Is £100 a week really seen as a lot to spend on food a week?

[sweetkitty]

Honestly was looking at "that" thread and the OP was being slated for spending £100 on food.

I have nowhere near that amount of income but still spend £95 a week on an online shop and top up during the week fruit etc of about £10, I am always looking for ways of reducing it.

I have me, DP, DD1 4, DD2 3 and DD3 4 months so one in night nappies, one in full nappies, oh 3 cats that need food and cat litter a week.

I use Tesco own label wherever possible including nappies and wipes
I have stopped buying Organic chicken (£9 for a chicken) but buy one £3.79 chicken but it does DP and the DDs 2 dinners
I'm veggie
I BF so no formula
I buy all own label cleaning products and use sparingly
we buy 20 pints of milk a week and 4 loaves of bread thats about £10 in itself
DP takes sandwiches to work so already saves money that way
fruit is a big one for eg we each have a banana a day thats 28 bananas a week!!
I usually have to back through the Tesco order and take things off so that it stays at £95 and the cupboards are empty on the day before Tesco arrives

So I guess I'm asking AIBU in thinking thats not really a lot for 5 people?

I don't think it's a lot. I spend around 80 online and then 20 through the week for me, dp and dd. I take my own lunch 4/5 days each week and so does dd. I don't care about organic but meat/eggs are free range.

£100 to £120 a week including wine (2/3 bottles a week), packed lunches and cleaning stuff/chemisty stuff for four of us. Could cut down but we don't go out much and food and cooking are a real family thing for us - we eat all our meals together and I'd rather cut down on something else than skimp - I don't waste anything though and no, our income isn't like the famous poster!

I've just completed my online shop and once again it came in at £75. We also have a veg and fruit box fortnightly and have milk and eggs delivered, so I'd guess that we spend £100 or so.

We do menu plan so we're not buying anything we don't want or need, but we do have meat or fish plus veg/salad every evening. I'm sure we could cut down if we wanted to buy having different sorts of meals. Generally we don't buy frozen foods or ready meals as I freeze portions of meals every day for DS.

There are three of us, 2 adults and 1 toddler. Nappies etc are bought by his grandparents, so we are very lucky.

We will be cutting down when I go on maternity leave, and we'll definitely be ditching the veg box for the weekly market and going back to breadmaking.

I don't think it is a lot at all.

I spend a fair bit more than that (2 adults, 2 dcs), but we're lucky enough to be able to do so at the moment. I do meal plan, and we don't waste much at all, but I do buy expensive meat and wine and a lot of nappies.

No, I don't think that's a lot. We spend that and more. We eat meat about once a week (what about free range as a half way post between organic and battery - about £5-6?) and fish prob twice or more. We hardly drink. Anything from an animal is organic (apart from fish!)

see, i think its loads, there are now 4 in our household and we are fuckwitted with regards to money, we go get a shop fortnightly and we spend a fucking fortune, we buy the shampoo and the detergents and scourers and dog food and everything that isn't just food - and we spend about £120

thats like £60 pw which is nowt really

I think it's a lot to spend every week

especially if you're 'topping up' through the week as well

I spent £111.00 today in asda ,But I did spend £25.00 of that in George .

I have 5 dc ,a dh and a dog and a very starving bump .

But I have everything I need for meals all week ,nappies and wipes ,cleaning stuff and packed lunch supplies so I think I did ok .

bout 100 pounds here for me, dh, 2 teenagers and dd. A teenager will have 5 clices bread, whole tin of beans and a mountain of cheese as a 'snack' when they get in from school. A bloody snack. No wonder its going up.
And from Jan dd will require a litre of cream plus butter and oil and cheese for the ketogenic diet and cos its dairy it has to be organic.
Fruit and veg are expensive too, even in season.

We average about £100 and that excludes dog food for 3 dogs which is about an extra 75 a month and one take away a week, lunch out once a week too.

We have nowhere near that income either, and we always spend £90-100 a week on groceries for the four of us. That's a Tesco online shop, buying a lot of own brand stuff. Don't honestly see how we could get it any lower without living off bread and dog-food.

