Dispatches -- Cost of Food

[Frenchie]

Quite interesting potentially.

We had this conversation in our household recently: Without baby nappies and toiletries, but with baby food, and without alcool, as we don't drink, we spend in excess of £100 per week on food (excluding lunches) at the supermarket and at the butcher's/grocer's for (2+a baby). We used to spend about £80 a short while ago I am sure. We do buy the odd nice product such as duck meat, some nice steaks, fish/seafood, nice bread as we enjoy cooking and food, but nothing really extravagant.

[hellymedic]

The cost of some previously cheap basic foodstuffs has soared recently and some of my regular provisions, like ordinary cherry tomatoes, seem unavailable from my local Sainsbury's. I end up buying the much pricier 'Taste the Difference' product.
My groceries bill has probably gone up by 40% over the past year.

[Valiant]

One word. Lidls.

[Jasmine]

I was really shocked by this programme.  I wasn't shocked by the rising cost of grain, rice etc. because it's not news.  It's been coming for some time now.  What shocked me was how much their 'average family' spent on shopping per week.  £150 a week!  I spend £50 per month on food (admittedly for 1).

I was even more shocked to see the other family and their food in the bin.  Their own estimate was that £30 per week was thrown away in uneaten food.  Novel concept - buy less.  They were throwing away whole packets of food - sausages, whole pizza, about 2 kg potatoes.  Most of it had nothing wrong with it.  The stuff like pizza and sausages - why not put it in the freezer so it doesn't go off?  I really couldn't understand it.  How can you complain about the rising cost of food while throwing so much of it away?  They actually threw away more than I eat.

[rogerzilla]

If you have kids you throw away a lot of food - they rarely, if ever, clear their plates and sometimes they won't touch it at all.

I think we spend £400 a month in Sainsbury's, although of course not all of that is food, and some of the most expensive items aren't (washing powder, disposable nappies*, razor blades).


*unfortunately, the reusable ones started leaking when they started walking.

[Julian]

I think one reason people throw quite so much stuff away is that they think the magic imps come and sprinkle evil imp dust on your food when it ticks past midnight on the best-before date.

A bit like the devil waving his tail over the blackberries after 30 September.

I horrified my housemates at the weekend by eating an egg that was a week out of date.  I explained the sink / float test but they were having none of it.

[Wowbagger]

A lot of food in our house goes to waist. Mine.

[Jasmine]

Rog - it wasn't food that had been cooked and uneaten that was shocking.  All of it was still in the original packaging.  Liz is right, they threw away stuff past the best before date.  The potatoes weren't even sprouting.  I suspect I am slightly too far the other way - if there is mould on the cheese, cut it off and eat the rest  !  Amazingly I never seem to get stomach upsets from this even last week when I had some milk 6 days past the use by - I didn't notice until I saw it was separating a bit amongst the bran flakes

[Flying_Monkey]

Half the problem is that people are so utterly ignorant about food and nutrition. However, having seen what they teach in schools now, I am not surprised. I was amazed to discover that what used to be Home Economics (where we used to make cakes and things like that) is not basically Food Technology and Marketing - how to design new 'food products' (i.e.: over-salted, over-sugared shite) for supermarkets...

[Hot Flatus]

That's the National Curriculum for you!

If you look closely in the supermarket you will see that little of what is on the shelves is unprocessed food. Most of the shelf space is taken up with manufactured crap. That is what people spend their money on, that is why it occupies so much shelf space. I would speculate that people choose processed food and ready meals over cooking using fresh ingredients due a mixture of laziness, tiredness, and (as FM says) lack of simple cooking skills.

All of the food in my household is prepared from raw ingredients.  Usually in under 15 minutes.  A lot of people don't seem to know how to do this.

[bikenerd]

We minimise food waste by deciding what meals to have in advance, writing a list of ingredients used in those meals and just buying those items.  We still spend around £60 per week on food for the two of us but we eat well, buying "Finest" lines and meat that has some animal welfare input, like outdoor reared pigs, free range chickens, etc.

[Kathy]

In our house, leftovers are almost always recycled - for example, if we roast a duck, the fat goes in a pot in the fridge to be re-used for roasting potatoes. We had roast chicken on Sunday - the carcass was simmered with some herbs and an onion to make stock, and we'll get one or two meals of a chicken-soup-nature out of that.

If we cook too much pasta it gets turned into a salad for lunch, and excess rice is saved to be egg-fried (free-range eggs from the local farm being cheaper than supermarket barn eggs) at a later date.

This attitude, coupled with the fact that we pop into the supermarket just around the corner two or three times a week just before it shuts and pick up whatever's reduced to clear, means the two of us eat very well for an estimated £50 a week.

[Julian]

Too much pasta?

Excess rice?

There is shurely no such thing! 

[Pingu]

even last week when I had some milk 6 days past the use by - I didn't notice until I saw it was separating a bit amongst the bran flakes

Milk is one of the things I won't touch after its use-by date  But then I am a bit of a lactophobe 

[Frenchie]

We minimise food waste by deciding what meals to have in advance, [...] buying "Finest" lines and meat that has some animal welfare input, like outdoor reared pigs, free range chickens, etc.

We do the same but reach £100; okay organic baby food isn't cheap, nor is good meat or fish.

