Sick to death of grocery costs (1k/ month)

[Icannotbudget]

Our grocery bill has slowly increased and is now around 1k per month. This is for two adults, two very active teenage boys, and two dogs. This includes everything you would get from a supermarket eg personal care and laundry/ cleaning stuff.
Both kids are neurodivergent one in particular is very fussy and would rather go hungry than eat ‘cheap’ food. The older one just seems to need constant protein.
I am vege and pretty unfussy but don’t like freezer food. No alcohol and i shop at Aldi as much as poss but do use other supermarkets too.
DH works long hours and Ive just gone back full time and really struggling its impossible to cook from scratch every night.
Not sure if I want sympathy or strategies to be honest, its crippling me and im feeling really down.

Exactly. I remember when I first moved in with my housemates at uni (3 boys and 1 other girl) we combined our food budget and did a big food shop all together. The food that should have lasted a week was gone in 2 days. So I excused myself out of the team shop and bought my own food and kept my snacks in my room from then on. I was not prepared to come second to a man and prioritise their desires over my needs.

In the 80s our after school snack was a piece of brown bread with peanut butter on it and a cup of tea! Cheap and nutritious.

I’m sorry I have no idea -this is the first information I’ve read on the subject

According to this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10108140/#:~:text=Estimates%20of%20the%20prevalence%20of%20ARFID%20using%20population%E2%80%90based%20surveys,Wilfley%3B%20Chua%20et%20al.%2C it’s 2.02 per 100,000 (those who require clinical treatment). So very few children, ND or not, are dealing with this eating disorder and it’s certainly less common than anorexia.

Thought so.

It seems to be a big thing on Mumsnet though.

It exists but it’s very under-diagnosed because most people can survive on a beige diet.

Doesnt mean they are thriving though or that it’s easy to feed them.

This sort of food restriction is very common in autistic people, some only having a handful of safe foods. At DS2 's most restricted, all we could get down him was peanut butter, toast, chips and biscuits. All brown, bland and unthreatening. This was after a bout of gastroenteritis that he picked up at school and it took several months to get him reliably eating other sources of protein again (fish fingers, chicken nuggets and sausages). Some kids are far more resistant than that and reject a whole meal if they don't trust something on their plate.

And a lot of autistic children, particularly in this country, get their diagnosis then are discharged, leaving parents to quietly get on with it, so no specific ARFID diagnosis is ever given.

I tell you what’s interesting about this thread. The people who can’t see or don’t know about the impact poverty, being a lone parent or parent of SEN/ ND child can have on the “just do this” “solutions”. The privilege of many posters is SHOWING, as is their ignorance.

There’s also the “poverty premium” to factor in- the idea that if you are genuinely in poverty, you will have more (and often insurmountable) barriers to doing the thing that would actually save you money (good (non food) example: if you can afford to buy £100 wellies you will probably buy one pair every 20 years, as they will last. So annual cost = £5. If you never have £100 available you will buy £15 wellies but replace them every year. Your wellies will cost £300over 20 years. So just being poor, means keeping your feet dry has cost you 3x as much as your more privileged peer).
For those who need it spelling out- apply this principle to (eg) buying a big bag of rice/half a sheep/whatever).

anyway, just a reminder to SOME of the smug cost savers on this thread, who can’t see their own privilege (and im
responding here to suggestions I’ve seen upthread);

• if you don’t drive you aren’t always going to be able to go to the cheapest supermarket. your closest may be an expensive sainsburys. This may be your only viable option. Never mind “buses” or whatnot. It’s not always practical or possible for 100 reasons, if you just try and think slightly creatively.
• if you are a LP juggling long hours at work and small children, you may not be able to go to the shops at yellow sticker times.
• if you are on a low income, you may not have and be able to afford slow cookers/ chest freezers / have space for bulk size ingredients etc
• if you live in low cost housing you may not have space or an appropriately bright spot for growing veg etc.
• on a low income you have no fucking chance of affording a green house and set up costs of growing your own 🙄
• if you have a ND child and/ or a child with ARFID you CANNOT just “make them” eat other things. They will genuinely starve instead. I mean that literally. They will starve.

I could go on. And some people will get upset by this post. I don’t care. I just want to say- I see you, to everyone struggling and feeling stuck. It’s shit. I hope things get better.

