AIBU to be annoyed at this suggestion that £50 per week for food for 4 is realistic?

[MageQueen]

This article about feeding a family of four on £50 per week has annoyed me a lot. https://www.thetimes.com/money/family-finances/article/we-earn-six-figures-but-feed-our-family-of-four-for-50-a-week-fx8w5t9lw

If you can't see the piece, here's a picture of her shopping list.

I mean, the piece is about how a family on more than 100k might still struggle which is fine, although I'm sure some people would take exception to it, but if they're going to profile a family that are a good example and doing a complicated job of managing, surely pick one whose food bill bears some resemblance to reality? That would feed our family of four for about 3-4 days. Tops.

I get that there's a whole narrative about people who seem to earn well but dont' feel rich. Hell, I'm ONE of those people. But this just feels so ridiculously stupid it has irrationally infuriated me! (And don't even get me started on the weekly cleaner and nanny for a SAHM who is skimping, supposedly, on food....).

Just bought 2 bags of shopping. Just a fruit and veg top up and some snacks and cereal and a few toiletries, some fish and 4 chicken breasts - £123. How anyone manages a family shop for under £150 a week I do not know.

I think you could feed a family of 4 on that for a week but there’s no way you’d only spend £50. By the time you’ve included loo roll, cleaning and laundry products, personal care products like shampoo, shower gel, deodorant, and whatever caught your eye in the Aisle of Shite, then you’re easily looking at something closer to £80. Chuck in a few bottles of wine, a bar of chocolate and a bag of Wine Gums and that’s £100 in no time.

But if you're on a tight budget go wouldn't be impulse buying stuff or getting wine and stuff.

Not with your version (My mother said they got more lard than that per person) - it's 38oz instead. And I didn't include cheese at all, which has the advantage of fat and calcium.

We have 2 parents, 2 teens and 2 cats. I probably spend 130-180/week on groceries including non food items. Thats mostly in tesco, but includes an occasional top up in sainsbury or waitrose. And also includes branded items, both food and cleaning stuff. If it was only food, and i shopped in Aldi I think i could probably do it for less than £130.

Can you feed a family on £50 a week? Yes. Is it using that shopping list? Obviously not. I'm a huge fan of Lidl now. Previously were spending £100+ a week at Ocado, at Lidl it's more like £65 inc. nice steak! Family of 3, not 4.

Bloody hell, her shopping list for four (with a few tweaks) would do just me! as would her budget.. As others have said, it’s clearly ignoring anything not food, or what was already in the larder / freezer / husband's meals on expenses etc. A much better approach would be for him to salary sacrifice into a pension to get to just below £100k a year, that makes the 15 hours a week of nursery free, which instantly triples their budget to £150 a week! She could go back to work PT to keep her hand in the workplace, and keep up her pension contributions, and they’d be rolling in it!

But other than the wine gums and chocolate (which might only be a couple of quid) none of that is food, so not really relevant in a conversation about feeding your family for £50 a week.

I don't think even the person featured is claiming that their entire household costs are under £50 a week.

I could cook a weeks worth on that. BUT.......I am pretty sure would not be meeting nutritional goals.
We would also be moody AF, tired, but likely not constipated.

well.... it's probably what you bought....

one whole chicken is just under £4, but 4 chicken breasts is £4.65 - would yield similar amounts of meat. chicken perhaps more...
500g Tesco own is 95p, but Kellog's is around £2.50 for 450g
basa is £1.79 for 250g, Cofresh cod Loin is £8.10 for 280g,
a pack of 6 Gala apples is £1.80 or 6 Jazz apples £2.80 ...
5 oranges are £1.50 - but if you bought a tub of blueberries then it's £4.55

You could easily spend over £22 ...or you could have spent £10 if you chose cheaper products ....

You can stretch a small chicken a long way if it's only used as "flavour" I used to magic chicken. Brought up in the seventies by parents brought up in the war used to small portions of meat. But I had small kids. (Under 8 because they were both still eating meat then)

If you do a roast with lots of other stuff (different veggies, stuffing, etc) you can get away with less meat as there are other things to enjoy.
You then use a small amount of chicken in soups, curries etc where there are other proteins, much like the small amount of chicken in an Asda value tin of chicken curry. (Per person) Bulk stuff out with tinned beans.

