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....).

So eggs chicken meatballs bread rice

and veg and fruit

might make a couple of meals but def not 16 - excluding 5 for school dinners (21 meals 3 x day for 7 days)

def not going to feed a family of 4 for a week

unless of course it’s a Mumsnet chicken

I totally agree. As a family of 4 who shop at Tescos, it’s an average of £150 per week. That’s without being super careful but equally, I don’t buy much alcohol.

Also they don’t appear to clean their house. Call me unconventional, but my weekly shop does include cleaning products.

I do t belive that because even at £60 you wouldn’t achieve 5 a day , even being 100% frugal . Unless you maybe live in a city an smange to get the yellow sticker stuff almost daily . Maybe . Or if like me you live rural and can grow a lot , we have 20 eggs daily from our hens and could have lost of veggies easily ( we do not as we have 3 kids and one on the way and both work full time ) , currently we only have unlimited apples , cucumber and plums .
Even then as you say our kids are used to different so my shopping is still £200 to £300 a week

The article says they have a cleaner? Presumably they bring their own products. The rest of the time might be a £1 bottle of antibac that lasts a few weeks, a bottle of smartprice washing up liquid and a bottle of bleach. That's about £2.50 that would probably last a month. And in fairness the article doesn't claim to include household products like this, just food.

I do think that one of the issues with budgeting for food shops is that supermarkets have become a one stop shop for so many things now. In many ways that is good, but when I look at my receipts I don't just see money spent on food, it also includes nappies, wipes, shampoo, calpol, dishwasher tablets, bin bags etc. Even more so if you shop in store and not online, I will often pick up any bits of clothes we need for the kids e.g. school socks, there might be a treat in there like a magazine. So you come home and think oh gosh food I've spent £150 this week! But actually only £100 was on food and the rest was on other stuff. It makes people think they're spending more on food than they actually are, but all the non-food items add up really quickly.

380-400 per week?

That is true.
im guessing I spend £120 on food for a family of 4 in a week. I don’t budget but equally I don’t buy alcohol.
£50 is insane - as illustrated by all the meatball posts.

Total BS.
Even at uni 30 years ago my bill was £20 per week for one person. I bought fruit and veg, only ready meals I bought were fishfingers and sometimes dehydrated bean feast packets (the bolognese was so good!). Had a lot of tuna pasta etc.
We are a family of 4 adults when we’re all here and I spend approx £100 per week, I don’t buy snacks really - some plain crisps, nuts, or I bake. Cook mostly from scratch, we eat a lot of eggs. Eat chicken 1-2 x a week, no red meat but a good amount of fish.

Oh my god her insta is awful. Vapid, hyper, full of fake dilemmas, and either he is on much more than £100k or they have lots of family financial help.
The Times article itself looks like boilerplate AI. Milly’s friend Bunty clearly works at the Times and has got her a tone-deaf poverty cosplay placement article.

Yeah right that will feed a family of 4 for a week.

One whole chicken and 12 meatballs! Eggs, tofu and lentils. Lots of fruit and veg tho to make the receipt look healthy.

I can see maybe 4/5 meals there. The 12 meatballs aren't going to go very far for 4 people. I would serve my 8 year old daughter maybe 3 meatballs. My husband and teenage son could eat at least 5 each but still be hungry. No pasta on the list! Just seems like a fake planned receipt to look good, but not real reflection on what a family of 4 can eat.

I have been to Aldi and spend £50 just picking a few bits up! Aldi, not M&S!

Times should be ashamed if that’s the best their AI can come up with…

Just 2 adults here, same as you, cook everything from scratch, veg from allotmen, and wine. Not nearly enough wine. Also £400 pm

I bet she was supplementing with freezer bits, stuff from the cupboards, and dare I say it, at least one take-away? It's easy to budget shop for ONE week, even ONE month isn't too difficult if you're starting from a place of plenty. As others have pointed out, doing this for months on end is tiring, mind-numbing, and there WILL be days of no meals. As a poor person, I have to feed and provide basic toiletries and house cleaning stuff for two on currently 42 a MONTH. It IS doable, at the moment, but our health is suffering ( been living like this for almost 8 months now) we often skip a meal, and it's grinding...hard to keep feeling positive, come up with alternatives etc when you're constantly tired, hungry, cold and every shop have to put things back with the constant price rises.

No sorry 4 weekly 🫣 max 100.00 a week for 6.

It's a right wing rag. What did you expect? They lie all the time.

What gets me is this is doing it 'on the cheap' but gets premade meatballs, chicken in a bag and expensive options like pineapple and avocados.
Looking at that they will be living on soup and fruit salad.
Would be interested in the fish cake recipe as there's no fish or potato on the list

I don’t mean to sound disrespectful but I honestly think my child would rather starve than eat butter beans and tofu

We survived on a fortnightly shop of around £60 to £70 for a family of two adults and two children HOWEVER, that doesn't include meat (my mother very kindly gets this for us in bulk every 2/3 months), so not sure how this article came to such a ridiculous conclusion???

Butter beans are great! I stick a tin in my chilli con carne, as well as a tin of kidney beans. The butter beans are probably nicer. (And could be even cheaper if I bought dried instead of tinned).

You absolutely would achieve 5 a day, root veg, dhal, bean stews all count which is what a lot of cheap food would be

These type of articles reminds me of those jamie oliver books and tv series about making meals for a pound a head, but it's only possible if you have a vast pantry of herbs, spices etc...nonsense..

Well I dont include those when thinking about or calculating the weekly food shop...

How do you cook your butter beans/tofu though?

Not with meat and snacks , come on just schools snacks alone laid break butter cheese ham etc cost that .

Geez The Times have lost the plot.
That article is absurd, and also grossly offensive to those of us who are actually struggling to make ends meet despite both parents working.