Sainsburys feed the family for a week for £50 - challenge?

Man of Honour
Man of Honour
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I thought I'd start a thread on this as the campaign appears to be widely mis-reported and the press have been keen to pick up every detail and give it a slating. If you haven't seen the campaign it's here.

The types of misleading reporting I'm referring to are the likes of here and here. The main comments revolve around there not being enough food. For example, the lunches are reported as being a 'Lunch is a ham, cheese and salad sandwich. Two pieces of bread, halved' which is completely misleading because it omits the fact that a piece of fruit and a yoghurt are included. Admittedly, I'd probably eat more than that but I'm quite active.

That aside, I don't think it's far off. In fact, I think with a little more effort the quantities could be increased, it could be done with free-range meat and eggs, and the general quality of the food could be increased. I'm up for the challenge, if anyone else is?

So I'm going to put together some planned weekly menus, based on two adults sharing for a whole week, for around £25. The tricky bit is that I'm a meat eater and t'other half is veggie, so our bills tend to include a lot of cheese which is more expensive than the meat I buy. I also make a lot of my own stuff like yoghurt, bacon and bread which saves a few £££ each week, so I'll point out where this is the case and allow for the financial difference.

I foresee this will go in a number of directions:
  1. I get a reality check and stand no chance :D
  2. I starve to death
  3. I get scurvy
  4. Everyone sees how bad my diet really is :D

I'll try and keep the manual labour to a minimum, though this will always save a few £££. The other tripping point is the amount I actually eat: as I'm quite active I do need to eat a fair bit. I'll be starting on Sunday, as this is a good opportunity to have a roast and get a carcass on the go for leftovers and stock. Lets see how it goes. Please join in too!
 
My immediate thought was that there is no way it could be done without heavily sacrificing on the quality, like having lower quality meat and buying from the 'value' range. However, having looked at their menu, it doesn't look half bad. I'm even tempted to try some of the dinners.

Good luck, but I think you might struggle, as you seem quite active. I also think the age of the kids in the family will contribute to whether there is enough food or not.
 
Very interested in this...I think the trick of it is make things in bulk...curries / chilli etc for tea.

Is growing your own cheating??

Currently me and the gf have a budget of £50 per week for grocery shopping...this includes cleaning products, hygiene essentials etc. I would say we wouldn't be too far off the challenge as it is.
 
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I would say we wouldn't be too far off the challenge as it is.
This is what I was thinking. Take the bottle of wine per week out of our bills and that cuts a chunk off. Then once you discount all the cleaning products we're probably not far off.

One of the tricks is using up every last bit of food. We tend to chuck out a chunk of bread each time, for example, so it's time to start baking smaller loaves. Or slice them up for toast and put them in the freezer. The odd whole vegetable ends up in the bin because we over-bought as well.

We also do a run to the Lewisham veg market each Saturday, which means loads of in-season veg for next to nothing. I'm not sure if it would be cheating to use the market prices and the way we bulk cook a load of stuff for the freezer, because markets are out of reach for most people. I need to keep this realistic. It might add £5 to the weekly bill with the difference.
 
I'll look forward to this one, I did my Student Chicken Thread and got hooked on using every bit of food up instead of wasting it.

I use any veg for soups and freeze them (but I should maybe use peelings for compost). I use stale bread for brushetta and croutons. If I cook a joint I take a couple of thin slices for sandwiches the next day and don't forget to make stocks from any unused meat/bones and peelings :)
 
So far I'm putting a spreadsheet together to work out the costs of the cupboard regulars. Breakfast is what I'm including in this because it's going to be the same pretty much every week, made up of porridge, smoothies, toast and a fry up at the weekend. These items will need to sit in the cupboard or freezer, so for example a pack of oats is 1500g which is 50 of my servings, TTD sausages in packs of 6 can either go in the freezer or be used in meals along the week, cost of servings of 100ml of milk etc etc. I'm also weighing what I'm eating for the next few days to gauge the actual size of portions of fruit, yoghurt, oats etc.

