To think this increase in cost is going to break me?

[Yummmyy]

I earn a decent salary. Whenever I go to Tesco for a basic food shop, sone items are going up literally 50p plus within a matter of two weeks. Orange juice was 2.20 for Tesco’s basic, the most expensive 4.30!!

Yes I know orange juice isn’t an essential but when you’re well above minimum wage and have to cut something like that out of your food shop it does make you question what’s the point… anyone else relate to this? I just don’t know where it’s going to end

The increase in the price of olive oil is due to weather issues more than COL I believe. I read on here that it will start to reduce now that harvests are going to be better. It's not something thats happening to all products, the whole of Aldi food hasn't doubled in price

This government wants 10% of England’s productive farmland to be used for solar panels and environmental projects.

I’d also assumed she meant we need to be realistic about what is a “good” salary, a “low” salary and a “high” salary.

Anything below £35k if it’s to keep a family (not just one of 2 salaries or just keeping a single person) kind of needs to be seen as a low salary because living costs have gone up so much it doesn’t have the buying power.

Price rises are only so unaffordable because we’ve not kept wages in line with cost of living.

I think Tesco can be a little more expensive but I tired switching to Aldi and Lidl and I absolutely hated the food. The quality is awful, the portion sizes are tiny and a lot of the time it’s cheaper to go elsewhere and buy the branded version.

Well do it then. Everyone sits about moaning how people should do something but don’t actually do anything themselves.

Find a like minded group and organise something.

Maybe it's doubled in 2 years rather than a year. I know that a cucumber used to be 49p and now it's 89.

When storm Darrah swept through a solar farm locally covering many acres was destroyed. Our wind farms offshore were locked down.

If we're going to have more and fiercer storms then the whole thing is an unworkable shambles.

Food is cheap in the UK relative to earnings. I have lived in a few other European countries and prices there are much higher.

What is different in the UK are expectations and food habits, as well an an innate unwillingness to use up leftovers in creative ways.

Soup and maybe bread are a normal meal in many countries - both for lunches and dinners. They are dirt cheap to make: meat stock from bones and salt, vegetable stock from offcuts (such as the ends of carrots and swede that no one eats), fish stock from fish bones and heads. Throw in a few vegetables past their best before date and some soup noodles. Or blend whatever vegetables with leftover poatoes or mash to make a thicker soup. They freeze well and make several portions - I eat homemade soup every day at work and it's considered odd by some of my colleagues, who moan at the cost of food but buy a meal deal every day.

Stews and pies are are a great, cheap way of cooking with offal, which is a fraction of the price of muscle meat. Speaking of offal, cooking with liver, heart or black sausage is a good way to get cheap nutrition. Again, considered perfectly normal elsewhere but the look of disgust on so many people in my social circle when I mention that is priceless.

Then there is seasonal food. You just don't buy fresh fruit, salad leaves and herbs in winter, you either grow your own on a windowsill, which is very easy to do, or you buy frozen or canned. Buy winter vegetables in winter, summer ones in summer and adapt your meals around that.

And leftovers are made into omelettes, potato-based cakes and pies or otherwise incorporated into another meal.

The whole animal, the whole fruit or vegetable are no longer considered as bases for different foods and only prime cuts are deemed acceptable for meal times. See also wonky fruit and veg - why is that even a thing and not thrown in with general fruit and veg? Because people wouldn't buy it, but why?

TL;DR, I find that a lot of people in this country are not using foods in a way to get the most out of them.

We are being fleeced by supermarkets and Brexit. I live in Northern Ireland and in Lidl olive oil costs over £7.00. Across the border in ROI the same item costs the equivalent of £4.50. It's just ridiculous. Unfortunately I don't live near the border.

Haha give it as rest indeed… Sorry, are you suggesting you deserve black pepper?
That the economics of food production, distribution and retail should have advanced in such a way so that it’s a god given right you can afford it???

The entitlement is just crazy and utter nonsense!
Global markets see a demand and hence create a supply - it’s available for you to buy.
If the price being asked is unpalatable to you, then don’t buy it.
But I have to admit, if pepper was on my list of things stretching out of my financial reach, I’d probably invest more time increasing my earning power than shouting at the clouds about what I’m entitled to vs the fucking Tudors lol what a clown 😂

If you mean the farmland that's only "productive" if farmers are given large public subsidies maybe that's not such a bad idea. Especially, as you can see from this thread, the average consumer is unable and/or unwilling to cover the real price for food production.

