Aibu to be annoyed the food shop disappears so quickly

[toadstool32]

It drives me insane. Food shop arrives and within a day most cupboard snacks / fruit has been eaten. I’ve spoken to everyone on numerous occasions about making things last. Family of 5 plus a dog, spending anywhere between £100-£130 a week. How do you make things last?! (Obviously not fresh stuff with dates but the constant snacking).

edited to add: school lunches and snacks are all provided by school. I get lunch at work too. So this is just home food.

How old are your children? I don’t let mine (pre- and early teens) take snacks without asking, other than a cheap apple or similar. They are allowed toast and cheap jam if they’re starving when they get home from school. If they want sweets or chocolate they can choose to buy them with their pocket money or sometimes I buy a multipack as a special treat and we all pig out together.

Quite apart from anything else, constant grazing is a bad habit to get into. If they’re really hungry between meals (rather than just fancying something nice), maybe they need more potatoes/pasta/bread with their meals.

Yes I think you're right. Im drinking some now in some tea because I opened some for a recipe (dont mind using it in recipes). Its awful.

You could think about frozen, tinned and dried fruits too, that would increase variety and accessibility and might help with price?

i always have some uht in as my kids will suddenly drink all the milk and until recently didn’t have a local shop. They are totally unbothered by it.

I’m not sure £20 a day is much to feed a family these days. Gutting as that is.

I guess it depends what you're having. I rarely spend more than £10 on an evening meal (the exception would be a roast), and breakfast in the morning is toast and fruit, so for us £20 would probably be ok. But I'm not doing packed lunches or feeding hungry teenagers, which makes a big difference.

I guesss it shows how different we all are. I understand having to ration food as your skint, I grew up poor, we didn’t have snacks either, and couldn’t afford fruit, but I don’t see that as aspirational. I also didn’t ration the sweet crap, which resulted in no one seeing it as a treat, and being able to moderate and share.

objecting to other people eating fruit and thinking they should ration is a step too far for me. I’m quite happy for mine to “mindlessly” eat a punnet of grapes or strawberries or help themselves to a biscuit or chocolate bar if they felt like it. No one has to ask in my house, no one eats more than their fair share, and that’s as food isn’t rationed and no one is sniffy or judgemental.

if money is tight, yes rations are needed. But that doesn’t mean it’s an aspirational way to live. Goodness someone on here even keeps the biscuits just for themselves and either doesnr share with their own kids or controls what’s allowed.

I’ve often heard “anyone mind if I habe the last x” I’ve never heard a no, the food in the house is ours, and we are all equally entitled, adults and kids alike.

How old are the 3 kids if it’s 2 adults and 3kids

if money is tight don’t buy snacks

agree a pack of crisps (6) would last one day so do you buy 7 packs of 6 crisps a week if everyone wants one packet a day

strawberries are costly and crap now it’s Sept. Apples /grapes /raw catguts etc

It's not about objecting to others eating loads of fruit, it's about accepting that not everyone can afford to eat loads of fruit, especially the more expensive stuff!

When we were a family of five and our three kids were all primary age, I used to have a snack box for each of us. Did the big weekly shop on a Saturday, and told the kids that the snacks needed to last a week. I always got extra, hid away and topped up their boxes mid week. My DS would eat his Saturday box by Monday, but soon learnt that he had to wait to see if it would be topped up. The other two were good at making their snacks last. They’d swap with each other, which was cute.

To save money I buy Lidl dupes, their mars bar, twix dupes are good and so much cheaper. Fruit’s expensive, so I’d buy dried as well as fresh. Lidl again, little boxes of sultanas etc. treat box was Lidl chocolate, almonds, tropical mix etc.

Maybe try going to Home Bargains or B&M to stock up on the snacks. They often have things that are a bit different and usually a lot cheaper than the supermarkets. Then hide some of it and drip feed it to the cupboard over time!

For a family of 5 eating one pack a day, every day, 6 x 6 packs would be enough, or alternatively a 24 pack and a 12 pack - written like that it does seem a lot of crisps though. 😃
I'm hoping raw catguts is a typo and it's raw carrots? 😆

Wow! My online shop from Tesco s about £60 - £65 a week just for me - although that ncludes a bottle of wine, lots of fresh fruit and any household stuff I might need. My nephew (also solo) spends £75 a fortnight for himself and two cats although he does buy other bits on top of his weekly online order.

£100 for a family doesnt sound much to me.

