Eat for £12 a week?

Don`t know if any of you watch ` Pay off your mortgage in 2 years` BBC 2 8.00pm on thursdays- should be re named `Don`t think anyone will pay it off`

Anyway last night there was this expert saying you could eat-an adult for £12 a week, by only buying fresh foods and no processed stuff.

I am old style and have managed to cut my shopping bill, but does anyone know who this woman is-does she have a book?

Thanks
April Grocery challange £175

Spent week 1 £29.90
week 2 £62.64, TOTAL £92.54
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Comments

  • rchddap1
    rchddap1 Posts: 5,926 Forumite
    You can feed an adult on £12 per week. My shopping budget is £50 every 2 weeks to feed 2 adults. This equates to £12.50 per person per week. On this budget we eat extremely well....and in fact there are areas that could be cut down even further if necessary.

    Its pretty simple really. I have a set range of meals and buy what I need for the next few weeks. On occasion (like this week) I will do a large shop and will fill the freezer to the rafters.

    There are many on these boards who spend a lot less than £12 per person per week!
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  • Februarycat
    Februarycat Posts: 1,385
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    I watched the prog and was interested in the eat for £12 a week, I think he said she was a Nutritionist, I was hoping she would give a few more ideas for meals.
  • Heth_2
    Heth_2 Posts: 472 Forumite
    rchddap1 wrote:
    You can feed an adult on £12 per week. My shopping budget is £50 every 2 weeks to feed 2 adults. This equates to £12.50 per person per week. On this budget we eat extremely well....and in fact there are areas that could be cut down even further if necessary.

    Its pretty simple really. I have a set range of meals and buy what I need for the next few weeks. On occasion (like this week) I will do a large shop and will fill the freezer to the rafters.

    There are many on these boards who spend a lot less than £12 per person per week!

    What sort of meals do you cook? I am really curious about the people on this board who spend so little on food. We always seem to spend so much, and don't eat ready meals, make pack lunches every day and quite alot of the other tips on here.
  • I watched the prog and was interested in the eat for £12 a week, I think he said she was a Nutritionist, I was hoping she would give a few more ideas for meals.

    Yes I watched this programme and found it a hoot.The lady was spending £75.00 per month on Champangne !!!.She said she would find it hard to live without her Champers and her bottled water .I was yelling at the screen GET a Life, I don't think she could ever pay off her mortgage. She was spending £100.00 a week on her food for herself alone
    She wants to become a state pensioner to find out how to live on less .
    I would be interested in seeing if this lady nutrisionist could supply details of how one could eat healthily on £12 per week. I'm sure it could be possible but I find it a little hard to believe. By absolutely paring everything to the bone I guess you could survive on £12.00 per week but surviving is not nessesarily eating well.
  • seraphina
    seraphina Posts: 1,145
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    At the beginning of this moneysaving lark, we went through our Tesco bills - which is where we do all our food shopping and found that we were spending about £13-£15 on food at each shop. What was worrying was that we were still coming out with £50+ of stuff - mainly booze and toiletries and household stuff, but that's another story.

    That amout covered 2 people for four evening meals, my lunches and both our breakfasts. It also usually covers a "special" meal where we want to cook something new that we haven't tried before, or it's the weekend so we have more time to cook etc.

    We are both vegetarians - although H sometimes buys salami/sliced meat - which probably helps.

    We're not particularly careful about what we buy either - we don't go for economy tinned veg etc, but almost everything we eat is home made. We also buy rice (10Kg) and pasta (3Kg) in bulk which may skew the total.

    So given that we had no problems doing more than half a week for two adults on under £15, it should be easy to do a two adult shop for £24/week.

    So typical menu would be:
    Breakfast - porridge or Weetabix
    Lunch - leftovers from the night before, otherwise a soup/salad/stew made up at the weekend especially for lunch
    Dinner - curry/couscous/pasta/potato cakes/tortilla+salad, anything goes!

    The only other thing I can think of is that I sometimes buy a bag of apples/snacky food near work which doesn't come under the monthly food bill.
  • rchddap1
    rchddap1 Posts: 5,926 Forumite
    We have packed lunches of usually a sandwich, yoghurt and some fruit. If we feel a bit bad we'll have some crisps and maybe a chocolate bar. However, usually we won't keep these items in the house....because simply put we eat them far too quickly.

