Just being nosy

[ang_rosin]

A community of which I am a member recently had a question about how much you need to spend per week on groceries. I've recently been able to sit and review my spending post-payrise and I've realised that I've been overspending again. I'm wondering if I spend more or less on food than other people and I'm terribly nosy so...

Poll set to viewable to none because I'm sure some people wouldn't want everyone to know they spend £400 a week eating out. :)

[Poll #847585]

Comments

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

What do you think the minimum spend is on food for a healthy and balanced diet.

It's not about money, it's about time. When I was a student, I ate much better (on a day-to-day basis) than I do now. Mostly because I had the time to source cheap ingredients and the time to cook them well. As a rule of thumb, cheaper ingredients need more preparation time.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

That's actually enormously true. But OTOH if you go into Farm Foods or somewhere of that ilk you find huge amounts of ghastly and very unhealthy fatty frozen junk food , which is also very cheap AND requires no cooking, unlike veg, lentils etc - and that's what the real underclass live on. Turkey twizzlers. mm.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Microwaveable. Donner. Kebabs.

*shudder*

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Your comment about time is very true. I can make smoothies myself but I can't be bothered with the clearing up afterwards at the moment so I'm probably spending £1.50 a day on pulped fruit. I spent a premium on Monday night for cubed lean lamb which I know if I prepared myself would cost half as much.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Absolutely no idea really. I am in the middle of transiting from a life style where i bouight most my provisions locally in small shops supplemented by odd trips to Morrisons to but tinned tomatoes, to one where I have to buy everything virtually from supermarkets and the only local one is waitrose which is bloody expensive!! So I'm feeling a mite worried about tis myself tho suppose the reality OUGHT to be that it's cheaper to buy in supermarkets than small local shops...?

But I miss my deli, my fish shop and my butchers. sniff.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

the reality OUGHT to be that it's cheaper to buy in supermarkets than small local shops...?

But it's not (in my experience).

I end up spending more on things like "out of date" sandwiches, ready meals, random sliced meats, fancy cheeses etc. that I otherwise wouldn't buy. I buy more salady stuff and then half of it goes brown and squishy in the bottom of the fridge before I can eat it and gets thrown away (along with half of the cheeses and sliced meats). I buy two or three kinds of bread products (fresh baked multigrain, sliced sandwich and possibly either something cake like or some "going out of date" rolls/baguettes etc.) and some of those end up going stale/mouldy and being thrown away.

I get large bottles of fizzy water and diet coke and other drinks (which I don't *need*) because I have the trolley and the car ... etc.

And so when I go to get a drink, or wash clothes, or anything else, I have LARGE packets and don't need to think frugally, so I end up using more.

And then there are the non-food products (the CDs, DVDs, magazines, housewares, electronics etc.) which get picked up on impulse ...

... I reckon if I had to carry everything I bought either in bags or on a bicycle, that I'd buy only half the amount of stuff.

But it is time and energy poverty that really affects my purchasing and diet. I don't buy fresh fish because I don't cook fresh fish (I don't cook fresh meat, beyond ground beef in spaghetti sauce, and maybe a steak once a year) so a butcher's or a fishmonger's wouldn't be high on my list of shops I'd miss.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you'd do yourself a lot of good by sticking to small shops and not going near supermarkets!! Could you try it for a month and see how you felt?

I don't tend to buy out of date stuff except sometimes meat or ready meals for the freezer; and I don't buy pop or fizz, or non food stuff in supermarkets, pretty much.

So my shop is mostly tinned veg (beans, tomatoes, corn, etc), cleaning products, toilet roll etc, and meat and fish and veg - all fairly decent value in supermarkets. I do have a weakness for nice bread, exotic ready meal type things (eg waitrose spanish tapas which are gorgeous) and deli counter stuff (cheese, olives etc) where I definitely do sometimes waste money. But I'm a pretty frugal shopper.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

I have comments on this but you'll have to wait until after I've been for a haircut!

Rampant consumerism.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

One of the things I managed to cure myself of is the compulsion to buy bargains that are patently not. A cheap packet of meat is not a bargain if you don't eat it - ditto BOGOF fresh food offers when you have no storage space.

I'm afraid your supermarket overspend is another manifestation of compulsive shopping/hoarding. Kill it before it kills you!

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

I think some studies have shown that although for staples such as eggs, milk and bread supermarkets are cheaper for fruit, veg, meat and fish sourcing from local suppliers is as cheap, if not cheaper. You need to find the local farmer's market, dear.

I've got to get myself back into the habit of shopping at the FM at least once a month.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

There'sa great farmers market in winchester allegedly but I;d have to get there before lunchtime Sunday! arg!

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the transition from big vibrant city dweller to middle-class suburbanite... The Renault Espace is in the post ;P

[daveon.livejournal.com]

But Waitrose is nice. :)

I like shopping in Waitrose.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I heart Waitrose , I admit.

[white_hart]

I'd be interested to know how the answers to the first two questions correlate. We spend a lot of money on groceries, but we both take packed lunches and very rarely eat out or have takeaways...

