How much money do you spend on food a day?

DJ85

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As I work away on call all the time I’ve no idea if I’m coming or going so we are usually about £30 ish per day for lunch and supper and maybe a bottle of wine if we fancy It, that includes our 2 year old to
(not the wine:p)
If I know I’m going to be home a good week or so we’ll be around £80 for a good weeks shop at Lidl or Aldi. So much dearer buying by the day.
 

Lima

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tuftyfella said:
breakfast - make my own granola 1.9kg + cheap all-bran + cheap low fat yoghurt, comes to £16.50 (ish) for the 28 days

lunch - fried egg sandwich, eggs + bread for 6 days a week, for 28 days worth comes to £5.00 (ish)

tea - roast chicken for the week days £3.30 + veg &/or rice or salad. 28 days comes to £26/27 (ish) (might do a sausage/ meatball casserole sometimes, comes to same cost)

saturday tea - half a 14" supermarket fresh made counter pizza. 28 days worth comes to £7.00

sunday tea - roast @ parents. comes to £1/2 (i supply pudding :p)

food is fuel, i get what i need and i'm not a glutton, never hungry, not losing /gaining weight so...

i also don't buy the expensive brand stuff, something like yoghurt can go from what i spend, 45p per 500g pot (i buy 4), up to £2.x for the same amount (500g pot). with the pizzas, i could get through a full 14" no problem, have done in the past, but was absolutely stuffed, stopped doing it, felt better after eating and saved money. i also don't buy something i'm not going to eat and that will get left in the freezer for weeks/ months. i don't dawdle around the supermarket going up and down every aisle buying things i don't need to. i go in with a plan of what i need, get it and get out.

of course there may be up to £5 on things like butter, salt + pepper etc too but either way £55/60 is easily a manageable budget for a single person.

:)
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If you can pull that off and enjoy it then fair play to you. In my head, despite what you’ve said I still don’t get it. Even if you could buy a dozen eggs for £1 (I’ve never seen eggs that cheap, usually £1.25-£1.75) you are pretty much at your full £5 budget and that’s without bread. Do you not have any butter or ketchup/ brown sauce? Just one egg, 2 slices of bread? Nothing else? :(

Edit - sorry just seen eggs in Sainsbury’s for £1.
 
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Maccapacca

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A £3.30 chicken must be disgusting in taste and welfare. The last chicken I bought was £16 and lasted a family of four three dinners plus boiling up for chicken broth.

You are what you ate ate.
 

tuftyfella

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Lima said:
If you can pull that off and enjoy it then fair play to you. In my head, despite what you’ve said I still don’t get it. Even if you could buy a dozen eggs for £1 (I’ve never seen eggs that cheap, usually £1.25-£1.75) you are pretty much at your full £5 budget and that’s without bread. Do you not have any butter or ketchup/ brown sauce? Just one egg, 2 slices of bread? Nothing else? :(

Edit - sorry just seen eggs in Sainsbury’s for £1.
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ASDA smart price eggs, 6 pack, 70p
ASDA Wholemeal Medium Sliced, 45p
ASDA Brilliantly Buttery 1kg butter, £1.44 (way more than a weeks worth)

so, easy meal, keeps me going until tea. :p

sometimes i might even buy a pack of sliced cheese and stick a slice in there too.

ASDA Smart Price Mild Cheddar Slices, 99p

you know i'm probably going to get some flack now for shopping at ASDA? :p
 

Uther

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tom_e

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Maccapacca said:
A £3.30 chicken must be disgusting in taste and welfare. The last chicken I bought was £16 and lasted a family of four three dinners plus boiling up for chicken broth.

You are what you ate ate.
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How big was this chicken!? A normal 2kg ish whole chicken might last me 4 possibly 5 meals and there's only one of me.
 

Flaevius

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Lima said:
How on Earth is this possible? There is absolutely no way you can use decent ingredients or cook tasty food on that budget. I swear people just grossly underestimate what they actually spend.

£2.07/ day for 3 meals. 69p/ meal. No chance.
£2/ week on junk food? So 1 maybe 2 items (2l bottle of coke (on offer) + some custard creams??
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Unless you keep track, it is very easy to underestimate total expenditure; not just shopping, but the little 'extras' that invariably accumulate throughout the week or month.

That said, depending on the type of food you enjoy, £0.69p per meal is attainable. Pasta dishes are pennies really if you make from scratch. One of my stock dishes is chilli con carne. Recently I started using quorn rather than mince; not for cost, but more to cut down on the amount of red meat we consume. It's the perfect meal to use it as it is so highly spiced you don't miss the additional fat content or flavour. A £3 pack will make six meals; with a tin of kidney beans and basic passata, it's around £0.65p per portion. Plus a few pennies' worth of salt, pepper and herbs. But in reality I buy the meat packs when they are (regularly) half price, so it's more like £0.40p per portion. Using mince, you can still do it for between £0.70-0.90 per portion as a main meal, batch cooking. *using supermarket packaged meat.

Just an example. I couldn't quite get my meals down to that level; but anyone who eats lots of rice, pasta, noodle or potato dishes, basic breakfasts, simple lunches, not a lot of meat - it's doable.

I used to be a nightmare for junk food such as biscuits and crisps, but now probably only spend £3.50-4 per week on 'junk' myself - usually a big bag of Doritos for £1 and a couple of packs of basic biscuits, with maybe a pack of granola bars.
 

b0rn2sk8

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Maccapacca said:
You are what you ate ate.
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Sorry, I couldn't let this one go.

I totally accept there is an argument for better animal welfare (the UK/EU already has very good standards comparatively) but...

In terms of what the body actually needs there is next to no difference between a high end expensive chicken vs a standard cheap British chicken. At the end of the day all the body sees is protein. Same with organic veg vs normal veg, there is zero nutritional difference.

It's largely irreverent what you eat (assuming it is safe) as long as you are eating the right mix of proteins, complex, basic carbohydrate and all of the relevant vitamins and minerals at the right amount of calories for your individual needs.

It doesn't matter if it comes in the form of a 'organic skipping threw the meadows happy chicken' with 'organic only the best sunshine vegetables' or the goop from the Matrix as long as it has everything you need in it then its fine. Food has most certainly moved from being an essential fuel to an every day pleasure.
 

explicit4u

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Probably £15 a day at work then around £25 a fortnight on groceries. Slightly less if I wake up early enough to have a decent breakfast (quick weetabix and a banana if I’m short on time).
 

Efour

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Maccapacca said:
A £3.30 chicken must be disgusting in taste and welfare. The last chicken I bought was £16 and lasted a family of four three dinners plus boiling up for chicken broth.

You are what you ate ate.
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Where do you even get a chicken for 16 quid?
There's not a single butcher around my mums part of London that could.. Where do you live.
 

chrcoluk

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Whatever my budget is I go over it,food is so expensive now days. Inflation has been unreal.

The earlier post of grand a month for a family I find very believable.
 

explicit4u

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Firestar_3x said:
Some significant differences in even moderately priced chickens, for example an M&S Oakham Chicken tastes night and day better than your standard cheap supermarket stuff, a corn fed chicken from the butchers tastes different again etc.
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I don’t know, for me chicken is all in the chefs ability. As long as it’s not too cheap I’ve never been able to tell the difference.

Obviously it depends on how you cook it, a relatively simple chicken breast maybe I can tell but it’s still not much of a difference
 
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