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.

Does ND child get pip? Can you get pip for that? No idea… might be worth checking.

I’d buy Aldi lurpak and put it into an original lurpak pack🤣 see if they notice!

Can you and DH eat the more inexpensive foods? There’s a deal “too good to go” so you get things like pizza, fruit/veg, subway. A colleague has signed up to it.

It's the lurpack. That's £200 a tub now. I'd be keeping an old tub and popping some cheaper butter in it to fool them. Keep it out of the fridge so it's spreadable.

Batch cook what you can on Sundays so you can reheat during the week.

Dh should be responsible for half the meals and that includes shopping for them.

ive been only vegetarian in the household before. I used to make a veggie version of the same meal at the exact same time, which sounds like an faff, but it isn’t any additional effort - promise! ☺️

Just stick another pan on the stove and stick in a can of beans/lentils/chickpeas then everything else you put in the main pot you stick in yours too like canned tomatoes, garlic, spices etc! You will likely have some leftovers too. This should hopefully be yummier and cheaper than a ready meal.

Thank you all for the kind replies. Its literally brought me to tears. Honestly I am so exhausted with the years of ‘food grind’, its never been easy but at least in the past at least brands and convenience were more affordable - now it feels like a rock and a hard place. Some posters have pointed out that actually my spend is only about £5 pp per day ( excluding pet and household stuff) which brings it into perspective!!
I think looking at all suggestions the only feasible ones are switching to cheaper bulk buy dog good and batch cooking (tho freezer is not huge and im exhausted on weekends) . I already buy only minimal branded stuff for my most difficult to feed son. Going totally hard line on food just wont work- i have tried it in the past but the youngest will just allow himself to starve!! Thank you all for solidarity and Im so sorry for everyone out there having similar struggles. X

I'd tell the kids if they want brands like lurpack they can buy them for themselves and that everyone is taking turns to cook from now on. My fussy autistic kids now eat far more since they've been planning and cooking their own meals.

Yes I’m always bemused by the unreasonable demands kids put on their parents here and the parents just jumping to it. Lurpak isn’t a human right

PIP is extremely hard to get- I know this due to my work. Son is ND but not diagnosed with ARFID and will eat’normal’ food albeit very selective. Thank you for the suggestion though.

This is MN @Icannotbudget where you can feed a family on a chicken and the dogs on the scraps. I have never been able to get my food bill as low as some people on here. The rise in food bills is not because you indulge your family, it's because prices are increasing.

I also get that if you have a ND child with sensory issues around food that they really can tell the difference between Lurpak and Norpak and giving them the latter might mean they can't eat a sandwich for weeks, or longer, even when you tell them this time it's Lurpak.

Do you get the right DLA / PIP for your DC's? This could greatly help with their extra costs.

I would be sneaky and use eg a Lurpak wrapper round a cheaper butter, or cheaper beans out of a Heinz tin.
Unless your dc come shopping with you, in which case you are stuffed.
Ready meals will blow the budget too.

Wow we spend £80-£100 pw at Aldi to include everything for the household and alcohol .We are 3 adults and a dog.
What are your portion sizes?
I would keep a lurpack pot and transfer Aldi Norpak to it for a start.

Sorry OP but that math ain’t mathing. What exactly are you buying and why are you giving in to your DC demands about brands? I’m presuming the dogs are Alsatian’s or Great Danes to be eating so much food? Can you afford to keep them?

OP, my saving grace was meal planning. Here’s my suggestion - apologies if it comes across as patronising! You sound like the time / organisation issue is affecting the cost issue. You won’t really reduce the cost until you sort out the
Organisation.
To start with, all family sit down and create a list of all the meals each of you will eat. This becomes your ‘menu’ to refer to in order to plan the meals for the coming week. Then once a week, sit together and select the meals for the following week - breakfast, lunch and dinner. Use a weekly meal planner that can go on the fridge so everyone knows what’s for dinner etc that day.
Create a shopping list from the weekly meal plan. I would try to calculate a costing of each meal if you can, or perhaps categorise each meal into low cost, medium cost and high cost. That way, you can ensure all your meals don’t end up from the high cost group!
Make sure you’ve planned the menu to accommodate the time each meal takes to prep so that you’re not doing a long scratch meal on a night you’re very busy or in late.
Batch cooking: this really can be a godsend. My DH is vegetarian, I’m not. I batch cook chilli and bolognese monthly, doing both meat and veggie versions which I then portion up into freezer bags. I aim to make 6 portions of each dish each time. This means we can both have chilli straight from the freezer, but each with our own version. I also make large trays of lasagne, cook it, portion it up and freeze single portions. I buy things like mince when it’s on offer / reduced and throw it straight in the freezer until I’ve enough to do a big batch cooking day. I spend one afternoon at the weekend prepping meals for the week.
With regard to things like buying Lurpak rather than supermarket own brands, I agree there’s a slight difference in taste, but can’t justify the difference in cost unless the branded one is on offer. If it is, I bulk buy and again throw it in the freezer although butter lasts ages in the fridge!
Finally - your dogs will not be influenced at all by brands! They just want food, any food. It’s you that’s being influenced - research the cheapest available that meets their needs and then bulk buy. We now get all our cat food / litter from Amazon. It’s not always cheaper but it’s delivered so we don’t have to think about it. (apart from where to store it)
Good luck!