My dc isn’t diagnosed. But if acceptable food isn’t available (eg on holiday) she just won’t eat. She has fainted through no food. It peaked in lockdown so no chance of a medical apt.
She manages eating a very restricted diet. It balances as she doesn’t eat much so her tastes eg chicken breast, fresh berries are affordable as her whole food spend is so little.
Most ED aren’t diagnosed. Lots of people have intolerances or eat clean etc as a way of masking restrictions.

@FloatyBoaty you mean you don't have a slow cooker, a pressure cooker, an airfryer, a yoghurt maker and a bread maker on the go? And the time, resources and energy to trawl around four different supermarkets every week? And then to batch cook constantly? You're letting the side down(!)

That's crazy, I shop at Tesco for 4 adults (3 males) and a dog and spend less than £130 a week!

Do you meal plan?

Invest in a slow cooker, fresh meals ready when you get in from work.

Sorry if this has been suggested already but I’m a real convert to the Airfryer for quickly producing home cooked meals. I have a
dual drawer - game changer!

My ND son likes 20% fat mince which is under £3 a pack even in M&S. I cook it with one pack of ready to use lentils (Lidl do some), a handful of dried onions (cheap and easy), a dash of passata and a stock cube. This makes three portions of sauce to eat with 100g dry weight pasta. Son happy with protein content etc.

The thing is, if the children can be fed at home (even if it's only on 5-10 things) and they are "healthy" enough not to require medical intervention, then they're never going to be diagnosed with ARFID (or any other disorder).

It's only when you get to the point of repeated medical intervention that a diagnosis is going to come into it.

I don't have ARFID but there are foods out there that will make me vomit if I'm forced to put them in my mouth for whatever reason. I'm not diagnosed with anything beyond autism because fortunately, my eating "issues" don't impact my life to the point of needing outside help.

For the one who won't eat "cheap" food, could you explain how Brands spend much of their budgets on advertising and marketing campaigns, which own brands don't do? Gently make him feel he's being exploited...😊

@FloatyBoaty I think the major impact on food habits is being time poor and not knowing how to cook. Most advice is well meant and probably worked for the poster giving it.
But I acknowledge that someone who is already strapped for cash is hardly trying out a new recipe with cheper ingredients, only for the food to end up in the bin.
Same as the person who is time poor, they won't try something new and taking the risk of having to conjure up another meal instantly.

I myself spent a lot of time learning to cook while on maternity leave and when working PT while DC were little.

All I could do was boil some pasta and open a jar of sauce... cooking is a skill that needs to be learnt. A lot of people can't cook these days, because they don't need to thanks to packets, jars and dinner kits. Obviously sold at a premium price!

Sympathy??? No alcohol and £2K per month on food???

We buy alcohol. Two adults, one adult teenager and one large dog in the household.

I cook from scratch - but you've only just gone back to work full-time, so time scarcity is new to you.

Nah. Not buying it. We have a weekly supermarket delivered shop at £110 pw. We have a Superdrug delivery every couple of months at c.£40.

Full Sunday roast today came in at under £7 for the whole family.

I just cannot even envisage what you're spending money on?

How full is your freezer and have you ever tried meal planning? Otherwise you should be applying to that show where two presenters secretly follow you around a supermarket and then get you to change your spending habits.

Slow cooker available for £9 in Asda. Great bit of kit for those who are time poor even if used a couple of times a week for bolognaise, chilli, stew type meals.

You are describing my kitchen and yes I batch cook. To be fair though my pressure cooker, slow cooker and yoghurt maker is one item (instapot) which I got as a Christmas present a few years ago- I use it a lot.

Maybe…. But I also think that the cooking knowledge or lack thereof is also often indicative of intergenerational cycles of poverty. It’s a vicious cycle that goes down through generations. And it can be very, very hard to get out of that cycle. I did it. It sounds like maybe you did it. But for every 1 of us, there are 10 who haven’t had that little glimmer, that little twist of fate, or just dumb luck, that gave me an out.

I don’t honestly know what the answer is. But I suspect it starts with a change of government. And long term, probably a whole new economic and social model. Which won’t happen. It’s very depressing.

Mother of 2 neuro divergents here. I have them make dinner 1-2 days a week; plan meal, shop ingredients, cook and clean up. I was amazed how quickly their fussy habits melted away, or they learned ways around it once they were faced with cooking different meals for different people. I'm always there if they need a hand.

The number of people on this thread saying ‘batch cook’. We know, folks, we know. Not everyone has the freezer space.

Thank you - well put!