Excuse me but HOW is this a £28 shop???

[PeachesoutinGeorgia]

I bought like 8 items … in ASDA? And I spent £18 on fruit and eggs in M&S shortly before which will probably last about 3 days.

Granted it’s a nice establishment but fruit elsewhere is shockingly bad and you pay like 80% of the price anyway so you may as well get the nice stuff.

Regardless £46 for a couple of days and I didn’t even get anything for me. I probably just won’t eat to be honest, maybe have some leftover egg bites and nuggets.

Literally, how are you all doing out there?

Am I surprised? No.
I don't buy much processed stuff, but when I do I really notice how much more it costs than my usual stuff.

I spend about £70/week for two adults and a child. Meat is from the butcher's. In terms of your shopping, I'm not sure I would buy ANY of the things in your basket!

I do buy high quality food, but for things like oil and tinned tomatoes etc I try and bulk buy when it's on offer.

I ditched lint rollers and bought this instead

https://www.amazon.co.uk/OXO-FurLifter-Garment-Removing-Clothing/dp/B01DF316EC/ref=asc_df_B01DF316EC/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=232328122683&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4471620023454319090&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9050359&hvtargid=pla-348082951169&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

I must admit I do prefer reduced items where possible especially when it's premium brands, get to eat like a king for 5 mins so to speak.

That said I'll take your perspectives on board, very much appreciated thank you.

To keep our food shop down we now get 2 of aldis too good to go boxes a week and then meal plan around it. The boxes are €4 each(I'm in Ireland) and between the last 2 boxes we got a big hunk of beef for roasting, 2 steaks, 2 packs of salmon, 2 packs of chicken, 2 pack of prawns some burgers, 2xpizzas and some fish cakes. As well as some fruit and veg like spinach, loads of oranges and blueberries etc. So all of that was €8(just the steaks and the beef would have cost us €28 full price 😱) and we will do a shop tomorrow planned around it. We've gone from never really buying meat because it is so expensive to always having some in the freezer. If you aren't fussy and can adapt to whatever then i would really recommend it.

The sort labelled “ripen at home”, except it just goes straight from hard to wrinkly and mouldy but never ripens? No thanks.

@ShadyPaws BUT HOW 😩

A couple of people have mentioned about the cost of Weetabix, since when did it get that expensive?!?!? I think I just not have noticed prices of bits creep up until this shop today.

@BarbaraofSeville Really??? How interesting! I did have a look at the cheaper ones to be fair but I always feel bad for the chickens and feel somehow Birdseye chickens may have a had a better life 😬

@Sugarcoatt I totally agree. And I disagree with.many comments about Aldi and Lidl - I used them a lot when we lived in Denmark and some of it was fine- but some of it disgustingly bad and poor quality food - I think a lot of people work on the pile it high mentality, and really aren't foodies . I think you have to be selective and I do realise for many its all about the price so I get that.

No. Just like cheaper chickens, Birdseye chickens are intensively reared (kept in barns with around 2 birds per square metre) and in no way a welfare-friendly choice. They don’t get to go outside at any point in their lives and they live for around six weeks instead of their natural lifespan of 5+ years. If you want birds that have had a semi-decent life look for organic.

Sweet but naive.

The simple fact is that the meat for nuggets is bought in en masse and while yes it could come from nice farm yard chickens who had a nice life,, chances are it didnt.

If you want ethical nuggets, buy free range chicken and make your own. Dont have the time? Either dont buy nuggets or come to peace with the fact that cheaper food comes at a cost. What is in that bag of birdseye stuff if made in the same place with the same ingredients as many other bags of nuggets, they have just slapped a premium on the price because some people thing "brand is better".

I say this kindly, not at all being horrible, but do some research. Have a look at what is made where and with what and how. It can be a real eye opener. sometimes big brands can be the least ethical.

@PeachesoutinGeorgia

You are a marketers dream.

You say that you bought things because they had the red "THIS ON OFFER!!!" label next them.....

I work in a supermarket. My colleagues and I discuss what will be on offer within the next couple of weeks based on how much the price has hiked. So for example a jar of £2 marmalade will suddenly jump to £2.95 for a couple of weeks then suddenly it will be on offer at £1.95 with "SAVE £1" on the label next to it. And you look at that and think "Ooh thats a good offer" and buy it, without thinking what it cost a month ago or comparing it to other brands/own brands in terms of cost and ingredients.

At work we have had thing be "on offer" then go back to pre offer hiked price for a week and then drop to lower than the offer price. The marketers know just how easy a red label draws people in.

Keep and eye on what you normally buy and the cost. If you do that over a couple of months you will see the fluctuations. Its now a kind of hobby of mine to spot future reductions simply by how much the price of something has gone up week by week.

Oh another one....look at price per kilo.

I never buy stewing beef at the supermarket. People buy it as the pack price is affordable and assume it is cheaper. It almost always isnt. I was making a steak pie. Stewing steak was £6.99 per kilo and I needed two packs. A beef roasting joint was £5.99 per kilo for better quality meat that didnt shrink away to nothing and was denser so I needed less for the pie. They often try to hide this by pricing some by the kilo and similar items per 100g, but anyone with half an ounce of sense can easily work it out.