You have to have always eaten that way for it not to feel shit. It really doesn't bother me because we were always short of money for food and it tastes a lot better than some of the crap we ate in the seventies.

It also has to be curry/sauce/stew type dishes with cheap veg and beans to bulk it out.

I managed to feed us on about £45 a week, (Two primary children and one adult) about 12 years ago. Doubt you could get anywhere near that now and it be sustainable, interesting, tasty and not take a ridiculous amount in fuel bills. (Daily amount per person was less than dinner money amount at school)

Breakfast was cheap wheat bisks and oats.
Sandwiches and cheaper fruit/salad for lunch
Carrot/onion/ lentil/ dried or tinned beans/magic chicken or cheap pork teas. Beans on toast featured too. Strawberries etc only in season. Value or supermarket own.

Didn't last when kiddo got older.

You could at a push get a weeks dinners if you all eat fairly small portions. But what’s for breakfast and lunch? And drinks?

I can feed our family for that, I bulk buy staples and meat at Costco and top up milk and fruit and veg from Aldi in the week. A kg of cheddar is about £5, a tray of eggs is a few pounds, a four pack of butter blocks is about £6 at Costco.

I do a lot of baking on Sunday make our own pizza bases, garlic bread and tortillas. Bulk make soffrito mix to bulk meals, make our own pasta sauces in bulk. Muffins and flapjacks for packed lunches. It takes me a few hours each week to prep everything but we have halved our grocery bill.

I’ve made butter bean gratins and I’ve used tofu in stir fries and curries etc . He won’t even eat spaghetti bolognaise like he is quite fussy

What😳I spend much more than that and there are only 2 of us in my household both retired 🤣🤣

No I don’t think that’s realistic. I could comfortably do £50 a week just for me, and I feel like I’m really good at food shopping. Much better than any one I know really. That’s only £1.77 per person, per day though. I don’t see how that’s doable at all.

I am doing £50 this week for 7 meals but we have some freezer bits already. If you want me to share I can.

Doesn’t include breakfasts or lunches though.

We have lunch out and breakfast is yoghurt and fruit from Aldi, or toast and jam, or eggs and soldiers.

Here they are…

The cod is sold out atm but that’s a fiver so will get that somewhere else.

Sorry it’s 6 meals, to double it to 7 just add an extra pack of drumsticks for £2 something. I make up double and freeze pre cook to defrost later for quick grab and dump meal like batch lady.

Ingredient list continued…

Family of 7 and our shopping bill is roughly £250-300 a week, that includes breakfast lunch and dinner, cleaning products, nappies, toiletries etc, so half that family of 3-4 would be £100-150 in my opinion, £50 is majorly unrealistic.

The only carbs on that list I can see are some baguette and a packet of rice, and maybe the flour if they’re baking their own pie or bread or cake.

Even if we were at the breadline we’d need way more carbs for a whole week. Even as a lone student, if I really had to save money I’d still have to buy food and would definitely drop things like cream, pineapple, avocado and blueberries to cover things like rice, potatoes and pasta, which you can buy cheaply but makes for a totally unsustainably unhealthy diet. And they haven’t even done that! That shopping list would not cover a whole week.

Absolutely. The Times is a right-wing rag, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch; avoid at all costs. These kinds of articles are intended to shame people who need Universal Credit and/or other benefits to survive. I'm sure that the author of the article received child benefit.

There's barely food on this, unless you're a rabbit

Here is a share link so people can read the article. https://www.thetimes.com/article/93ce52ec-fae7-403e-bb44-0be9226b9445?shareToken=aab35b27d89dd58c1f123ec1d7611fff&ver=article

I don’t think you’re being unreasonable to be outraged at all, doesn’t make any sense to me.

That's what I'd like to know. Being a SAHM is an expensive choice for most people so, when they made that choice, did they not budget for it? We're always hearing about how feckless the Poor are but at least when I was one of the Poor, I had a full time job!