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Your Annual Food Bill?


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HOLA441
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HOLA443

Go on them -I'm calling you. I'd like to see a proper breakdown of a balanced diet for £2 a week. (Ketchup on pasta isn't balanced, btw).

Ketchup???

The core ingredients are pasta and pulses (e.g. lentils). Anything else is a bit of luxury, or (if you find it on offer) a like-for-like substitution.

One week's sustenance: two and a half 500g packets of value line pasta (36p/packet), plus one 500g pack of lentils (90p). Beyond that ... tiny bit of corn oil and you can fry the lentils, and if you can stretch to an onion, a couple of mushrooms, and a pinch of herbs/spice it'll even taste good.

When I was on it for real, the best luxury was blackberries gathered from nature's bounty. I was still collecting them into late November in 2003.

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HOLA444

Ketchup???

The core ingredients are pasta and pulses (e.g. lentils). Anything else is a bit of luxury, or (if you find it on offer) a like-for-like substitution.

One week's sustenance: two and a half 500g packets of value line pasta (36p/packet), plus one 500g pack of lentils (90p). Beyond that ... tiny bit of corn oil and you can fry the lentils, and if you can stretch to an onion, a couple of mushrooms, and a pinch of herbs/spice it'll even taste good.

When I was on it for real, the best luxury was blackberries gathered from nature's bounty. I was still collecting them into late November in 2003.

That is calorific survival not a balanced diet. In fact it isn't even survival. 1250g of pasta and 500g of lentils a week doesn't even add up to 800kcal per day (Concentration camp ration)

Edited by Kurt Barlow
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HOLA446

About £9,500 - 2 adults and a 7 & 4 year old. Reading this thread makes me think this is a bit high though! It includes alcohol (biggest expense at about £2,000) and cleaning products, bog rolls etc etc. Everything cooked from scratch and no factory farmed meat.

This thread makes me feel profligate too. We don't drink much, except for single malt whisky and the occasional bottle of decent plonk, which comes out of my leisure budget rather than food. Annual shop including cleaning products, toothpaste and that, for 2 adults and a toddler, is £6.5-7k.

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HOLA449

Whatever that costs, its worth it. That a group of people who are, on a sliding scale, some of the richest people in the world feel the need to live on £3 a day, then something in this country is very wrong. But we knew that, didn't we?

Not convinced by that. £3 a day isn't a lot but with some planning and a few basic cooking skills, you could live fairly well on that. There are probably those that are having to do it now as a result of inflation, but it's always been a way of life here rather than a choice. That's not to say that it hasn't been forced on others though.

I've always been able to cook from quite a young age, and with four to cook for it's easier to get it down to less than £3 a day per head, in fact it's not really an effort, I just do it as a matter of course. There is of course an opportunity cost in doing things the way we do as does take some time, but I work from home anyway, so it's not actually a big problem. Whist "two can leave as cheaply as one" isn't entirely true, there is something to it.

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HOLA4410

A diet heavy on lentils and rice is cheap. However, I find fruit very expensive. It's not helped by the fact that my kids are fussy and I still want them to get plenty of fruit and veg. Two kids eating a banana, an apple, a handful of grapes and some strawberries every day soon adds up. If they'd eat less fruit and more veg then my bills would come down quite a bit. Annoyingly, my eldest lad prefers exotic fruit to English as well, and it's hard to tell him he can't have a healthy mango because it costs too much.

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HOLA4411

£30 per week for one person. I eat organic good quality stuff where possible.

Breakfast - uncooked organic oats, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, 9 cornflakes to give it texture, 10 at weekends!.

lunch - 2 slices of wholemeal bread, 5 cherry tomatoes, low fat cheese, 1 stick organic celery.

tea - 1 vegetarian ready meal from wherever, or pasta and brocoli, 1 glass of fruit juice watered down with mineral water.

Occasional salmon thrown in somewhere.

Then I ruin it with biscuits etc.

Anyway, average preparation time is 4 minutes.

Reckon in all honesty if you were happy to kill yourself by the age of 40 you could manage on £15 pw at iceland.

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HOLA4413

Say what?

That's £3 a day. What do you live on, a single helping of rice? :)

I shop for one only too, and also at Sainsburys. My weekly food bill alone must be £70, so around £10 a day. And I'm a fit healthy guy who eats no junk food.

Seriously, please explain to me how you are living on £3 a day from Sainsburys?

