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.

I feel the same, ours are now about £800 a month for two adults and two primary age children. It's absolutely crippling.

I don’t have a chest freezer. I can’t bulk buy. I work. I have three children. One is autistic and very fussy. I don’t meal plan or prep as I find it too difficult with everything else.

I think your post is rubbish because these things don’t mean we are forced to eat lentils all week. Neither do we spend £1k on groceries. I just buy sensibly, make sure my kids understand the cost of things and do the best I can with the money I have.

I also think you’re conflating rare and serious eating disorders with fussy eating, which has derailed the thread.

One piece of advice that I followed after hitting the wall with the monotony of having to think about what other people will eat, buy and cook it, was this . Buy a good budget family cook book or two, get three sets of different coloured post its and get each family member to go through and put a post it note on things they either can/will eat. When you get a match on all colours plan your meals around this. It does help to plan in advance, even put a menu up. Also get the teenagers cooking with you so that they can start to do it for themselves. It would be a big help if you can ask them to start on prep before you get in. If you put a menu up you could list what they could do as prep. You will be doing them a huge favour in the long run.

Bless you. Not just the cost but the extra workload to work around SS diet. 👏

I am howling at all the comments of “surely they don’t demand to only eat lurpak!”

This isn’t a case of being spoiled. ND individuals have a high rate of ARFID. Look it up. Educate yourselves. My son literally only eats 4 things and sometimes this can be cut down to 1. He is autistic. He will starve before accepting safe foods. Would you let your child starve or give them safe foods that they will eat. Cutting out even one thing, can be the difference between them eating or not. Other things start getting cut out for them to gain control. My son has lost lots of weight this past few months and we’ve managed to build him up to 4 things. These may be dropped in a. Heartbeat. So please don’t judge someone when they say their child won’t eat certain things. Even if you are ND yourself, this doesn’t mean anything. Everyone is an individual and everyone is different.

1K sounds a bit much. Ours is around £320 for two -- with some bottles of wine and not many UPP. Maybe, if we could take out the cost of feeding the two pet dogs, the figures might begin to reveal the costs. COL is still painful.

Giving in to what is in DCs a power struggle is never good.

Giving in isn’t good, but nor is letting a child starve themselves because you’ve not provided food they can eat.

Correction: He would starve before accepting unsafe foods.

I'm sure there are children that will starve themselves rather than eat new foods.

I'm also sure there are even more kids that will deliberately fill themselves up with snacks after school to avoid eating new foods.

There are also children that have learned that refusing to eat new foods results in them getting the food they want.

I very much doubt that all the numerous parents on this thread claiming to have children that would starve themselves into hospital, actually have children that will starve themselves into hospital.

All this people saying “ you don’t need to eat butter “ oh you can just eat grass and lentils and cook for 10 for no £100 a month . That’s called surviving !! That’s not called living . The point is people shouldn’t need to live that way . People with actually ok wages are struggling .
Those with children and adults with special needs will for sure be struggling the most . It’s wrong

Ready meals are expensive and full of salt and sugar to boot. You'd be better off pre-making a pasta or lentil dish that you can eat up.

I'm sorry, but if they want Lurpack they'll have to start buying it put of their own money! It doesn't even taste good any more.

They won't starve themselves, they will use refusal to eat foot that they 'can't' eat (no allergies are mentioned) to get their way. They are going to be horrid, entitled people who will find that the world won't give in to the games mum did. One solution is to make enough spaghetti bolognese etc to feed them it every night of the week, and keep doing so, just get it out of the freezer and heat it up. Meanwhile, cook a different meal for everyone else - this is not cooking twice, you have batch cooked the spag bol. I suspect even the most ND child/teenager ever will get fed up with this after a few weeks. If they are old enough they can buy the food they 'can' eat e.g. Lurpak butter, themselves, which will help them with understanding domestic economy, too.

Did I say anyone was forced to eat lentils all week?

What I said was that the cost saving tips being put in this thread are out of reach of many people, and that if you’re in poverty, putting things in place like greenhouses and bulk buying ingredients is often prohibitively expensive.

You’ve honed in on the ND aspect of that to the exclusion of all else.

They won't starve themselves, they will use refusal to eat foot that they 'can't' eat (no allergies are mentioned) to get their way. They are going to be horrid, entitled people who will find that the world won't give in to the games mum did.

My DS is neurodiverse, he has complex sensory issues, there are foods he can’t eat and will go hungry rather than eat something he can’t tolerate. How long do you suggest I let him go without eating? My need to ensure he grows and is healthy is much greater than my desire for him to eat mushrooms or prawns.