I shop at Lidl and each month you get one shop with 10 percent off if your spend is over a certain amount. I wait and buy things like toilet rolls, washing powder, hand wash etc in that shop.

Great post.

I spent some time in Japan pre baby and fruit and vegetables are so expensive. It really made me appreciate how cheap basic food items are here.

I don't think people realise that as resources become more scarce it's only going to get worse. We can sit around bitching and moaning about it or try to be more savvy and resourceful. How much food is wasted in the average household?

Prices will go up with RR NI increases due to start in April and minimum wage is going up quite a bit so prices will definitely rise again in April.

I used up my last swede only last week. I also store in our very cold garage in a brown sack.

Similar to my thoughts upthread.

Another thing that jumps out to me on food threads here, is the wastage.

Can I cook this steak? Would be the thread title. The sell by date was yesterday and will it make me ill if I use it today?

The amount of replies saying, oh no don't risk it, I would bin, it astonishes me. There are always sensible ones saying don't be daft, of course it's fine, but they aren't always majority.

I feel like chiming in to say, well we go to the shop in the afternoon just to buy meat marked down for this very reason. And we are all still rocking and rolling.

So much binning happening.

I dont earn as much as you op.

I do understand that its going to be harder if you have children.
But live alone and childless so i dont really feel the pinch all bills are paid i have no debt etc.

This is another example of the well off having options to save money that the poor do not.

The existence of secure outside space to store vegetables is massively more common as the value of the property increases.

I accept that there are rural poor who have the same option but a flat dweller in a town or city definitely doesn’t.

Ha! There are an awful lot of poorly paid jobs with huge levels of responsibility. And many reasons why people can't move up the career ladder (caring responsibilities etc.)

Pretty much this. Honestly if you even notice the price of orange juice in Tesco then you most likely dont earn a decent salary.

The median salary in the UK is £37k (or £47k in London). If you earn less than that then yeah, youll have to budget. Poor people have always had to budget, since time immemorial

Black pepper is needed as much as salt in my house. Pepper is a basic. I can’t think of a savoury dish that tastes good without it.

I live in the Netherlands but frequently go back home to London. I don’t think people realise how cheap food was and still is in the UK. Yes prices have increased and I make different choices now than I did 3 years ago, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because I really am more conscious of what I choose to consume.

I stopped using fabric softener (washing machine engineer said I was shortening the life of my machine and clothes by using it). I have offset the price increases on my favourite products by switching up what I buy and how frequently.

My income will drop this year and I will have to be smarter about how I spend my money.

£15.40 for 2L of olive oil yesterday, I nearly fainted! It wasn’t even the nice extra virgin olive oil we always used to buy, it was just the Sainsbury’s bog standard one. We’ve now started doing most of our shop in Lidl and just popping over to Sainsbury’s for the things we can’t get (don’t know if they sell olive oil in Lidl or if they were out of stock but it certainly wasn’t there).

Can’t people let this one go now??

When I was a student on no money we used to hang things we wanted to keep cool from plastic bags out of our windows.

I have been without a pot to piss in, and I am still not well off now, though my lot has improved somewhat. You can make things work, even in tiny flats with tiny spaces and shared kitchens. I've done that and still eaten well, even with a baby and young toddler.

Maybe we need to make a thing out of either asking the older generation for their habits when young, or buy the many books that now appear in charity shops on how to keep a household in the 1950s (the era before fridges were a thing in every house and before convenience food took off in the 70s).

Food is just one example, but mending things is another. I had the numbers come off an old watch (almost 25 years old, in fact) recently. Brought it to a local watch repair service, who took the thing apart and mended it - for free. Another service wanted me to pay £200 to get it sent away and all sorts done on it or buy a new watch to the tune of £140. It took the guy 10min to fix the watch and it works beautifully. I mend holes in clothes, use rags for cleaning or making soft toys or blankets for the kids, repaint old furniture to make it more modern, repair jewellery and mend what has broken in the house unless it's completely beyond my skill. Youtube and HowTo Wiki are my two best friends in that regard.

No one taught me any of this. Not cooking, not sewing, not furniture upcycling, nothing. I also work 60h weeks, so I'm not even particularly flush with time. But needs must, and with that I do my bit for the environment and save money.