How often do you grocery shop?

UnderPressure

weezl74 wrote: »

Hi there, you can do the govt recommended 5 a day for 19p per person per day at asda at the moment, so it is very faesible to do your groceries much cheaper, if you want to that is.

Go on you have "hooked" me lol tell me how you can do it for 19p a day then?

I dont doubt you just interested it always costs me anywhere between £16-20 a week for 2 adults and 3 children, the £15 for milk thats £35 just there lol

weezl74

UnderPressure wrote: »

Go on you have "hooked" me lol tell me how you can do it for 19p a day then?

I dont doubt you just interested it always costs me anywhere between £16-20 a week for 2 adults and 3 children, the £15 for milk thats £35 just there lol

sorry I may have misunderstood, I can't do a whole day's food for 19p (best I can do is 54p healthily) but here is a link showing my workings for 19p for the 5 a day part of your day,

Hope it helps someone!

UnderPressure

weezl74 wrote: »

sorry I may have misunderstood, I can't do a whole day's food for 19p (best I can do is 54p healthily) but here is a link showing my workings for 19p for the 5 a day part of your day,

Hope it helps someone!

Interesting you raise a great point there, I was alwys under the impresson that the government guidline was for "fresh" fruit and vegetable so have never considered tinned and dried as part of the allowance makes complete sense though

Nicely worked out

I suppose 19p a days is possible then still questionable as to the "Health" benefits though compared to fresh produce I think so anyhow..........

OH just to clarify in my previous post my 16-20 a week is just for the 5 a day nothing else........

pavlovs_dog

we're in the process of buying our first home and my intention is to a big monthly shop followed by small weekly shops for perishables. we plan on operating a similar system to that described by nowpanicking.

*meal planning - so that as little as possible gets wasted.

* using the 'tumbledown' meal principle eg a pack of mince is cooked and bulked out (with extra veg, pulses etc). one serving is a meal for that day (eg spag bol), another serving becomes chilli with the addition of a bit of spice, and one is made in lasagne/shepherds pie and frozen for later in the month. this also takes advantage of the fact that it is usually cheaper to buy and cook in bulk.

*having at least one cheap or vegetarian meal a week.

*buy doing a big shop less frequently we can justify the increased fuel cost of going to the next town where we can access cheaper, better stocked shops.

*buying bulk of things that can be broken down into weekly/individual/meal sized portions to avoid waste - cheese, meat etc.

*cooking from scratch and in bulk more often than we have been of late, and freezing the surplus for meals later in the month.

*analysing receipts to see where most of our money goes, so we can see how best to make further savings (eg even buying own brands or whats on ofer we still seem to be spending and obscene amount on yoghurt at the moment). We would remedy this buy buying yoghurts from aldi during the big shop with the longest dates we can find, thus spending less on yoghurt during the smaller shops at the more expensive local shops.


as things stand the smaller weekly shops will be for things like milk, fruit and veg, bread, - things that you can only buy so far in advance because they just don't keep and/or freeze as well as i would like

UnderPressure

Why not try making your own yoghurt, I have never tried always intended too just never got round to it, bit from what I can gather it is very very easy to do..............

weezl74

UnderPressure wrote: »

Interesting you raise a great point there, I was alwys under the impresson that the government guidline was for "fresh" fruit and vegetable so have never considered tinned and dried as part of the allowance makes complete sense though

Nicely worked out

I suppose 19p a days is possible then still questionable as to the "Health" benefits though compared to fresh produce I think so anyhow..........

OH just to clarify in my previous post my 16-20 a week is just for the 5 a day nothing else........

Hi sorry OP if this is a bit off topic, but mostly what I've read says that frozen dried and tinned is often better because the nutrients are preserved within hours of picking. (often 1 and a half hours from field to freezer)

Fresh is not always so sadly. The average transit time from picking to supermarket for a potato in the uk is 3 weeks, and that's before they sit for a while in your kitchen cupboard! Sorry to continue the debate, it's just I have a real bee in my bonnet about the 'fresh is best' mantra because I feel it often makes people spend 5 times what they need to to be healthy!

And (sorry) one more thing before I leave you all in peace, sometimes preserving veg actually ADDS to the healthiness. Canning tomatoes increases their content of the cancer-fighting antioxidant lycopene by 2 and a half times their fresh equivalent.

(sorry to have waffled on! )

pavlovs_dog

UnderPressure wrote: »

Why not try making your own yoghurt, I have never tried always intended too just never got round to it, bit from what I can gather it is very very easy to do..............

we haven't ruled that out yet, it's an idea i'ved toyed with.

I'm also toying with the idea of making more regular use of the breadmaker again. whether that will become a reality however remains to be seen!

UnderPressure

You make valid points weezl74 I was not aware of most of the points you have made there, some thinking to be done I think

Pavlovs: Yeah from what I hear the yoghurt making is really easy, I make about 80% of our families bread, have to say though never got on with my breadmaker got rid of it ages ago I do all mine in a kenwood chef with a dough hook its great really easy and there is nothing like fresh bread and muffins mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm smothered in "real" butter mmmmmmmmmmm sorry I digress

catmiaow

We do a big shop every month online mainly(making sure we use a discount code) which is around £55 inc cat food. Then I will get stuff inbetween around £10 a week. We only get meat for OH as I am veggie and we buy our toilet rolls at home bargains as it is cheaper and I get the veg from a grocers in town which is fresher and cheaper than Tesco.

Ames

Just to back up what Weezl said, I was getting advice from the NHS on weight loss last summer and was given loads of healthy eating leaflets. They all said that frozen, dried and tinned fruit counted towards the five a day. In fact, the health trainer suggested it to me as a way of cutting the cost.