We're about £2.5k/y for 2 of us all in, easy when a single chicken and some veg does a roast, pie and soup-thats three mains for 2 and sandwiches for lunch for 2 for 2 days. Cook like your granny did and food goes much farther. Cook the chicken and turf it and eating is expensive. If I didn't like meat so much we'd go veggie-very cheap eating that.

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HOLA4414

ok, the best I can come up with, for cheapness, is beans on toast. I've heard that this is pretty much a "balanced diet", and if you include some vitamin tablets, then I reckon you'd be able to eat that pretty much indefinitely.

1 loaf of (home made) bread a day = 50p;

2 tins of cheapish baked beans a day = 50p;

Nutritional amounts per day:

Calories: 2,500

Fat: 37g

Carbs: 450g

(Sugar: 55g)

Protein: 75g

Fibre: 35g

So, £1 per day... wow. £365 per year!!

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HOLA4415

My food bill is tiny. Discounting what I grow in my garden, I spend the following in a week.

15p - loaf of bread (close to sell by date, gets frozen).

89p - 2l milk

70p - 7 free range eggs

60p - 3 onions

89p - 2kg potatoes

40p - ~250g rice

89p - small bunch (5-6) of bananas

60p - 3 satsumas

25p - bran flakes

£1 - 6 tomatoes

90p - 2 small broccoli's

80p - medium sized turnip

25p - fresh garlic

25p - fresh ginger

£3 - fresh boned chicken for about 4 meals

30p - 100-150g chickpeas

30p - 100-150g lentils

40p - random spices and oils

20p - teabags (about 2 cups a day)

£5 - random stuff, toiletries, washup stuff, treats

On average, I spend about £20 a week, like to get a nice steak or bit of fresh fish, so that brings the total up to £1100 a year. Meat is expensive, and unfortunately fresh fish is even more so, so they are a treat. To keep costs down, cooking using lentils, chickpeas and veg really is key. Might eat out the odd time which costs me an extra £100 a year, but I really count that as entertainment. Only drink in the pub, and would only go there at most once a month, would only spend at most £200 a year on alcohol.

I know people who spend more on alcohol on one night out than what I spend in an entire week on food. Madness.

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HOLA4416

That is calorific survival not a balanced diet. In fact it isn't even survival. 1250g of pasta and 500g of lentils a week doesn't even add up to 800kcal per day (Concentration camp ration)

My experience was that the metabolism adjusted to a sparse diet, and I didn't even lose weight (my BMI remained resolutely around 30). It was one meal a day, and no bigger than one of three (two cooked) meals/day I might eat in more affluent times.

I suspect it would've been harder at a younger age. And it was probably made easier by several years in Italy, where I had grown accustomed to an ample but far less rich diet than in the UK.

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HOLA4417

Weekly mean (63 weeks data)

£52.89. Groceries. Food and household/domestic items.

£20.75. Coffee and miscellaneous food items. (Basically all food I purchase for immediate consumption)

£17.73 Alcohol. All, home and social.

Single, Male. 200lbs. Ex-body builder, still eat around 4500 calories a day, quality meat and clean carbs.

1kg meat a day, 3kg rice a week etc… Food is cheap.

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HOLA4419

It got hit playing volleyball: I thought it the finger equivalent of a stubbed toe. So I went home, and made bread as planned, but kneading the stuff was agony. That's when I began to suspect what later became clear: the finger was actually broken!

If you sourdough it, you don't really need to knead it. I've been doing sourdough pretty much daily since last October.

25kg of organic white flour (Doves) is £23, I mix a bit of rye too.

I do an 800g (500g flour) loaf every day, just requires a few folds, throw 100g of flour out a day - so cost is around 60p a loaf - and it's proper artisan stuff (£4 in shop).

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HOLA4420

Seriously people? It's not about (optionally) scratching around combining the cheapest of ingredients to make a semi-nutritious meal.

If you work for a living and can't at least eat good food then what's the point.

Made in China or Made in Germany?

For me it's quality every time (in everything).

Case in point, my local (French) supermarket sells Asparagus. They had Chinese and French. The Chinese Asparagus is genetically modified to resist roundup. As a consequence the Chinese use copious quantities of the stuff to keep weeds down. Long term consumption of roundup causes cancer.

Someone asked about VAT on French food, the rate is 7% (up from 5.5% last year).

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HOLA4421

Weekly mean (63 weeks data)

£52.89. Groceries. Food and household/domestic items.

