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.

Option 1: lockable cupboard and dole them out daily

Option 2: make the meals a bit bigger and don't do snacks at all. Nobody HAS to eat between meals.

Option 3: Give each dc some money to buy their own snacks weekly

Option 4: Go on as you are and leave them to decide for themselves if they want to spend half the week with no snacks.

Those are very treat snacks- snacks in our house were: apples, bananas, little oranges, carrots, weetabix, toast with peanut butter, jam, marmite. Noodles, oven chips, eggs, cheese for starving teens. If they could be bothered to cook them. But even plain ordinary food is horribly expensive these days.

I cook from scratch - I find that costs more than fish fingers etc so I disagree. Making DD’s birthday cake was far more for ingredients than buying a shop bought cake.

Hiding food sounds like a bad idea to me as you end up making it a forbidden food that they’ll eat as soon as it’s in sight.

But they don’t know it’s hidden.

I agree. We have fish fingers one evening a week and pizza another evening (along with freezer fries or pasta and veg/salad), as my kids are fussy eaters. Those meals are inexpensive compared to the other meals where I cook from scratch. It's usually buying good quality meat/protein that pushes the cost up. Salmon is £8-9 to buy enough to feed our family, whereas fish fingers are £3-4 and ready-made pizza around £5-6. When we make pizza, that is expensive as we have to buy passata, grated mozzarella and toppings.

Didn't we have this thread last week??

Ordering tons of expensive fresh fruit, then the op's wondering why she's spent so much??

We’re on £200 per week for a family of four plus dog so that’s impressive

Its a complete myth that children turn into overweight gluttons because their parents dont want them or dont allow them to eat their way through packets and packets of processed calorie dense snacks all the live long day

We know that children largely replicate the eating habits of their parents and family. Fat children come from fat households, its that simple.

Nothing should be 'banned' or labeled as 'unhealthy' as such, but just allowing mindless eating is just setting kids up to form bad habits. Children that come from households where its largely whole foods, cooked at home rather than snacky pre made stuff, with a wide variety of foods, lots and lots of veg, tend to have better diets. Its not foolproof, outliers like ND and other issues that cause overeating will affect that, but largely the case.

Me and my son get through 2 punnets of grapes in a week plus strawberries, easy peelers, apples, bananas, and other snacks. I agree you're the obviously not buying enough food for the whole family.

Passata is 60p a carton at Lidl, and mozzarella is 69p per 100g. I make sourdough pizza from scratch, and it costs a total of £3.00 for me, a 10 year old and a teenager (and we're greedy- that's a lot of pizza!) They won't countenance many toppings though- maybe £1 s worth of peppers roasted off in the oven, and I'll usually have half an aubergine and some capers if there are any.

Agree that it's often meat pushing prices up though- I'm vegetarian and we comfortably spend £90 a week on food, including 1/2 bottles of wine for me and cat food.

But people are very wedded to their meat....🤷‍♀️

Ha ha. Yes carrots

my phone often does that

yes 6 lots and be one left over each packet

None of those snacks are very filling so they’re going to eat more. They’re all fairly high on the glycemic index so you’re hungry again really quickly. Try nuts, seeds, cottage cheese, cheese cubes etc with apple slices, grapes etc.

I find threads like this a bit mad. I'm a single parent and I spend about £60-£80 a week on groceries for myself and 3 kids at either Aldi or Asda. Granted we eat mainly vegetarian meals, but I feel like we eat really well and snacks are readily available. I always assume that the posters spending £££ on their supermarket shop every week must be buying loads of red meat and alcohol, or perhaps buying loads of brand named items or something.

OP - my tips for keeping the costs down are similar to others, buy more apples/pears/oranges/bananas and batch cook big pans of healthy, vegetarian based meals. Me and the kids just had big plates of coconut dhal with rice & naan breads, followed by tinned peaches and greek yoghurt for dessert. It might not be super fancy food, but everyone is full and it's relatively healthy!

Breakfast croissants with fruit and lunch was scrambled eggs, avocado, fried vine tomatoes and beans with toast. Snacks throughout the day have been apples, oranges, yoghurts, raisins and we shared some popcorn while we watched a movie. I think you're getting a really hard time on here and it's more than possible to feed your family well & healthily on a budget.

Agree

We're only one adult, one primary school child (but he eats like a teenager) and one toddler. All of us eat lunch at school/nursery. I generally spend about £50/week for home food, snack boxes, etc.
However, we don't tend to have many snacks at home. (We still have sweets left over from Halloween...) I rarely buy fruits out of season and usually shop at Aldi.