Lol

Same for me unless I went out in the forest to pick blueberries- then my mum made a cake. But I love my dessert, and so do my children:).

Agree.
Family of 4 here and my weekly order starts with 10 bananas, 10 clementines, 8 apples, 4 kiwis and then an additional rotation of either a punnet of strawberries, grapes, blueberries or a whole melon or pineapple.
If four people eat 2 items per day, thats 56 pieces of fruit per week!

Well the fruit you have bought barely equates to 4 portions per person so assuming your 5 a day is 3 veg 2 fruit that's only 2 days of fruit.

I bought a plug in air popcorn machine from the supermarket for less than £20 as a gift for my daughter. I got huge sack of popping corn to go with it. It's lasted a year and the kids snack on plain popcorn non stop. Sometimes the add a bit of salt or a shake on flavour. Its turned out to be very cheap and fairly healthy. Perfectly safe for my 10 year old to use herself too.

We have one from Lidl. I must get it out again. Thanks for the reminder!

Well we werent poor, just average working class. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner. we were never hungry and wanting.

I was overweight as a child! Mum liked big portions

Im just saying that lacking snacks is not rationing, harmful, or indicative of not having enough money, they're just not necessary.

Goodness someone on here even keeps the biscuits just for themselves and either doesnr share with their own kids or controls what’s allowed.

Hand up, that was me 😂. But it's not because I'm being mean or not sharing, it's because we all have the things that we like in this house, and we tend to stick to our own favourites rather than eat each other's indiscriminately. So the kids don't eat my biscuits, but they do like a hot chocolate with marshmallows instead. One of my kids likes Happy Hippos, so they'll have one of those from a box whenever we're having chocolate. The other one prefers chocolate buttons so has a handful of those. One child likes ice lollies best, the other one prefers a scoop of ice cream. I don't deliberately deprive them!

I've just done a shop and as far as fruit goes I have hoightvthe following for a family of 4.
2 x raspberries
2 x strawberries
2 x blueberries
1 watermelon
9 bananas
4 apples
4 pears
6 kiwi
1 punnet of plums
This will all be eaten over the next week but I will probably top up mid week.

Other snacks bought are
12 pck crisps
Scones
Crumpets
Houmous
Pitta
Greek yogurt

I think you need to adjust your expectations a bit OP.

Same. Big meals, no snacks. Was never overweight and have never been in my adult life. Now 54. Mum would always say no picking you’ll ruin your dinner! There is now scientific evidence ( Zoe) that snacking within an hour or so of next meal, means your insulin response to the main meal is impaired. So mum was right!

And Im quite perplexed at posters who are encouraging or not curbing this mindless eating, never mind that its a box of fruit, doesnt make a difference what it is, habits are formed in childhood, it wont stay at fruit it will move on to more calorie dense food as they get older and mix with others who mindlessly eat their way through crisps and cakes and whatnot

Your 5 a day is supposed to be more veg so no reason why you can’t only have 1 portion of fruit a day and juice counts as does tinned fruit and dried. People obsess far too much.

Op your snacks sound a bit expensive and too processed. I’d just get a sack of nice apples, bananas, some whole juice, sack of carrots, some digestives, nuts and cheese oatcakes . They’ll slow it down, you’ll pay less and they’ll fill up more.

We eat more than 5 a day and I only buy apples , bananas, cherry tomatoes, carrots and whatever is in season for a treat to snack on as regards fruit/ veg. We pick it up hugely in meals.

I’m not sure you’re buying enough, the fruit you mentioned for 5 of us would only last a couple of days.
What I’ve started doing is having snacks in the cupboards that the children can help themselves to, then a locked little cabinet for the snacks that they can’t.
Our shopping bill is approx £120 pw, I was finding I’d put the shopping away and within 2 days the stuff for the packed lunches ie crisps would have all been eaten, then I would replace them at another shop 2 days later and the same thing would happen, which would bump up the shopping bill massively because even if I only went for one item, I’d pick up more….
Now crisps, little cookie packs, dried fruit etc get put in the locked cupboard and in the normal cupboard they help themselves to, they have crackers, nuts and they have a fruit bowl that always has apples, easy peel oranges and bananas.
I only buy 3 punnets of soft fruit, 1 grapes for the fridge, once they have gone I don’t buy anymore, they know to attack the fruit bowl once the more yummy soft fruit has gone. We easily get through 3 bags of apples, 2 bags of oranges and 2 bunches of bananas in a week.