Are your food bills rising?

[KatieMumsnet]

Radio 4's You and Yours are asking for Mumsnetters' views on the cost of our weekly shops. Have you noticed your food costs spiralling, are you having to change your shopping habits to compensate or are the effects of high global food prices yet to impact your pocket?

Would be great to hear your views.

Not mine tbh, I shop at asda and my weekly shop for 7 of us is approx £110. I have always looked for good deals and planned meals etc... so have continued o do that and haven't noticed any change

We've switched to Aldi - from Tescos. It's made a massive difference. We meal plan and shop with a list.

We noticed it was just getting more and more expensive... Especially with online shops.

We've really taken control of our costs, and are really happy with the difference.

I have changed my spending habits and meal planning to keep the cost fairly constant-but its quite an effort. The quality of what I buy has probably been compromised-higher welfare chicken, for example, went by the board a while back

same here with chicken but switched to turkey ages ago

It's definitely getting more expensive. I'm managing by shopping the offers and making full use of the freezer but it's really hard to stay in budget. 10 years ago as a student I managed comfortably on £20 a week for food and toiletries and easily had change to spend on drink! Now with two adults and a toddler it's hard to keep it under £50-60 a week not including nappies and stuff.

I would agree that the difference has been increasingly noticeable over the last 4 months.

I have become a supermarket `floozie' taking advantage of points schemes and incentives (varying online shops and when you havent ordered from one supermarket for a period of time - they often send money off vouchers to tempt you back - this month Tesco have offered me £10 0ff a £50 spend)although I have a fondess for Lidl!

We eat more vegetarian meals than previously - now 2-3 times a week whereas previously it would have been perhaps once or twice.

Meat quality I am not keen to compromise on but I scour our local Co-op for the reduced meat and stock up the freezer.

The biggest change I have made is that (if possible and within reason) nothing gets thrown away - years ago shamefully we probably threw food away that we had forgotton about or bought on a whim and never ate. Every meal is planned in advance and we have reduced our portion sizes too (better for the waist line - a welcome side effect)

yes, it's really noticeable. when did tinned tomatoes go from 17p to 31p a tin? We plan menus and shop really carefully in Asda, Iceland and Aldi but still costs a small fortune for family of 5 and 1 cat.

Food prices are definitely a lot higher than they were a year or two ago. Because I am slightly nuts and have a good memory for figures, I can tell you with absolute authority that a couple of years ago, 250g of prepacked steak mince in Sainsburys was £1.23. It is now £1.64 but reached the dizzying heights of £1.73 at one point.

I have switched quite a few things to Basics range, do a monthly shop at Asda to take advantage of cheap deals on stuff that doesn't go off and we are eating a lot more dishes that are bulked out with lentils etc. The bills are higher than they were a few years ago and seem to be still rising. I think prices have been rising in dribs and drabs over the last few years but I've noticed a few things recently that have had quite a hike in price (I won't bore you with the details!) over the last six months or so.

If prices continue to rise at the same rate, I think we'll be seeing a lot of people having to make some very hard choices (including being unable to eat/feed their kids as healthily as they might like). Fruit and veg has gone up quite a bit recently.

Cadbury's Creme Eggs are an average of 55p each

and the average chocolate bar 60 - 65p each.

outrageous.

I don't do shopping sohave no idea about real food but have noticed this.

I think I shop quite cannily (meal planning, online, offers, using leftovers/freezer meals etc) I have happily kept to a budget of about £100 - £120 for 3 adults, 1 teenager, 1 under 5 and 3 cats (including toiletries, makeup, cleaning products) for about two years but am finding it really hard now, and that's despite youngest now being completely dry day and night (so no nappies, pull-ups or bed mat type things).

I have already cut down on wine - which I suppose is a good thing - but am finding it hard to make decisions between healthier vs cheaper options (low fat/low additives/organic) and as a previous poster said, the welfare of chicken has not been my highest priority. I do still make a real effort to buy Fairtrade when that is an option and would put that above organic. I also make huge use of a slow cooker so I can get cheaper cuts of meat. I've noticed some of the products from the cheapest ranges just disappearing!

