Single person weekly food budget?

bouicca21

It really depends on how much you are going to spend on takeaways and ready meals.  I cook from scratch and spend £30 to £35 a week on food and household essentials.  I could spend less if I planned better.  I suspect it also depends on how much you enjoy or resent spending time cooking.

if you want to avoid takeaways and ready meals then you need to develop a repertoire of quick easy meals (a quick home cooked meal can take less time than ordering a takeaway) plus do some batch cooking so you have a few lazy meals in the freezer.

goldfinches

I live alone and shop at M&rks, Sainby's, Mr T and various local health and Indian/Turkish/Moroccan grocer's shops and budget £4 per day solely on food.
I think that I am quite extravagant because I tend to have a lot of ingredients opened and sitting in the fridge/larder/freezer and I buy and use a large proportion of fresh ingredients for specific recipes.  I'm aware that I could reduce my spend by about 50% simply by changing the way I plan so that I'm using up pastes and dried pulses etc. but don't choose to do this at the moment.
It's well worth your becoming an expert on the various pulses and their nutritional and calorific values as well as their flavour and methods of preparation so that you determine which ones you find worth the cost and effort. For instance imho brown lentils taste far better than red ones and they are just as quick and easy to prepare plus if bought from my local indian grocery they are cheaper.
You say that you need quite a lot of calories per day so may I suggest you consider dumplings which are both delicious and cheap as well as being easy to make and very filling plus you can add them to anything that has sufficient liquid to cook them. I can vouch for this recipe Chipotle sweet potato & black bean stew with cheddar dumplings recipe | BBC Good Food which would be a fairly easy beginning I think but if you find the method daunting just shout and I'll make an alternative suggestion.

RecoveringAndy

I budget £120 / 4 weeks for my shopping so £30 a week. However, I may go over one week and under the next. There are big items (washing powder etc) that I buy in bulk which can affect a weekly spend. I got £140 of tesco vouchers from work and I've been seeing how far I can stretch them. Just spent the last one at week 7.

Menu planning is a big deal, as is cooking from scratch and using the freezer wisely. I tend to only buy "yellow sticker" meat. I reduces my consumption of it and keeps the cost down. It gets portioned out and goes straight in the freezer.

Menu planning is important. Work out meals which use similar ingredients. There's a range of veg I buy which I know I can do a lot with. Sometimes I but something more exotic and struggle to use it all before it turns. 

This is a really difficult subject, because it's easy to save money on food shopping if you have money. It's much less easy if you're living day to day. If you can, I'd suggest trying to get a cupboard of staples sorted and bought in bulk. Buying in bulk, either online or from asian supermarkets is much cheaper than anywhere else. I buy rice in 10kg bags for example. For me this includes....

Spaghetti, fusili, tagliatelli, long grain rice, short grain rice, brown rice, risotto rice, udon noodles, soba noodles, AP flour, bread flour, dried lentils, stock cubes, dried herbs and spices. 

It probably cost me a week or two's budget to buy those at the outset but now I can just top up where needed. Chillies and fresh ginger live in the freezer and last forever. I only tend to eat fresh herbs which I can grow myself as the small bags are expensive and turn before I can use them all.

As for supermarkets, I like aldi but always found myself in Tesco for a few things. Now I generally use Tesco as I "Scan as you Shop". That and a preplanned list, prevents overspending (plus a single weekly shop fits nicely into a big blue Ikea bag which can be packed as I go round and lifted straight out when I leave the shop). Sticking to own brands is key. If you're cooking from scratch the things you buy are rarely branded anyway.

I eat well for relatively little but I realise I had both the money up front to get set up and the skills / time / interest to cook from scratch. 

Also... and this may be a dealbreaker, I don't drink anymore.

Toonie

Your budget really does depend on how well you can cook, the time you have available to you, and the reason you are setting a budget.

My partner and I spend around £160-180 for the month. We shop at Aldi and Sainsbury. I enjoy cooking and cook almost everything from scratch and we eat meat with pretty much every evening meal. If we needed to make things cheaper I'd add more carbs and veg and make smaller portions of meat.

marycanary

Since the 1st January 2021, I have spent an average of £31.19 per week on groceries. In addition to food for myself, that includes cleaning materials, washing up liquid, washing powder, shampoo, toothpaste etc. plus food/drink when family and friends visit. 

I have a milkman (because I hate plastic waste), I shop at the local green groceries and butcher plus ALDI and ASDA. I could definitely spend less if I shopped exclusively at ALDI & ASDA but I can afford to support local businesses and I am happy to do so.

goldfinches

I think @RecoveringAndy has made some very good points above as have @Toonie, @bouicca21 and @marycanary.

I would also add that much depends on the range of equipment that you have available to you and that there are many threads on this board that specifically address slow cookers, air fryers, bread makers, eating out of the freezer etc. etc. so it may be worth your time having a read of some of those. You could also try starting a thread specifically detailing your equipment and asking for suggestions for very useful cookbooks or websites to look at.

Floss

Could I ask how your high level of calories is made up? Is that for your work or exercise?

vodkawitch11

Buy your higher calorie foods in bulk if you can. My son eats a lot of calories as he is very active. Eggs, cheese, milk, roast chicken, fruit/veg shakes all add calories without to much cost. I would say £70 is plenty.

djhep

Single person shopping mostly at Lidl, I average 40 pounds/week for all groceries.
I'm a 70kg cyclist usually clocking around 150-200 miles per week, so do tend to eat and snack a fair bit. 
If push came to shove i'm fairly sure that i could reduce that to 30 pounds/week without too much of a sacrifice.

djhep

Oh hello by the way......hadn't realised that the above was my first post lol....
(Makes way to introduction part of the forum)