6000 meals under 50p in 2010; feeding your family on a low budget

tori.k

I think you are doing great Mark88Man and best of luck with your challenge i will be watching with interest and i will be the first to hold my hands up that one of my kids are lucky to do "5 a month" let alone "5 a day" but he is well and fit (doing GCSE PE) but you cant force anyone to eat what they dont want.

mark55man

i don't mind at all - surprised at the decision to merge - but endlessly accommodating (if a bit touchy now and again)

edit: oh I see Nikki has already acted - hope you didn't think I was getting at you - good luck

debjam

I started reading Mark888man thread and thought I would follow as it is something similar to what I am trying to do, but then started getting confused when nikki20022008 started being congratulated and then "attacked" (not having a go couldn't think of a better word).

Tried to find Nikki posts to see what she was doing and how she was getting on but then when reading further found that two threads had been merged and it wasn't until the last page when I read she had deleted all her posts.

This seems a shame that something that seemed to be a good idea has turned into a nit picking exercise. I enjoy lurking and reading the threads on here, don't usually join in though, trying to pick up ideas about how to organise my life and finances etc better but felt quite embarassed about how people have behaved on here. Yes we all have our opinions and we are entitled to them and we should respect that about each other, but it doesn't mean we have to get into a slanging match over them does it?

Kimitatsu

3v3 wrote: »

Those are interesting figures.
Adult @ £25 per week / 7 days and then / by 3 meals per day = £1.19 per meal
Child @ £15 per week / 7 day and then / by 3 meals per day = £0.72p per meal
Teen = starved at either daily amount :rotfl:
Curious to know at which point the "child" allowance morphs into an "adult" allowance?

well there is the eternal question! I have a DS who is 12 and is 5ft 6 tall and growing like a weed daily! In all honesty as a money advisor the financial institutions are open to some leeway so although these are braod guidelines if there are good reasons for budgets to be higher (specialist diets, specific food requirements etc) then they are happy to accept that there is a need for a higher financial allowance. The figures are about having a guideline to exist on and if you had a couple with a budget of £100 a week for food then they would be querying as to why it would be needed.

As for teenagers, they need constant feeding regardless :rotfl:they need an allowance waaaaaay above most peoples weekly wage!

thriftlady_2

Doom_and_Gloom wrote: »

Actually thriftlady you can only count different fruits and vegetables. No matter how much you have of any one fruit or vegetable it will only count as one. 80g is an adult portion on average, just because you have 160g does not mean it counts as 2 portions. They say to try and eat a rainbow so for an average adult the following would cover 5 a day: 80g of carrots, 1 medium banana, 80g of peas, 80g of strawberries and 80g of eggplant.

With fruit juice it only counts as one no matter how much you have of any flavour of juice! If you have a portion of orange juice and then a portion of apple for example it still only counts as one.

Sorry to nitpick but can someone point me to where this information is? I quite see that eating five portions of the same veg or fruit everyday is not going to work but according to the NHS link I gave the only things specifically mentioned as not being suitable in multi portions are pulses and fruit juice. The guidelines definitely encourage variety but I can't see where they specify five different types of fruit and veg each day. Maybe it's staring me in the face and I'm just being unobservant.

I agree with Mrs Bartolozzi

Does it really matter if she has 2 portions of carrots today, and maybe 2 portions of cabbage tomorrow, and two portions of peas the next day? Will her body really be able to tell the difference as long as over a reasonable time period all the needed nutrition is being supplied? This is a serious question,.

.

OrkneyStar

As they say 'variety is the spice of life', however I try to look at it over the week instead of just per day. DS, who is 30 months, will eat plenty of carbs and dairy most days, but his fruit and veg intake varies greatly from day to day, despite me offering it every day! Some days he will consume copious amounts of blueberries. strawbs etc and other days his fruit will only be the raisins or other dried fruit he eats! Over the week he gets plenty of every food group though!

coco1980

oh i ot soo confused reading this thread, mark88man good luck with your challenge.
i make lentil soup with red lentils, carrots,leek.turnip and onion and asda do a great bag with al the above(except the lentils) for £1.46, i can make it do 2 batches of soup and lasts about a week

nightsong

Phew! What an interesting idea for a thread, good luck OP - and what a lot of unecessary opinion from the odd poster (very odd probably!).

Anyway, I wanted to share this suggestion about the cheap way to get your fruit and veg. This is what we do -

Go to Tesco, or probably any supermarket but we live nearest to Tesco, a couple of hours before it closes. This makes a nice outing on a Sunday afternoon after lunch as they close at 4 pm. The fruit and veg will be reduced, sometimes amazingly so.

Today we bought -

1 kg. baking potatoes, 40p
2 bags new potatoes, 10p each (!!!! There were loads of these and hardly anyone interested)
I mesh bag mandarins, 8 in total, 27p
I bag apples, 8 in total, 27p
1 box blueberries, 60p
3 Papayas, 30p each
4 mangoes, 35p each
1 bag rocket, 30p
1 okra pouch, 35p

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this produce and indeed some of it isn't even ripe yet. It's just reduced because of the sell-by date. We will eat it all up over the next week or so and it will certainly go a long way towards our five-a-day!

mark55man

coco1980 wrote: »

oh i ot soo confused reading this thread, mark88man good luck with your challenge.
i make lentil soup with red lentils, carrots,leek.turnip and onion and asda do a great bag with al the above(except the lentils) for £1.46, i can make it do 2 batches of soup and lasts about a week

I know it confused me !! All in the past now and lets look forward - honestly I am the least controversial/adversarial person so all a bit of a storm in a soup cup

Looking forward to Lentil soup - but have stuff in for now so will leave till later in the week

candygirl

mark88man wrote: »

I know it confused me !! All in the past now and lets look forward - honestly I am the least controversial/adversarial person so all a bit of a storm in a soup cup

Looking forward to Lentil soup - but have stuff in for now so will leave till later in the week

ooh it's my fave with toms and garlic:p:p