Admittedly, when we make homemade pizza, the kids like pepperoni and I'll push the boat out and go for goats cheese and red onion or prosciutto and rocket... which clearly pushes the cost up 😂. We do generally spend at least a couple of quid on grated mozzarella though and I end up buying yeast a lot as I can't find ours in the cupboard (ADHD and kitchen cupboards are currently a disaster zone!).

I wish people wouldnt put dishes down as 'not super fancy food', this is partly what has caused a really negative food environment in this country and also what means people arent able to afford what they think they should be affording

A bowl of dhal, with rice and naan, followed by fruit and yoghurt is a substantial, healthy, tasty, wholesome balanced meal. Its superfoods and nothing to talk down. Be proud of what you provide for your kids and that they're eating fantastic food.

It would be interesting to hear what people are cooking to reach their total food bills for the week. So for us, weekday breakfasts are toast or cereal and fruit. Lunch 2 days a week (we're out the other days) for the toddler and me would be scrambled eggs on toast and chicken noodles or chicken with rice. Dinners would be something like:

• Monday - fish, rice and veg.
• Tuesday - pizza with veg/salad (swimming night).
• Wednesday - pork chops, potatoes, veg.
• Thursday - fish fingers, fries, veg.
• Friday - jacket potatoes with various fillings or toad-in-the-hole.

Then at the weekend, kids would have their usual toast for breakfast, we might have pancakes and bacon for brunch and dinner would be a roast. Sunday is usually pasta - spag bol, carbonara or pasta bake.

I don't find this plus basic snacks undoable on £140-150 per week. Admittedly, that's for 2 kids 8 and under, not teenagers, and I am an uninspired and unadventurous cook so not constantly trying new, exciting things.

If kids want 'snacks' let them buy them with their pocket money.

This

plus I love tinned peaches as don’t like the skin on normal peaches and biting into them get so messy.

Tinned and cut into slices drained - stab with a fork Yum Yum

How do you make the coconut dish that sounds yummy?

Thank you! I mean I feel like that's a decent meal but I'm comparing it to what I imagine others must be eating to spend £2/3/400 a week on food... Steak every night? I have no idea. I was brought up on wholesome vegetarian food so that's what I feed my kids, and it doesn't feel like we're missing out at all. We eat chicken or fish probably once a week.

It's fascinating really to see what others spend. I do buy berries for example but my kids are only little so a couple of punnets lasts a few days. Those buying 40 apples and bananas a week or whatever - where on earth do you store it all?!

Dinners for this week are,

Today: Garlic Honey & Thyme chicken thighs with homemade mashed potatoes, steamed green beans Brussel sprouts, broccoli and gravy.
Monday: One pot Chicken brocoli and cheesy leek pasta with garlic bread.
Tuesday: Cottage, haricot bean & lentil pie with buttered cabbage and green beans.
Wednesaday: Homemade Steak & mushroom pie with baked parmesan mash, carrots & peas.
Thursday: Gnocci, chicken and veg creamy soup with fresh foccacia.
Friday: Chicken & stuffing lattice with roasties, veg, yorkies and gravy.

Breakfast for the kids is either toast, porridge or wheat biscuits, fruit or/and yogurt.

I tend to have a lot of Greek yogurt, nuts, fruit about twice a day max and hm soup a bit especially in winter.

There are fixed things we have to buy for DS9 who has AFRID, food therapy is a daily event as well.

DH has a manual labouring job and cycles lots, DS17 is 6ft4 and goes to the gym, they both have 2 adult portions for dinners, I don't make their breakfasts or lunches but they take a good variety and will cook for their lunch if at home, egg based quick but filling meals. I tend to make flapjacks, cake bars or tray bakes rather than buy things unless they're on offer.

I do resent the increase, in 2020 we were spending about 130-150pw, now it's about £100 more. Food isn't something I've had to worry about since I was a child and I feel anxious atm about how much worse it's going to get and I'm not in a bad position in comparison to many but that worry doesn't go.

Good question about storage, perhaps they have big kitchens or fridges, we dont

But in terms of dietary intake and what is considered a good menu these days to serve up, Im constantly annoyed at some posters on this site who will pull apart an OPs menu because 'its boring', 'my kids wouldnt eat that', 'not enough protein', etc etc

When its perfectly good food. People think that you have to include all sorts of varying non seasonale often exotic foods. You dont. It might be nice but you dont need it.

Its not really about whether fish or chicken is on the menu or not, people think that eating simple home cooked foods, unless its swathed in tons of different styles, world foods, etc then its not good enough.

Jacket potatoes with fillings, things on toast, egg and cheese based meals, legumes and lentils and bean based dishes with rice and potatoes. All wholesome and nutritious.

Also people turn up their noses at soup for a meal. Ive seen it on here tons of times.