It started when the "live frugally" type shopping programs pushed brisket, beef skirt etc as cheap cuts so everyone bought them. Now they can be more expensive than the traditionally "expensive" cuts because of the assumption that they myst be cheaper as that bloke on the telly said they were.

Same with pack sizes. You buy the "economy" pack of something....say pasta, assuming that they will be cheaper per serving. They can be but again check the cost per kilo/item. Often it can be cheaper per kilo to buy the smaller pack, they hide this information as far as possible. One at work is jars of sauce. The jars look very similar in size and are the same price, but the more desirable one actually contains less sauce, you dont notice this until you look at the info on the label, which is conveniently so fucking small you need a magnifying glass to see it.

A supermarket is like a casino, the house always wins. So do your work to make sure that they dont.

i've actually gone a brand up recently for my fruit and now get from M&S or Waitrose. Aldi and Lidl fruit is terrible quality, Tesco lasts longer but is tasteless.We eat loads and used to buy it from a local greengrocer but they closed down 6 months ago

This is in Asda for £1.50, won't be any different to child's farm just doesn't have the fancy label and bottle.

Don't buy branded stuff.

Nuggets are nuggets.

Toilet roll is toilet roll.

Get lint rollers and general crap from the poundshop.

Life is so expensive these days I agree, but my days of buying things on your photo are long gone! We buy nothing branded, and go for the mega cheap essentials range for things we don't eat (foil, wipes, bleach etc).

If it comes to it will we switch down to essentials for food but we're not quite there yet. And the quality probably isn't much different to the general store brand stuff it's just the pack sizes and weight is much smaller.

I can’t see what all of it is.
here is the aldi equivalent
£1.95 the green baby snacks
£1.55 nuggets
1.79 quilted loo roll
0.55p per bag of crisps - I’m sure they do a multi pack
1.49 oil

they do their own childs farm it’s between £1.50-2.50 or normal baby wash is 0.95p

You could easily have got those items cheaper if you cut brands out and looked at alternatives

I find asda really expensive. I seem to split my shops between aldi, lidl, sainsburys and m and s at the moment.
I’m lucky my Aldi’s fruit and veg is spot on, but I know not all are.
m and s fruit and veg is really reasonably priced now (if you don’t go for the fancy stuff). The meal deals are great value for a Saturday treat instead of a takeaway.

Don't blame you for getting M&S fruit. I stopped trying Aldi and Lidl after dozens of disappointments after many years over at least three counties.

My wtaf point with supermarkets in the last six months was seeing tin foil (not a fancy one) for £4 and a packet of ham for £4.50, Sainsbury's iirc, not finest.

Get my tin foil in booker now. At least it's not paper thin and lasts probably a year and a half a box.

The amount of processed junk we have cut out of our diets is unbelievable.

Some may strongly disagree with this but I just don't care. We don't even buy evening meals or weekend meals anymore. We get them delivered by Lions Prep or Simpfly (I think? Something like that). No, they are not cheap. But they cost 5p to heat and I no longer have to deal with skanky veg that has turned before you get it home, food planning decisions, wildly varying meat prices and quality and also a bunch of washing up.

Because we are only using supermarkets for toiletries and milk etc, it's a ten minute military operation about once a fortnight with no deviation to buy anything not on the list.

I feel like we waste far less and are spending less too.

Financially, completely unfeasible if you have kids.

Didn't think I would see the day when living off freshly delivered microwave meals would be cheaper than my normal shops.

I hasten to add that they are pretty well nutritionally balanced and we were previously eating far too large meals for us anyway.

I know there are meal kit delivery companies but I have mobility and standing issues, so those are maybe a way of economising a tiny bit when I have less pain.

@girlygirly Try B&M if you have one nearby. I buy them for my elderly neighbour when I do his shopping (he loves them!). I think they’re £1.50.

I’m not surprised, that’s all brands and apart from toilet roll, you don’t need any of that stuff. Those “children’s” snacks are so ultra processed, I’d never feed that to myself let alone kids

Making stuff is cheaper although time consuming. I used to make cheese straws for my kids and put them in the freezer.
But yes you're absolutely right everything is madly expensive.

I no longer live in the UK. I went back last week to visit , I could not believe how expensive it was. I honestly don't know how low income families are feeding themselves. It's so worrying

I am actually finding our local Asda is getting cheaper.

@PeachesoutinGeorgia

From a retailer point of view (I've worked in retail for a long time) you are one of those unicorn shoppers that appears to just buy brands. Any retailer would love to have you shop with them.

If you want to reduce your spend, buy predominantly own label and brands when they're on offer or buy the brands you genuinely love and add value to your life.

Most retailers have animal welfare standards - Waitrose have the highest.

Food inflation is going down but we're not back down to where we were. Not sure we'll ever get back there TBH