We throw little away, certainly not like the couple did last night! Importantly we enjoy food and cooking it!

PS £50  amonth J?! What do you buy for food and where do you shop? 

[ABlipInContinuity]

We minimise food waste by deciding what meals to have in advance, [...] buying "Finest" lines and meat that has some animal welfare input, like outdoor reared pigs, free range chickens, etc.

We do the same but reach £100; okay organic baby food isn't cheap, nor is good meat or fish.

We throw little away, certainly not like the couple did last night! Importantly we enjoy food and cooking it!

PS £50  amonth J?! What do you buy for food and where do you shop? 

Maffie and I went to the Unicorn Grocery Store in Chorlton that specializes in organic and whole foods. It was surprising to see that in-season produce was in some cases much cheaper than what Tesco's typically stocked.

It was nice to see that there was no unnecessary packaging.

[Hot Flatus]

okay organic baby food isn't cheap,

Is it impractical to make it yourself?

(caveat: I don't have kids)

[Kathy]

okay organic baby food isn't cheap,

Is it impractical to make it yourself?

(caveat: I don't have kids)

Does it *have* to be organic? There's usually a huge mark-up for calling things organic, and no health benefits - or is all baby food by default "organic"?

(also doesn't have kids, but used to work in agriculture, and saw enough research to make me believe that the organics industry is over-hyped)

[Ian H]

even last week when I had some milk 6 days past the use by - I didn't notice until I saw it was separating a bit amongst the bran flakes

Milk is one of the things I won't touch after its use-by date  But then I am a bit of a lactophobe 

I never look at Use By dates. Fresh food lets you know quite clearly when it's no longer fit to eat.

[Attitudeless Badger]

Different countires have different standards too.  A friend of mine is a technology teacher visited a major yoghurt plant in France and was suprised to see the same yoghurt getting different Best Before dates printed on it, depending on the country it was going to.  Also, he was told that, as common sense would dictate, the product will usually be safe days after.  If it still looks and smells fine then there should be no problems.  Seems like a devious manufacturers trick to me.....

[Jasmine]

We minimise food waste by deciding what meals to have in advance, [...] buying "Finest" lines and meat that has some animal welfare input, like outdoor reared pigs, free range chickens, etc.

We do the same but reach £100; okay organic baby food isn't cheap, nor is good meat or fish.

We throw little away, certainly not like the couple did last night! Importantly we enjoy food and cooking it!

PS £50  amonth J?! What do you buy for food and where do you shop? 

It's not really where I shop, but what I eat.  For example, a big box of cheapy bran flakes taste the same as other bran flakes and last for about 6 weeks for £2*.  My lunch: teacakes (fruit ones, not marshmallow ones  ) plus some sort of cheap cake, plus fruit (usually whichever ones are on offer), plus fruit juice (I take a big box to work).  Total cost for the week: £4.  At home I eat a lot of pasta or potatoes.  Bought in the biggest bag you can haul home it works out really quite cheap, particularly if you are prepared to eat the same thing for a week.  I haven't got a real freezer, so all processed frozen food is out.  If I make a chilli or something I can keep it in portions in the ice box for a few weeks.

I also don't eat meat, so that saves a bit.  Also, I don't buy the meat alternatives, which are actually quite expensive (and require the freezer).

I probably eat the same 6-7 things on a cycle, but I like them.  I live on my own in the week and go out cycling as soon as I get home from work, so there's no incentive to cook anything that isn't really simple (baked potato anyone?).  I suppose it comes down to the fact that I have cheap taste.


*I kid you not, 6 weeks.  Big box.

Small caveat: I don't eat here at weekends.

[Wascally Weasel]

In our house, leftovers are almost always recycled - for example, if we roast a duck, the fat goes in a pot in the fridge to be re-used for roasting potatoes. We had roast chicken on Sunday - the carcass was simmered with some herbs and an onion to make stock, and we'll get one or two meals of a chicken-soup-nature out of that.

If we cook too much pasta it gets turned into a salad for lunch, and excess rice is saved to be egg-fried (free-range eggs from the local farm being cheaper than supermarket barn eggs) at a later date.

This attitude, coupled with the fact that we pop into the supermarket just around the corner two or three times a week just before it shuts and pick up whatever's reduced to clear, means the two of us eat very well for an estimated £50 a week.

We always make stock from chicken carcasses too.  Freezer is half full of the stuff, great to always have some on hand.  Great for soups as you say and as a good base for other meals.

[cometworm]

The common factor in the majority of "solutions" posted here is that they require a basic standard of skills and knowledge about cooking and nutrition in general. This is fine for the above-average yacf citizens (YACF - the forum where all members are above average but someone for whom stock comes in cubes, they're not going to make stock on the remains of their sunday roast, much less soup from it... a huge amount of knowledge is being lost from the population as a whole because kids aren't taught this at home. Or at school, for that matter.

[Jaded]

erm, I think you are talking about people who don't even know what stock is...

[Frenchie]

okay organic baby food isn't cheap,

Is it impractical to make it yourself?

(caveat: I don't have kids)

We do as much as we can, believe me; but we both work and there are times where these pots are very convenient "on the go". When I pick my daughter up "late" she wants to eat as soon as we make it home; or when we travel it is convenient to have a few pots. Baby milk and other things aren't cheap.