Example: bowl of porridge, 200g:
Oats, 2 tablespoons, 30g - £0.03 (based on 1500g bag of porridge oats @ £1.41)
Milk 150ml - £0.08 (based on 4-pint bottle of whole milk @ £1.25)
Water 20ml - £0.00
Total: £0.11

That is an actual size bowl of porridge I'd eat and rounded up the milk a bit because I used slightly less.

What I need to do next is buy some fruit and veg to gauge the unit costs of things like bananas, apples, potatoes, carrots etc. Then I can work out costs of portion sizes in meals and smoothies and work out what costs what and where :D
 
Sounds good Jonny. I don't really have the patience to try it as I'm not a fan of sticking to such regulations and what not. I've always wanted to make proper weekly meal plans but it never works out and I suppose I'll always spend more because of that.
Interesting to see how it works out for you.
 
I spend £50 on myself a week on food! At uni days I did hover around the £15 a week mark but it was lots of economy stuff, bread and carb products. 99p meal here and there, basically crap.

I don't spend far off that and I'm a student... On the other hand I am a student "in" London and need to buy speciality stuff because of a wheat allergy which sort of puts the price up. When I was at uni in the south west a couple of years ago £25 was reasonable, £30 with a lot of treats but now food prices have gone up...

However a friend of mine swears he only spends £10-15 on food a week. I'm not sure it's doable for me though, for example those dinners for 4, that's only two days dinner for me. There's also no snacks for between meals (by that I mean fruit mainly).

Good luck with it though.:)

EDIT: for comparison I've just done a quick pricecheck on my eathing habits... No snacks or treats in this but a reasonably standard day...

Breakfast -
Banana - £0.20

Lunch - £1.80
Two Gluten Free Pitta (x4 pack @ £2.09) - £1.05
Wafer thin ham (450g @ £3) - £0.60
Cucumber (whole @ 80p) - £0.15

Dinner - £2.67
Sainsburys beef mince (500g @ £2.20) - 250g - £1.10
Gluten free spaghetti (pack @ £2) - 1/3 of pack - £0.65
Bolognese sauce (500g @1.75) - 250g - £0.87

Day - 4.67
Week ~ £31...

Obviously that doesn't include anything I want to add to a bolognase or any fruit I eat during the day or juice I drink...
 
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Well it's not looking good for me so far :p

Working out breakfast options.

Smoothie, soft fruit eg strawberries, blueberries, 300ml
Soft fruit 100g: £1.00
Yoghurt 100g: £0.06
Oats 10g: £0.01
Milk 100ml: £0.06
Total = £1.12

I usually have 5 of those a week so that's half my budget gone :eek:

Alternatives:

Smoothie, Nesquik, 300ml
Milk powder 60g: £0.24
Nesquik 20g : £0.11
Milk 250ml: £0.14
Total = £0.49

Smoothie, banana, 300ml
Banana: (approx) £0.10
Yoghurt 100g: £0.06
Oats 10g: £0.01
Milk 100ml: £0.06
Total = £0.22

Better, but still not looking great...
 
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Haha! That's the problem, to eat healthily you need to spend money. :(
I disagree with that. It's the fact that I'm using blueberries and strawberries which are extremely expensive :D

Have you tried the frozen fruit rather than fresh fruit?
Going to check it out because I'd like to keep soft fruits in at least a couple of my smoothies per week :)

Bananas are only about 18p :) or are you eating one and a half in a smoothie?
Just weighed a banana and the ones I go for are about 150g, which equates to about 10p. Cheap win! :)
 
Where are the vegetables? The herbs/spices for the haddock? Not to mention, I wouldn't say that one Haddock fillet is enough for one person.

last time i checked a potato was a vegetable, and i get my Haddock fillets from the fishmongers, and believe me one fillet is enough for one person.

Why would you want to ruin the gorgeous taste of Smoked haddock with herbs and spiced, salt pepper yes, anything else is heresy
 
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