£5 Food Week Challenge

Voltar said:
Here here. Couldn't agree more with 'why shouldn't you if you can?' If you can spend £30 a week on rank student nights getting ratted why only £5 on food.
I'm the first to admit my budget is different to most but still:
student loan is like £3k isnt it?
student term is how many weeks? I dont do maths, but that should mean you can spend more than £5 a week on food. In london £5 gets you a pack of crisps, sandwich and drink with one random item in the union.
If you get a part time job in the union behind the bar that means free drinks + if you're shifty/sly extra money from short changing.
Making money is easy if you want to and eating is such a great pleasure in life that it's worth every penny. Its like women like spa days and shopping. I like going to a nice supermarket/ department store in London and buying some top quality ingredients and always feel satisfied. My wardrobe however, has suffered because of said indulgence.

Student overdraft + student loan= enough to spend sufficiently on your wellbeing and happiness: both of which are directly effected by what you eat. Plus if you eat well you wont get spots or look like a typical geek as such, your health is more important than the other random carp you spend your cash on.
/rant
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What about rent? Fees? £3k is nothing when you have those bills to pay for. If I didn't have a part-time job to pay for food, I would have about £200/year to pay for food.

If you dont know what you are talking about, dont rant about it.
 
£5 a week is pretty hard,I spend about £25 every 2-3 weeks.But then again I do go back home to work during the weekends.
I think my mum would kill me if she knows I spend so little of food whilst at uni!!:p
 
I haven't moved out yet. Turned 18 on Sunday and thinking about renting a place with a friend. Will make sure I have more than a fiver to spend on food though.
 
Sainsbury's Instant Chicken Noodles, Basics 65g
Basics

£0.08/unit

x14 = £1.12 with two meals a day. Spend the rest on some fruit/veg (frozen is cheaper for veg) and if the budget allows then some chicken, failing that smart price white bread + smart price cooked ham :D

They might not be great but at 8p a pack they're a bargain :D. Skip the veg, buy some tinned tomato and chillies and make a chili/tomato sauce and use noodles instead of pasta.
 
Biohazard said:
RICE AND PEAS!

RICE AND PEAS!

Surely 4tw?
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Use tomato ketchup for a sauce and you are laughing - or perhaps choking if you can afford the energy to do so. ;)

One of my ex-flatmates always used to end the uni year living off 9p noodles, tomato ketchup and a loaf of bread or similar with some diluting juice to wash it down and of course whatever was left in the cupboards/he could scrounge off other people. Not very healthy and I never did quite work out how he managed to do it every year when the rest of us were ok.
 
Don't forget things that make cheap healthy fillers.
Potatoes, onions, carrots, leaks, broccoli, turnips,etc. are all prett cheap and healthy. I substiute around half my normal meat with vegies to lower cost and increase healthy. E.g., fill out a chili con carne with lots of kidney beans and potatoes. Lots of Carrots and onions in spag bol.
Home made sups out of these ingredients taste great, can be filling, and are cheap.

Lentil and bean curry is tasty, cheap, and very gassy....
 
Beansprout said:
My housemate and I spend maybe £30/week between us, £50 when we need to buy a lot / include alcohol.

We eat fine, I don't understand how people can spend so much more. Or, equally, not be able to make good meals on a £20/week budget - the key is cooking in groups!
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How many spices and stuff do you buy? I use a lot of spices, herbs, vinegars etc. As you say the key is cooking in groups.
 
i remember a few months back reading a list of products that were supermarket branded but were actually the same product as the branded ones - e.g asdas own nan breads are the same as the pataks ones but half the price - cant find it though :(
 
£5 a week would be easy, but you would need an intial outlay of about £20 for certain things tbh.

Bulkbuy everything, buy a huge bag of potatoes from morisons or a farmer or anywhere tbh, MASSIVE packet of pasta+rice, then you just have to worry about how you're going to make your sauces, so you can buy aload of dehydrated ones with the intial outlay or something but either way its not very hard if you're living off pasta/rice/potatoe meals.
Could also go to somewhere like netto and get bags of frozen chicken for v cheap, one bag should easily last a week or longer.
 
I'd mucho recommend finding a job to anyone who had that little an amount to spend on food, even one shift a week would bring in £30+.

I spend £20-£30 a week, by myself, and I have a relatively healthy diet I think.

For £5.... I'd say cheap bread, cheap jam, cheap pasta and make your own sauces for the pasta.
 
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