Oh I crossed posts, he doesn't need to have ARFID and I'm sure the ND is more than just food. If they are under 16 low rate care is the minimum option and that £28 a week would help with the extra food cost.

What meals do you have and what do you buy each week? Genuine q as I’d love to get ours that low and I feel like I’ve cut loads back! Also what dog food do you get /size of dogs dog you have? We’ve a large dog so she eats a lot!

People struggle with their food bill because they eat too much meat. If you ate red meat twice a week I guarantee it would come down massively. Nobody needs that much meat and it’s killing the environment.

How much of this is on the dogs? I genuinely don’t have a clue how much pets cost but it might help others to give you advice if we know how much of that £1000 goes on the humans.

I spend £80-100 a week for two adults and one 5yo, which is £10-20 less than it was a year ago. Prices are coming down gradually but it’s still a huge amount of my monthly outgoings.

How did your DC ever taste Lurpak in the first place? You have to be in charge and you buy what you can afford.My dog is a rescue and gets in great with Aldi Earl kibble. She’s nearly 10. Not saying this is you OP as ND makes a huge difference but so many indulge fussiness.

Question for the posters who say disguise other spread or foods. Do you do this with your ND children who have sensory issues or obsessions around food?

Do you have a child who will eat your home made chilli con carne or vegetable pasta dish but if someone else makes it with the same recipe and same ingredients that child knows that something tastes different and they can not eat it and wont try it ever again?

Genuine question but if they had never tasted Lurpak or whatever specific item they want, would they have continued to eat whatever alternative came before it?

@Gensola £194 per person per week. The OP has 4 x £194 = nearly £800, then the expensive dog food so £1000 is only just over average spend.

and a month is actually 4 and a half weeks, so a month would be more like £900.
Disclaimer: all sums done before coffee and in my head so no calculator used.

I get that ND is tricky but it’s not unreasonable to put limits on what they can eat, within reason.

This made me laugh. The only limit is to not have it and that has consequences.

I stood at the chicken fillets for a good five minutes wondering whether to bother

Buy a whole chicken and cut off the fillets. It takes less than a minute with a bit of practice.

Can you try the switch challenge? Ie, get the next food level down and see if they’ll notice, such as Shreddies to own brand, posh Tesco tea to standard tea etc, Don’t tell them you’ve dropped and see if they notice the difference. Sone foods they will, others they won’t.

@Wigtopia In terms of meat I buy: 1 pack of chicken thighs, 1 pack of chicken mini fillets, 1 pack of lean pork mince.
Fish: 1 bag frozen white fish ( for curry or Spanish style stew)
I buy lots of tins of pulses( chick peas, butter beans and lentils) and vegetables and fruit. Cheddar, feta equivalent, Greek yoghurt, eggs, 4 tins tuna. Large pot hummus. Some frozen veg. Cook from scratch each night.
This week:
pork mince chilli on sweet potato wedges with yoghurt.( leftover chilli for lunches)
Fish curry with coconut milk and rice.
Lentil bolognaise lasagne with salad
chicken skewers with roasted veg and pitas.
Air fried marinated chicken thighs with homemade coleslaw and parmentier style potatoes.
Cereal: organic oats, weetabix equivalent, DH gets the granola and no sugar muesli.
Peanut butter, whole grain rice cakes, DH buys one packet of choc biscuits . I buy Aldi non bio laundry tabs, every few weeks , same with their dishwasher tabs. 1 loaf seedy bread, 1 pack pitas, sourdough and crumpets. Aldi gold tea, green tea.
I get espresso in Lidl and bulgur wheat in Morrisons.

Never? I think that is so wrong and immoral as to be evil to give that much cash, on top of salary, to one person, in recognition of the amount of cash they've generated for shareholders, from people struggling to pay food bills.
Think how many jobs, operations, families that money could support and instead some hard nosed greedy salesman gets to pocket it all for himself? Should be illegal. Never going to Tesco again if this is true. I already hate the club card/nectar card dual pricing farce ripping people off unless they have their personal info.
Awful state of affairs!!

Food wise though, cut the sugar - fruit juice is not healthy and is overpriced, bin it, same for most yogurt it's no different to ice cream really, and even lots of fresh fruit is expensive and non essential as a regular food item. Stick to cheap apples, oranges and bananas and ditch the berries and tropical fruit.

Cut out any chocolate other than weekend treats, biscuits shouldn't be a regular thing and crisps are overpriced air as well.

Tell the kids it's a health kick if you don't want to focus on the cost of it - they can fill up on pasta and baked potatoes or air fried wedges and if you stop the sugar highs and lows they'll get less hungry for snacks.

Need to keep blood sugar stable to control appetite and food cravings.