How much do you spend on your weekly shop?

[Jacomus]

Someone has just said that they spend £100 a week on food shopping , I don't know how many people they meant that for, but it did make me sit up a bit.

So, how much do you spend a week on food shopping? I'm talking provisions for the house, not including buying lunch out etc. just food that you take back to your house.

Emily and I spend between £25-£50 per week on food to make meals and packed lunches for the two of us.

Shopping mostly done at ASDA.

[mike]

about 70 quid a week.  We buy meat from the butchers who get stuff from local farmers and most other stuff from waitrose or tesco.  Probably higher than it should be but we both work from home and eat too much.

[longers]

Fifty quid a week is food/essentials/entertainment budget. Hence my reliance on cycling fora for entertainment.

[hellymedic]

About £7 per day for the two of us. Order about £70 worth every ten days or so.

[Jaded]

around £100 for a family of four.

[Fab Foodie]

Around £120 family of 5 inc Tesco CDR wine-box habit...

[peliroja]

140 a month Sainsburys online order, supplemented by about 10 a week milk and bread, etc.

[Valiant]

About £160 a week. Family of 9 atm. Also spend about £25 a week on lunch.

[kyuss]

I shop day to day. Being single I don't have the opportunity/heart to do a 'weekly' shop. It's just too depressing. Never more than £4 per day though (normally less than £3). I imagine it's much easier/cheaper if you have more to provide for, and can plan ahead making use of BOGOF etc..  

[Cudzoziemiec]

Don't know - could be a little over 1,000 rupees, especially if I buy cheese!

[andygates]

It never fails to strike me how much cheaper a family of 4 eat than four singletons! 

Forty quid plus lunches, ish.

[Aidan]

About £120 a week all in, for a family of 5.   We spend most of that on milk and toilet rolls I think

[rogerzilla]

About £100.  Frightening, isn't it?

[Wowbagger]

Too much. I'd have to look at the Waitrose bills, but it must be close to £100 a week, which for 3 is extravagant I think.

Probably beer makes up about 15% of the total. We also tend to buy stuff that we'd never have dreamed of getting when we were impecunious and had 4 growing kids, eg smoked salmon.

[TimO]

Hmm, like Andy said singletons seem to spend more (per person) than families, but I guess that's partly the benefits of buying in bulk.  I can sometimes find it difficult to eat all of a loaf of bread before it starts walking out of the Kitchen by itself!

I reckon £20 to £30 a week in Sainsburys, plus buying my lunch in the canteen once or twice a week, and a Pub Lunch (or equivalent) on a Friday, so say £45 a week.

(Things like toiletries, cleaning stuff, & batteries can massively increase that though).

That also includes moggy food and stuff, and weight for weight he's a lot more expensive than me!

[cyclone]

On the face of the above replies far too much! Averages over 100, worked out that feeding the dogs + cats is costing nearly 20!!!! No wonder I cant afford some soot bling this year (and fight the flab as he assumes boulder status courtesy of stinking cold....) - Oh 2 of us plus son 2/7 days....

[gordon taylor]

Our weekly bills are about £40 for two, but I buy a lot of little "top up" things on the way home on the bike.

When my son is home from college, the bills easily double... if his mates come round for tea, and find the hidden beer... then it is tripled.  

[CrinklyLion]

Actually, I think that if you can afford it buying really bloody nice food is a great way to spend your money.  By spending more money I can (not that I necessarily do) afford better quality produce and, often, more local produce.  And good quality nice food is IMO an important factor in having a decent quality of life.

Our refusal as a society to accept the cost of producing good quality food is why we have supermarket 'value' chicken and why battery eggs were invented.  On the other hand, our refusal to accept wonky carrots and odd-sized spuds has led to the invention of supermarket value range fruit and veg - which is usually really good.

I don't know how much we spend, as we're random and disorganised about shopping at the moment.  Probably more than £100 for the four of us, not least because of buying half our bread/milk/cat food from the corner shop or the 24 hour garage.  My mate who is much more organised and skint than me budgets 40 quid a week for groceries (i.e. food+cleaning/household stuff etc) for her and 2 kids and seems to stick to it, and they eat ok.  Not a lot of meat - sausages, a roast chicken once a week, ham for sarnies and the odd packet of mince - plenty or pasta/rice/fruit/veg.  And gallons and gallons of coffee

[Euan Uzami]

  christ what do you all eat dry bread and gruel?
we spend several (like, about 2 - 3) hundred a week for family of 4. we do rate good food fairly highly though,  do drink a fair bit of booze, and don't have other luxuries like the cinema, pub, restaurants.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Actually, I think that if you can afford it buying really bloody nice food is a great way to spend your money.  By spending more money I can (not that I necessarily do) afford better quality produce and, often, more local produce.  And good quality nice food is IMO an important factor in having a decent quality of life.

Agreed, seconded, +1, very important IMO2.

Our refusal as a society to accept the cost of producing good quality food is why we have supermarket 'value' chicken and why battery eggs were invented.  On the other hand, our refusal to accept wonky carrots and odd-sized spuds has led to the invention of supermarket value range fruit and veg - which is usually really good.

Agreed with the first part, but those wonky carrots etc have led us to judge fruit and veg by appearance rather than by taste. In fact we seem to have become almost scared of strong-tasting veg, which is a great shame.

[CrinklyLion]

But the supermarket value range veg is entirely mage up of the stuff that fails the 'better' gradings because of looks.  So you buy entirely wonky carrots and odd sized spuds for a lot less money.  In terms of taste and keeping qualities it's usually on a par with the mid-range ordinary supermarket ranges.  If I buy fruit and veg at the supermarket it tends to be the value stuff.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Ah, I misunderstood. Well, in that case I agree with everything you've said! 

[CrinklyLion]

I thought it might be a 'not having spent much time in UK supermarkets' thing   I do find it odd that people care about the appearance of certain foods more than they care about what's in others. 

[Polar Bear]

Works out to about £20 a week each on food.     

[bobb]

Our refusal as a society to accept the cost of producing good quality food is why we have supermarket 'value' chicken and why battery eggs were invented.

Surely it's the other way round?

In the old days, before intensive food production, things like meat and stuff were considered a luxury and nobody complained about the cost as that was just the way it was. It was only when supermarkets came about and started a price war that prices came down and insipid cheap chicken and battery eggs started to be produced.

Only then did society (particularly younger generations) believe that food like that should be cheap. Same with veg. Only when the supermarkets started selling perfectly straight, bright orange carrots did people start believing that's how carrots should look. Same with seasonal fruit and veg. Nobody cared if you couldn't buy asparagus in December - now, down to the supermarkets, everyone thinks it's normal.

Supermarkets have an awful lot to answer for.

As for my food bills. Depends. If money's tight it's amazing how cheaply you can eat well for. Loads of fruit and veg and easy on the meat. If cashed up, expensive bottles of wine and nice cheeses start to make their way into the basket