Approx £4 per day to feed 4 people, breakfast lunch and dinner? That sounds like hell.
£100 a month food budget for two
- Thread starter PiKe
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Approx £4 per day to feed 4 people, breakfast lunch and dinner? That sounds like hell.
0.99p for 300g from Lidl, although it was on offer (not something I often purchase). Showing £5.17 for 1KG for me - https://www.buywholefoodsonline.co.uk/organic-quinoa-grain-1kg.html
Cereal or toast in the morning.
Lunch is sandwiches, pack of crisps, nothing fancy, it's lunch.
Dinner usually has meat but not always. For example, last night was stir fry with left over chicken from Sunday roast.
I shop wisely, I mostly buy named brands at some times at Costco or when there are deals, I often pick up reduced items and plan meals round that so can end up with steak, chicken, lamb or mince.
How is that hell? We eat better than most and for a lot less.
So eating rubbish for breakkie and lunch and fighting for cheap reduced food. It sounds like hell to me yes, and even then £1 each per day doesn't go very far at all.
On £1 per person per day you couldn't really afford a single chicken for the Sunday roast either, and 1 chicken is not enough for 4 people to have enough leftovers for a decent stir fry.
I now have visions of how you spend your evenings
Quinoa is notoriously expensive. Why not go for bulgar wheat or something less 'trendy'. There's a lot of grains that are similarly good for you. The bulgar wheat that I get from Ocado is 24p/100g.
Sounds like you've got the right mindset, so good on you. People like @200sols are going to assume the worst when you say 'cereal or toast' and to be honest it gives me visions of sugary rubbish (cereal) and cheap bread for toast etc. But I'm not jumping to conclusions. Porridge or overnight oats would be even cheaper and much better for the family if that's the case. I'd try not to get kids used to eating crisps every day but to be fair I did when I was growing up and I turned out.. somewhat ok
Honestly, that sounds like a lot of beige food and pretty much what I expected. Good for you for sticking to a budget but I don't think it's fair to say you "eat better than most".
Sounds like you've got the right mindset, so good on you. People like @200sols are going to assume the worst when you say 'cereal or toast' and to be honest it gives me visions of sugary rubbish (cereal) and cheap bread for toast etc. But I'm not jumping to conclusions. Porridge or overnight oats would be even cheaper and much better for the family if that's the case. I'd try not to get kids used to eating crisps every day but to be fair I did when I was growing up and I turned out.. somewhat ok
Thanks, not sure what 200Sols wants to suggest for breakfast, but I am not talking about sweet cereals. Porridge is included in my list of cereals.
BTW my children are not teenagers (not babies either) so they aren't eating loads. But we don't snack, all food is freshly made and no ready meals.
Beige food? A stir fry that contains brocolli, carrots and peppers is not beige.
I dont want to turn the thread into a competition of who spends the most on food as that is not my point really. I get eating on a budget but yours just seems way too low for me to even imagine.
Of course it's fair to say, the thread has been started by someone who is eating ready made pies. Look at the average families, many who can't cook or are too lazy to cook from fresh. There's several programmes on TV every week with people who spend stupid amounts of money on food each week, these programmes exist because there are 1000s out there who are in the same boat.
The competition is who spend the least
We are not eating on a budget, merely spending wisely. We eat well and don't drink a lot (which helps spending massively)
I would be interested to hear what you consider a healthy breakfast for a working family.
Porridge is a good breakfast, but you said cereals and toast and that brings visions of frosties and coco pops or cheapo sliced white bread and to be fair your budget doesnt allow for better bread.
£4 per day for a family of 4 is a budget, and a very low one IMO.
£4 per day for a family of 4 is a budget, and a very low one IMO.
Named brands from Costco, usually half the price than the supermarkets and often reduced (not going out of date!) Shopping wisely...
Toast, cereal, crisps, sandwich etc. are what I was referring to.
A ready-made pie or sandwich isn't necessarily going to be any better/worse than one you make yourself if you're using cheap mince, cheap white bread, low-quality deli meats etc. they're basically the same thing.
Well, I've just started tracking what I have to cut down on ready-made, low quality food and have more veg etc. so I actually have a break down of my food today, although this is a particularly expensive day.
Normally I wouldn't have Salmon or Quinoa, but I got 1kg for £6.50 which is pretty cheap. On an average day I would have breakfast at work, which would vary from day to day.
Breakfast -
Egg - 1 - 15p
Spinach - 3rd bag - 43p
Butter 8g - 6p
Garlic - one clove - 4p
Smoked Ham - 100g - 50p
Total - £1.18 - 290 cals
Lunch -
Chicken - £0.32 - 2 drumsticks
Carrot - 2p - 1/4 large
Red onion - 4p - 1/8
Beetroot - 9p - 1/8 bag
Quinua - 16p - 50g dry
Stock cube - 1p - 1/4
Feta - 11p - 25g
Spinach - 11p - 1/12th bag
Spices - 3p - Spice blend/harrissa
Dressing - Honey/Oil/Lemon Juice 8p
Total - 0.97p - 594 cals
Dinner -
Salmon - 170g - £1.11
Spring onion - 12p
Egg noodles 100g - 25p
Sweet chilli sauce 50g - 16p
Mushrooms - 100g - 25p
Spinach - 1/3rd bag - 43p
Garlic - 4p
Ginger - 3p
Carrot - 10p
£2.49 - 670 cals
£4.64 - 1702 cals
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I wont have a bad word spread about porridge. Or toast for that matter (as long as it's a granary loaf).
Between the two of us we spend £160 a month on shopping (not including take aways) and I thought we were fairly thrifty shoppers. Buy most of the fruit, veg, eggs and meat at Aldi/Lidil can never remember which is which. The better one) then hop over to Tesco/Sainsburys for all the branded stuff.
Between the two of us we spend £160 a month on shopping (not including take aways) and I thought we were fairly thrifty shoppers. Buy most of the fruit, veg, eggs and meat at Aldi/Lidil can never remember which is which. The better one) then hop over to Tesco/Sainsburys for all the branded stuff.
Though a ready made pie is full of salt and other additives. I am not buying cheap mince or cheap bread.
Which is what I am doing, buy when on offer. Shopping wisely and eating better.
Exactly, the abundance of supermarkets now means there are always offers on named brands as they fight for competition. Aldi super 6 for fruit and veg or the Tesco or Sainsbury's equivalent.
Soldato
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We do similar, some of the fresh stuff at Aldi is good quality and much cheaper than elsewhere.
I use that in preference to say green-lentils (have never bought bulgar) due to the higher protein, which might be a false economy, if you can have something just as tasty
with a lower protein content, but relatively cheaper.
Although like op, we make bread in a bread maker, making a 100% wholemeal bread is challenging (to get sufficient rise, not a brick);
the supermarket breads are themselves particularly ambiguous about the quantity of wholemeal themselves, so identifying true high end is difficult. I'd contend. ?
surprisingly now looking https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/health-...revention/nutrition/whole-grain#_Toc479239824
EDIT: I should have read further
where is the eu when you need it
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