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.

See the trolls are out.......🫣

Exactly! And the op shouldn’t be making her family feel bad for not “making it last” when she’s provided so little fruit / snacks in the first place. It’ll lead to the kids having a very poor mental relationship with food

Not nearly enough fruit for 5 people! 6 bananas really

I buy almost all my snacky things from cheapfoods.co.uk and lowpricefoods.co.uk. If there's a really good deal I'll bulk buy and put away.

We're a household of 4 adults and 1 teen and my monthly groceries works out to about £500 on weekly shops plus about £50 from snack shop plus £50 on Amazon subscriptions for cleaning stuff if I find good deals. I tend to stock up on cleaning products and soaps, shampoos etc. when I find a good deal.

Just make a whole load of flapjacks (or traybake/similar) at the weekend, and buy cheaper fruits than strawbs/grapes etc. Snacks cost a lot for very little nutrition/size unless homemade ... but then you've got to have the time and impetus to want to make them ahead of time. Not ideal. I have a family of 5 (incl 3 teens) and there's no way I could do a weekly food shop for that little, and I make most things from scratch/batch cook and am not a pricey food shopper.

Just stop buying 'snacks' and ensure that everyone eats well at meal times. Then they won't need snacks. Fruit ok but put on table at meal times.

When my children were at primary school their lunch portions were tiny. Fine for reception, but by the time they were in y6 they came home ravenous and definitely needed something to keep them going. We were often going straight to sports clubs. So instead of snacking we had an early picnic dinner. Usually wraps, cucumber, lettuce, ham, cheese, carrots, hummous. And then some fruit and flapjacks.
If you are relying on school lunches for one of the meals, OP, have you checked how much food they are actually getting? Mine used to burn it off at an astonishing rate.

I really don’t understand all this snacking thing. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner. There might be the odd packet of crisps or something like a doughnut but really and truly we don’t do snacking. We do do good food though and myself my son and his to young boys can spend £180.00 a week easily, we get our meat from the butchers and always buy organic milk etc.

Stop buying they can just take and eat. Buy food that needs a little prep work so it's not like a takeaway. X

as others have said - this is quite a small budget I would guess- we spend maybe £200 p/w on a family of four for reasonably good quality, healthy-ish food.

Simple homemade snack stuff we find not too pricey. Stuff that helps us keep spend down:

Not into too many snacks that are pre-packed and avoiding too much plastic packaging if we can. Apples are in season, lots on our tree or cheap in greengrocers - I chop up a load for everyone at breakfast and put into snack pots. Squeeze lemon to stop them browning. Family eat them if there's nothing else more interesting.

Other stuff like big pot of breadsticks and dips like peanut butter with bit of choc spread in it to hand.

Homemade jam or bought jam on plain greek yogurt a huge hit with the kids - and is cheaper (large pot grk yog) and less packaging than individual little pots of things.

Meal plan when I can be bothered seems to save money. But mostly buy seasonal veg, meat and invent stuff. The hippy in me likes to grow stuff on sills and small containers outside like sprouted salads, toms, herbs, greens and potatoes. Not for everyone - and granted space ( not much though) or time (not much needed of that either) for this but it helps us.

Left over meals are put into tubs for lunches and suppers. Frozen snacks are handy - frozen fruits like strawberries are quite cheap from Aldi. Kids make own smoothies when there's nothing convenient and packety to eat like biscuits - for this reason we try to avoid buying biscuits and crisps (unless someone else does the shop that me lol)