I’m not going to repeatedly serve him something I know he can’t eat while serving everyone else an alternative - do you really not see how abusive that is? For him to see everyone else eating food he likes and is safe for him while serving him something he can’t eat? His eating isn’t that restrictive, I can easily work around his preferences and I refuse to make meal times a battle ground.

My DS is one of the nicest, most kind hearted children you could meet, not in the least bit entitled.

This budget includes personal care and laundry etc. If you're not already I bulk buy all of this stuff (even if I don't always have the space) so when things are on offer or going to Costco etc. I know these won't go out of date and will be used. The same with tinned food and any other long lasting sauces/food you may use. As for trying to keep food bills down and cooking from scratch when working FT, batch cooking helps or having all the veg prepped the day before. Throwing something in the slow cooker in the morning so it's ready when you walk through the door. A pressure cooker has been great for us as it cuts down some cooking time e.g a stew takes 30 mins and tastes just the same as something that's been cooking all day. I've seen some tik toks of some people meal prepping their daily meals so that they are ready to cook instead of faffing with this on the day-maybe an idea?

We both work full time and tbh, I'm finding it a full time job in itself shopping around to cut our food bill down too and where was cheaper the week before isn't necessarily the same the week after and then there's the rigmarole of everyone getting bored of the same type of food etc so switching our food list up (family of 6). Good luck OP!

Gosh some people really need to educate themselves around ND and food.

Advise is to take emotion out of it, no forcing to eat,no battle of wills,no power games, but to offer safe foods every meal time with no pressure to try new things.

Only once emotion is out of it other food can be offered but again with no expectation the child will eat it. They might ignore it or play with it.

Its a long game.

Not feeding a ND child (or any child with issues, or maybe any child...)
something safe is abuse.

Those who are spouting about entitled kids or kids just having to eat what they are given please go educate yourself and realise you are wrong and actually can be quite damaging.

I did not say serve repeatedly something he can't eat. The OP said her DS would eat spag bol made in a certain way. I suggested she batch cook it (and the other meal she mentioned, which I cannot remember) and serve it up for every meal (or alternate them). It involves no extra cooking and everyone else also gets a meal they like, and ND DS gets a meal he CAN eat. If he gets bored that is rather his problem, not hers, because he is a teenager, not a child. I also suggested he buy his own Lurpak out of his pocket money/allowance/earnings from p/t job. Also reasonable and teaches domestic economics. The suggestion was for her DS (who seems to belong to the awkward squad, unlike your DS, who sounds lovely).

Not feeding a ND child (or any child with issues, or maybe any child...)
something safe is abuse

I agree BUT, if you don't have the spare cash for expensive brands that were previously affordable, then you simply cannot magic up these items. The ND child will have to learn to accept the cheaper alternative. They might taste different, but butter is still butter and bread is still bread.

And no, I don't believe in cutting down on quality of food for all other family members, for the the sake of branded items for one.

Imagine the conversation you'll have with the other DC's in the future: "Yeah sorry you have bowl cancer from all the processed crap I gave you as a child. But you know your sibling would only eat X brand butter & toast and 80 day matured steak. Unfortunately that wouldn't leave much cash to feed the rest of us some fresh foods."

Some of the amounts people are spending are mind boggling - there are 4 of us and a cat and we spend around £100 a week, and we are in an expensive part of the country. I guess it helps that school lunches are free at the moment and DH and I never eat breakfast, but we don't scrimp on food, and would struggle to spend more. We do a big Ocado shop at the beginning of the month, then top up from Lidl. I think what also helped is I listened to 'ultra-processed people' on audio book, so now very rarely buy pre-packaged snacks or other such nutritionally bereft foods.

OP are you prepared to upload photos of some of your recent grocery receipts so people can make suggestions?

Just keep piling in with the disablist ignorance, eh?

That's a lot of words to say you've never experienced a kid with ARFID like.🙄kids do actually starve themselves to death. There was a barin in the news recently even. It's not a won't thing. You cant starve then into submission.

Maybe it would be better for you to thank the universe that you've never experienced the kind of restricted eating that does actually kill kids. It's not fussyness.

No, I have not had a child with ARFID. I only suggested bulk cooking the food they will eat and serving it up for them, thus avoiding them sayinng they can't eat what is provided, while everyone else can have a different meal. This limits daily cooking to providing one meal, plus defrosting and heating up a portion of a different meal which can be eaten by the ND child. What's wrong with that? Makes sense, surely?

That is not the only thing you said. It was buried in a diatribe about becoming horrid, entitled people and a sneery comment that even an ND child would grow tired of eating the same thing every day.

Well, yes, because that is a possible outcome. I suggested a solution. I thought that was the point. Also, I did not say that in the post you quoted.

Aye, right.