What tends to bump it up is not the food but the big household items like packs of dishwasher tablets and washing capsules and so on.

It depends, I don't think it is a lot, average, especially if the the weekly shop includes all the food you eat every week. If you then spend extra on eating out, take outs, child school lunches, DH or your own lunches (if you work and buy out), it is a lot, but if the weekly shop covers everything you eat during the week, it's not. I have been spending 70 to 100 easily since the dc's were little, so I guess I have cut back as that is average for the last 10 years. I try and shop every 8 days to stretch it further and I meal plan for the week.

I spend about £50-60 a week on 4 of us.This covers day to day stuff and bread & milk for the freezer,to keep it topped up.We don't buy eggs,as we have chickens and I have only just started buying veg ,as we grow 90% of ours during spring/summer.We don't buy nappies and don't have pets,apart from the chickens.

We buy a sack of spuds too,it is amazing how much money that alone saves.£6 for a sack and it lasts about 3-4 months.I used to spend £2 a week on supermarket potatoes,which would go green in days.

One of my customers is a pensioner,on her own and spends £75 a week on food.I was absolutely astonished.

Our groceries budget is £100 a week but that includes nappies, cleaning products, etc.

Generally we do an online shop of £60-70 with Tesco, then get fruit and veg from Lidl or the market. We eat a LOT of fruit and veg and it really can break the budget.

We are a family of 5 and i spend about £130 a week in tesco and then school dinner money on top of that. I don't buy any ready made stuff, i make all my own meals from scratch and enjoy doing it. This includes cleaning stuff and nappies for ds3 and the odd bottle of wine.

No, not if you want to eat fresh, healthy, good quality food.

Really nice food - fresh fish, meat and a good variety of fruit and vegetables - is horribly expensive.

Our supermarket shop is under £100 now (food, cleaning, nappies, everything that can be got in the supermarket), but before DS (when money was not the issue it is now!) it was regularly over £110 for just me and DH. Nice food, nice wine, olives, nuts, fresh fruit, organic and fair trade, Waitrose all the way... You can spend as much as you want if you try... Keeping it under £100 feels like an achievement.

That is very true Anna. Now we just don't eat fresh fish at all because it's too expensive. For our fish, I buy the value bags of frozen white fish portions, which are fine for poaching to go in a fish pie or something, but no use on their own. And like I said, we don't eat nearly as much fruit as I would like. We have meat maybe twice or three times a week.

What I find so cruel is all the exhortations by governments (in lots of countries) for their populations to eat healthily with lots of fundamentally sound nutritional advice but that does not take any account of the costs involved.

We spend about £100 a week on food and I know we are extravagant. Of course it's a lot to spend on food.

I think £100 a week on food shopping for a family of four is reasonable. I live in an area where our local supermarket has been called 'the waitrose of the north'. It's either shop there or travel 10 miles to a cheaper store, then using the cafe, which adds to the cost and takes about 3 hours out of the week on the food shop.

There is DD and I and I spend around £45 a week on groceries.

You can eat healthily for a small amount of money. What should governmets do then Anna? Tell everynoe to carry on eating shit?

Someone earlier on mentioned the mixing of terminology on threads like this. Can I ask that we should all be clear exactly what we are including? The OP, as I understand it, was including her entire weekly shop - food, cleaning stuff, pet stuff, toiletries and nappies. Therefore my equivalent is £60 a week. This doesn't include any alcohol (ever - ).

If we are talking about food ONLY, the amount would be about £45 a week for me, DH and DS.

No, but they need to be realistic about the costs of 5-a-day, 2-3 portions of fresh fish a week etc.

We eat very well/healthily indeed in this household, and pretty much in accordance with what both UK and French governments exhort people to do (which is pretty sound advice on a nutritional front). I spend horrendous amounts of money on food. I know that I am incredibly lucky to be able to feed my family like this.

But I get cross with governments who expect their populations to be superhuman in a general sort of way...