've noticed some of the products from the cheapest ranges just disappearing!

balia - totally agree there.

I've certainly noticed a rise starting from last year as has MiL. I do most of my basic shopping and dry goods at Asda to utilise the 10% guarantee and then buy short date meat etc through the week to freeze.

I also gave up drinking altogether to economise.

AtYourCervix

Co Op £1.45 for 6 pack at the mo

It used to be that you could pad a meal out with carbohydrate, and make it go further that way. But the price of carbohydrate - bread, pasta, noodles, etc - has rocketed. Prices are double what they were a few years ago. It's not surprising that low-carb / carb-free diets are so popular at the moment.

I haven't changed my shopping habits much because I have always cooked from scratch, meal-planned and buy off a shopping list. I suppose the biggest change is switching to more meat-free meals.

Definitely, did a shop that I expected to be about £60 it cost over £80. I don't understand how or why. I shop at Sainsburys but I'm not sure I can afford to anymore.

Yes, over the last 2 years, I've gone from spending £40 a week to £60. We're creatures of habit so I haven't substituted cod for caviar or the like :)

The most increase in the last 3 months has been the cost of flour (breadmaking flour)

It's gone from 65p to £1.29

I also have noticed a difference and have changed the way i feed the kids. I only buy cuts for roasting now as i find they're cheaper and go further, i also stock up on the kids favourite foods when they're on offer, otherwise i can't afford them. I love cuts to roast as you can bulk them up with stuffing and veg so you don't need potatoes. Or i often make soup and a pudding, i think speaking to my Grandma i cook a lot more like she used to than my mother. My Grandma was raising a family at the end of rationing and my mum in the 80s. Also fruit; my kids see it as a treat and i cook with it rather than giving to them raw as you can get away with using bruised or older pieces and that way its cheaper. Also Suet and milk puddings help bulk up our meals. I think it saves money to cook everything from scratch, although milk is freaky expensive and we use about 16 pints a week.

Oooh cheers for that Honeydragon, know where I'm going tomorrow!

And yes. Hugely. We're going to have to stop eating at this rate

Well I have the whole of 09-10 Tesco receipts batched in piles of 10 for data entry into my accounts

& they have gone up, a lot

We have cut out the spare things and the treats & we are still spending the same or more each week

Oh, and talking of supermarket's sneaky tricks ...
I don't like the current trend of keeping the same price but giving you less for your money. It's a bit underhand.

Yes, I was going to say that I have noticed quite a few products being re-packaged/re-launched in smaller sizes

I think avoiding the supermarket helps, we try and buy direct off the farms near us, which helps as we know them now and if we can't pay they usually let us pay later.
And people tease about farmers markets but still i find them better value as i am not tempted to buy things i don't need because it looks like good value.

Although some things we do buy from the our local discount shop or supermarket like milk and nappies, i try to use real nappies but with 5 peoples laundry it's tough.

I use our child benefit to buy food, nappies, toiletries and cleaning things so that's £50 a week, no idea how i will manage in April when it will drop to £30 my husbands salary is only enough to cover the bills, and as he works away i will struggle to fit work around children until my youngest is at school.

Potatoes are really expensive.

All the packages have got smaller.

And products have been reformulated too - I know this sounds daft but there appear to be less beans in the baked bean cans these days and more juice. It's weird.

And I am probably very weird to notice it.

But supermarkets do have some very interesting pricing models which people don't seem to notice - the whole 'inflate the price, then cut the price'. Or the 'special offer which is actually more expensive than the regular price one'.

What's odd is smaller packets seem to be getting more expensive than big packets in lots of things, like breakfast cereal, I saw a chocowotsit doodah flakes (don't ask me, the kids like them - it has a spaceman on it) anyway - and the 'big value pack' gram for gram was 30p more than a small pack . How does that work then?

Of course the trick is to buy small and often because you are less likely to forget what you've bought and also you get stuff reduced.

Oh and ignore sell buy dates entirely. Not furry - good enough me for!

Oh and flour - last year a kilo of flour was 56p. I bought one yesterday 98p

So I bought two in case they are £2 next week!

and Pringles - used to be 78 pringles in a can, now 70. Bastards!