    Breakfast is usually cereal...unless I have some of my Homemade bread around when we will have toast. When buying cereal we'll always go for the supermarket's own brand as its cheaper, but tastes the same....in fact that is a general rule of ours and we don't use 'branded' stuff at all (unless its on a special offer and works out cheaper of course).

    For our main meal it varies.....sometimes we will have jacket potatoes with veggies & tuna, othertimes soup and HM bread (haven't ventured into making my own soup yet), homemade pizza & garlic bread thanks to my OH and my breadmaker (this dish costs us pennies literally and is so filling). The rest of the time we have a portion of meat with either mash, homemade chips, rice or pasta with some veggies. Another one we've recently got into is spag bol. I will also do individual portions of shepherds / cottage pie and freeze instead of cooking in the oven and will then cook after defrosted on the day we want to eat them.

    We don't normally have dessert and consider it a big treat when we do. Such times I'll usually make a quick microwaved sponge and will have either treacle or custard with it.

    For us this started before I found the MSE boards. It actually started as an attempt to improve our diet. MSE has simply helped me along the way. We use to buy so much rubbish when we went shopping. THese days we're much more healthy.

    Now, instead of hovering around the cakes we go straight by them and I will make some at home....don't generally last long though.
    Baby Year 1: Oh dear...on the move

    Lily contracted Strep B Meningitis Dec 2006 :eek: Now seemingly a normal little monster. :beer:
    Love to my two angels that I will never forget.
  • black-saturn
    black-saturn Posts: 13,937
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    I feed me, 2 children 11 and 8 a dog on £53 every 6 weeks. £10 of that is dog food. I make absolutely everything I can from scratch unless it works out cheaper to buy them from the supermarket. I find bread is cheaper to buy than make but I suppose it depends on what kind of bread you like. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner and pudding every day. I make my own ice cream, cakes etc. Steamed puddings are a cheap and easy way of giving a pudding.

    Spending so little just comes naturally to me as I have never really had a lot of money to play with. In fact, the amount I spend seems like a lot to me!!!!
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  • MATH
    MATH Posts: 2,941
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    One adult eating for £12 a week is easy. I feed a family of five and two cats for £35-40 and that is sticking a few extras in as treats and a bottle of cheap plonk. We eat a very healthy, largely vegetarian diet and are ll in the rudest of health. LOL
    Life's a beach! Take your shoes off and feel the sand between your toes.
  • Lydia_2
    Lydia_2 Posts: 145
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    I feed me, 2 children 11 and 8 a dog on £53 every 6 weeks. £10 of that is dog food. I make absolutely everything I can from scratch unless it works out cheaper to buy them from the supermarket. I find bread is cheaper to buy than make but I suppose it depends on what kind of bread you like. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner and pudding every day. I make my own ice cream, cakes etc. Steamed puddings are a cheap and easy way of giving a pudding.

    Spending so little just comes naturally to me as I have never really had a lot of money to play with. In fact, the amount I spend seems like a lot to me!!!!

    That means you are living on £7.16 a week for three people. That means £2.38 each for a week. Thats amazing! What an example you are. Please please would you give us some kind of breakdown or an example of a typical week because I'd love to give it a go.
  • mummysaver
    mummysaver Posts: 3,119 Forumite
    I feed me, 2 children 11 and 8 a dog on £53 every 6 weeks. £10 of that is dog food. I make absolutely everything I can from scratch unless it works out cheaper to buy them from the supermarket. I find bread is cheaper to buy than make but I suppose it depends on what kind of bread you like. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner and pudding every day. I make my own ice cream, cakes etc. Steamed puddings are a cheap and easy way of giving a pudding.

    Spending so little just comes naturally to me as I have never really had a lot of money to play with. In fact, the amount I spend seems like a lot to me!!!!

    Rightyho! I'm feeling very inspired now! Used to spend £80 to feed four of us for a month, and this amount included cleaning stuff and toiletries, now that we earn more the food bill has gone up - also have two more children and various animals!

    Slow cooker arrived this morning and I'm planning on filling the freezer with cheaper cuts of meat, ready to slow cook!

    Have also made a meal list for the next fortnight, and will be getting the ingredients today! DD1 saw the list and says that we should all take it in turns cooking a meal each night :happyhear So we'll give it a go, though I'm not too sure what the 4yo will produce - baked potatoes or soup I think, she enjoys chopping things up!

    Right will finish ingredient list now and be off to supermarket, may try dividing list into five, so children can each have one and me too, should make it quicker!
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