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

I'll give it a few hours, or even a day, then try and match them up for you. I'd be interested too. I'd also be interested in how much stuff people estimate they throw away, how many people make lists etc. but didn't want to overload the flist.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I realised that when I said 'over 50 quid' for coffee sandwiches, meals out, that's for me, not per person for the family; we don't spend £200 on this stuff but I have yer basic London working lifestyle, 'oh yes if we're having a drink after work then let's pick up a nibbles platter at £13.95' that sort of thing.

On the 'how much is needed' this depends to some extent on family size. I think it is much harder for a single person to manage on a limited budget than for, say, a family of four to live on four times that budget.

A family of four can buy all their groceries and household expenses, and eat very well, on £120 a week; £80 would be seriously tricky, even with a choice of sources, and as other commentators have pointed out, the choice of sources can be difficult if you're working full time, especially if you're working full time in low-paid work. Good quality fruit and veg is incredibly expensive in supermarkets; but I can buy a big pile of fruit, enough for a family for a week, for a fiver on the market.

[valamelmeo.livejournal.com]

As a single person who works full-time at a low-paid job, I can attest that fruits and vegetables are far too expensive and tend to come in packages that are too large to be economical for me, as I'd never eat them all. I don't buy bread, either, for the same reason. I can never manage to eat more than half a small loaf before it all goes bad.

I never buy meat except in restaurants, because I won't finish it, and if I freeze it it'll sit there for months and get freezer burnt before I have enough energy to actually properly cook.

I'm forced to eat out for lunch because there's no refrigerator or microwave available to me at work, and I can't stand room-temperature food, so that's $20-$25 a week I can't use to get better food for home. That and the large unfinishable packets everything comes in at the supermarket (small local shops might well be where the unicorns live, where I come from) lead me to make lunch my primary meal of the day and have a light snack for dinner most of the time.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

We spend between £70 and £90 every Saturday at Waitrose, for almost everything for the two of us and the cat. We could get costs down, but we are following quite a specific eating plan. (I don't think Waitrose is expensive, certainly in comparison to Sainsbury's, and the quality is much higher.)

I take about half an hour every evening cooking a main meal, and we probably spend about 5 minutes each every day putting lunches together. The supermarket shop includes our lunches and breakfasts. John eats breakfast at home and I buy portable food (fruit, bagels) that I keep in my desk and eat at work.

About once a week I have lunch "out" or buy a deli sandwich. John has fish and chips every Friday, and once a month we eat a pub dinner when it's Sheffield SF Group. We go out to a restaurant on average once a month for birthdays, anniversaries, treats etc.

I plan a menu for 6 weeks at a time, and take a weekly menu plus list to the shop. Any wastage is because I only need, for example, half an onion, or because for some reason we go off the plan (last week I had the lurgy and we had beans on toast one night instead of mushroom risotto).

I try not to buy veg or fruit out of season, or with a huge airmiles bill. I would like to be able to shop the way we used to - wholefood/fruit/veg merchant, butcher, top up at supermarket for groceries - but I need to be able to do a gestalt thing to stick to the list, and doing it all in one place is more effective for that.

I rarely buy anything that's not on the list, unless it's something like laundry detergent. At this time of year I am indulging (which is why the cost is edging more from £70 towards £90) and stocking up on stuff for Christmas / New Year. So booze, luxury pickles, chutneys, dried fruit etc. are finding their way into the trolley, and next month we'll be looking at things like whole Stiltons and hams as well.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

My balance has kind of shifted, I used to cook "properly" 4-5 times a week but I now commute 40 miles each way so tend to either eat lunch as a main meal in the staff restaurant (approximately as good as most University food and heavily subsidised) a couple of times a week or get sandwiches. When I cook in the week now it's usually something simple and quick for a late-ish dinner. At weekends I tend to cook 'for fun' which will usually mean good dinners on Friday and Saturday (helped by the fact that we finish early on Fridays) and if I can be bothered, a roast on Sunday which will get me sandwiches for a couple of days afterwards...

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

Of course, I've just thrown out my answers by going for lunchtime sushi and spending nine of your english pounds on it. Bloody good sushi, though.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Sushi.

A Gatecrasher Writes...

[thebustocrookes.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it's terribly rude to vote in someone's poll and not say hello...

So, hi. And yes, I probably spend more than I should on food, when you think how simple and cheap good grub can be.

Personally (not that anyone asked my opinion!) I think some people like to waste money on prepackaged food because it lets them feel busy and "time poor", so that they need to spend one fifty on a baked potato (with cheese) at the supermarket - just one example of many I've seen recently.

£1.50? You could buy a decent sack of spuds for that, but some of us would rather spend the money than the time, especially as we get to feel all busy/ important/ stressed...

Like I said, none of my business, and nobody asked me, but I felt bad for not commenting after I'd voted :-)

[hnpcc]

Granted my contribution has limited value, what with costs of living differences and all. I spend far, far too much on coffee though.