nursery so I'm buying 3 meals a day extra (I also used to get free lunch at nursery but don't work there now).
£200 is pretty much everything though and includes take away once a fortnight but I'm not sure if we can cope with prices up going up much more.

If you really think that then you're living in cloud cuckoo land....

News today says prices have risen in the last 12 months an average of 2%. It feels like a lot more! I don't think these figures take shrinkflation into account either
https://news.sky.com/story/supermarket-prices-2-more-expensive-than-a-year-ago-as-grocery-inflation-rises-figures-show-13230049

I live alone and my bill is around £100 its drops and rises depending on whether i need shampoo conditioner WUL Washing powder ect, i struggle because most supermarkets only sell things in packets, (i do have a few items i will not compromise on though) so by the time i get round to eating them all they've gone off, ive tried buying from veg stalls just a few carrots ect, worked out similar prices as usually more expensive, so now i cook bake n freeze, nothing gets wasted, im even going to try Nadia's curry made from banana skins.
I do think its not just down to cost of living either, i think supermarkets are raking it in.

The thing is that although they say it's 2% inflation, some products went up way more then that - for example, Tesco's whole roast chicken recently went up to £5.25 from £4, thats like a 30% increase, their own filtered milk went up by like 15% a little while ago, butter has similarly gone up in price too. And I think that's why we feel it more - actual price increase on some items are way above the supposed average price rise %.

It isn't a supposed average price rise, inflation is measured using the specific basket of goods consistently, what you personally experience won't be the same unless you buy that exact mix of stuff

There are things in the supermarket that have gone up by way more than the calculated rate but actually some things I buy have come down in price so we're all going to have a different view