£20.75. Coffee and miscellaneous food items. (Basically all food I purchase for immediate consumption)

£17.73 Alcohol. All, home and social.

Single, Male. 200lbs. Ex-body builder, still eat around 4500 calories a day, quality meat and clean carbs.

1kg meat a day, 3kg rice a week etc… Food is cheap.

Hmmm.... £360 per month for 4500 calories a day. I spend £100 per month for 2500 calories a day. You say food is cheap.... not the stuff you buy!

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HOLA4422

Hmmm.... £360 per month for 4500 calories a day. I spend £100 per month for 2500 calories a day. You say food is cheap.... not the stuff you buy!

Depends on your terms of reference. Nothing wrong with spending £360/month if you can afford it. If you eat prepared meals then it's not really expensive at all (and if you don't enjoy cooking then why wouldn't you?) A few meals out, a few bottles of classy wine, could easily add up to more ... and if you're away from home and relying on eating out then it's positively cheap.

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HOLA4423

My food bill is tiny. Discounting what I grow in my garden, I spend the following in a week.

15p - loaf of bread (close to sell by date, gets frozen).

89p - 2l milk

70p - 7 free range eggs

60p - 3 onions

89p - 2kg potatoes

40p - ~250g rice

89p - small bunch (5-6) of bananas

60p - 3 satsumas

25p - bran flakes

£1 - 6 tomatoes

90p - 2 small broccoli's

80p - medium sized turnip

25p - fresh garlic

25p - fresh ginger

£3 - fresh boned chicken for about 4 meals

30p - 100-150g chickpeas

30p - 100-150g lentils

40p - random spices and oils

20p - teabags (about 2 cups a day)

£5 - random stuff, toiletries, washup stuff, treats

On average, I spend about £20 a week, like to get a nice steak or bit of fresh fish, so that brings the total up to £1100 a year. Meat is expensive, and unfortunately fresh fish is even more so, so they are a treat. To keep costs down, cooking using lentils, chickpeas and veg really is key. Might eat out the odd time which costs me an extra £100 a year, but I really count that as entertainment. Only drink in the pub, and would only go there at most once a month, would only spend at most £200 a year on alcohol.

I know people who spend more on alcohol on one night out than what I spend in an entire week on food. Madness.

This is pretty much what we buy (2 adults). Includes stuff like bogroll, soap, cleaning stuff. Current rate of expense about £1700 a year between two. Here in central Europe food prices work out at about the same as the UK - luxuries are more expensive but staples are a bit cheaper. We keep costs low by avoiding meat (have fish and pulses instead), home baking and cooking from scratch, growing a bit of veg on the balcony, and making our own wine. The Mrs. doesn't drink alcohol or take dairy products, and I drink green tea to save on milk anyway. Toiletries are kept down by using crystal deodorants and I use shaving soap and brush, with a stropped razor which lasts indefinitely.

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HOLA4424

I think I've mentioned this on here before - but for bacon:

full pork belly, skin on, boned yourself with no holes for moisture

cut in half if long

rub half a tube of coarse sea salt on to it

stack it in a bowl, cover with water

put plates on top to hold under water

dry off after 3 days

put on a wire rack in fridge (skin side down)

ready immediately but gets better after a week or two

you will smell if something is wrong - cut the smelly bit out (usually a flap you've left)

slice what you need and fry

This gives me a bacon sarnie every day for 3wks+ - costs £10-£20 depending on size of belly - no preservatives

Wow, we have a winner. I'll save this incase I want to start eating meat regularly again. Anyone spending 400-600 pounds/ month on food for one or two people should be ashamed of yourselves. I've had months where I've spent 300 pounds on food but that was more due to laziness of not wanting to cook and preferring to eat out. But I have immense plans now including buying an electric oven, cutting out most meat, eating more fruit and nuts, eggs then using then oven for roast vegies. I'll try and cut meat down to 2 days a week, as I want to get slim and toned up.

Obviously I will be doing exercise/ sports and workouts on top of that.

Edited by Saberu
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HOLA4425

We live in Singapore, but also spend a lot of time ( around 25% ) up in Tokyo which is not cheap and we like to eat and drink very well wherever we are.

For the missus, myself our maid and our 2 year old daughter last year we spent

groceries 10,700 gbp

restaurants 14,100 gbp

drinking 2,500 gbp

So a total of around 27k which is pretty extreme but food is the one thing we are pretty indulgent on ...

We find when in the UK the supermarkets are really very cheap in comparison to what we are used to.

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