How much money would it cost to feed yourself for a week?

35 comments

1. If you are [Effie Deans](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/xod6hj) (a raging Unionist who hates Scotland) then around about 70p. But you can only eat oatmeal with tepid water.

2. You can buy a loaf of bread and a tin of beans for a quid.

   So less than seven quid as I wouldn’t need to eat an entire loaf of bread a day, although I would need the entire tin of beans.

   It would be a boring week just eating beans on toast but you would have energy from the bread (plus fibre if you get wholemeal) and fibre and protein from the beans.

3. You could fast for 5-7 days, really cut costs down

4. £10 at minimum, per week.

   Ideally about £30-£40 to account for quality in my training diet (nicer turkey filets, better protein powder etc).

   But at a minimum, yeah, I could maintain my current eating regime quite comfortably on a tenner.

5. In London I could actually manage on £0. There’s enough stuff going for free on Olio.

   And for just a couple of weeks I have enough in the cupboards and the freezer. Probably up to a month’s worth.

   If I was buying at a big supermarket, I could probably go down to £10, but it wouldn’t be amazing.

6. Tesco bargain Brie was 79p in July now its £1.29.
   No more Brie for me.

7. If you were prepared to eat badly for a week, I m sure you could live on £10.

   Eating well- imagine that you eat just luxury food, so £10/ meal and half that at breakfast = £25 x 7 or £175.

8. I would say a tenner a week is stretching it easier to go for £40.

9. I could take a few quid and I could feed myself for a month. I would buy milk, I would buy flour, I’d buy vitamins, I’d boil them down to little energy balls to sustain me, but whatever.

10. Google John McDougall’s Starch Solution diet. It’s the cheapest diet I’ve come across. Basically fill up on starch with some fruit and veg. £10 might be pushing it a bit, but if you stick with potatoes and the cheapest fruit and veg maybe it wouldn’t cost much more than that.

11. A tenner is realistic, but incredibly depressing.

    Giant bags of pasta cost a few quid, tinned tomatoes can be had for 10-20p.Big bags of porridge are less than a pound, cheap bread and ham should be doable for a couple of quid a week.

12. Short term yeah maybe 10, long term more like 20. 60g protein/day 2000kcal all your nutrients/minerals (apples/carrot/sweet pots/bananas/broccoli/beans/nuts mostly covers it)

13. You can’t eat money, OP.

14. If I had to I could also live off £10 but I’d probably be pretty miserable if I had to do it for very long. I’m a petite female so I don’t need a lot of food. Cooking is something I enjoy. There’s some simple meals I like and some days where the cost of everything I eat is very little. For example I could happily have porridge for breakfast, homemade carrot soup with a cheese sandwich for lunch, apple, banana and yoghurt for snacks and say a vegetable & chickpea curry with rice for dinner. And that would be a very cheap day.

    But I have some treats every week to keep me sane and my taste buds tingling. Such as bacon from the butchers in a sandwich at the weekend. I also enjoy seafood which is tricky to cook on a budget.

15. It would be interesting to see a breakdown and a menu for a tenner a week tbh. It would presumably need a base of real bulk basics like lentils, beans, rice, oats and maybe some potatoes in there. That alone could be half of it. Tinned fish thankfully I am a big fan of, you can also get a hell of a lot of meals out of a single whole chicken, they can be as cheap as £3. A box of eggs. Yeah actually out of that lot if I was willing to be very bored might work.

16. Yeah, If I had to, I reckon £10 is achievable for myself. It wouldn’t be particularly enjoyable but if the times call for it.

    When I first moved out with an ex, we used to do the weekly food shop for £20.

17. real basic

    rice 45
    red lentils – 90
    cauliflower – £1
    carrots – 30
    white potatoes – £1
    vegetable stock cubes – 80
    aromat – £1.10
    parsnips – 65
    sweet potato – £1
    curry powder – 60
    squash – 40
    hot chocolate – £1
    chili – 80

    variations of soup and curried soup, with ir without rice and as filling in baked potato.

    usually though costs more than this as also buy sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, banana, yoghurt, milk, milkshake mix, icecream.

18. eating everyday the lowest I can do without hating it would be 45 a month. I have done this before when I was broke

19. I think £10/week is doable. Prices from Tesco.

    Breakfast: Oatmeal (1kg porridge oats £1.30 + 2 pints milk £1.25)

    Lunch: Lentil and carrot soup (Red split lentils 1kg £1.80 + Carrots 1kg £0.47 + 1 tin chopped tomatoes £0.45)

    Snack: Carrot sticks

    Dinners: 4x red lentil and squash dhal (+butternut squash x2 £2.50), 3x tomato pasta (hearty penne pasta 500g £0.32 + 3 tins chopped tomatoes £1.35)

    Total cost: £9.69

    Even with no storecupboard whatsoever, the meals above are edible. Obviously with some salt, pepper and sugar you’d improve things.

    In the above, you would have leftover oats, lentils and pasta for the next week.

    Week 2 you could buy 1kg dried chickpeas (£2.35) to make lentil and chickpea curries, buy olive oil 250ml (£1.90) and combine with chickpeas to make hummus which you can have for lunch with your carrot sticks. I’d probably also then buy frozen spinach (£1.60) and some cream cheese (£1.20) to make a creamed spinach pasta. And maybe add some chicken stock cubes (10 for £0.75) and some smoked paprika (£0.95) for added flavour.

20. I’d say I generally spend £30 in one shop then maybe £15 of extras throughout the week.

21. My normal intake at the moment is around 3500ish calories and I probably spend around £80ish per week.

    If this was a challenge type deal for a week then realistically it would be £0. I have enough fat and muscle to avoid starvation for over a week. As long as I’ve got water I’ll live.

    If this was a challenge and required I maintain my weight then maybe a £10-20 for the week. Rice, bread, tinned black beans, milk and porridge are all cheap.

22. £35 a week if I tried to budget. I can easily spend a lot more. Buy a whole chicken and learn to cut it yourself.
    Potatoes, rice, and pasta should be the basis of lunch/dinner, plus some protein. Pork, chicken, beef, lamb in order of cost.

    I come out of the gym and get a brie/camembert just to get me home, so can’t stuck to a budget!
    It also depends on your appetite. I can easily do 150g raw weight oats, plus milk, plus 50g peanut butter, but the serving size is probably 30g with water which will cost a LOT less.

23. I pay a my peasant manservant £50 a week to feed me.

    So I suppose £50 would be the cost, were I to lower myself to feeding myself.

24. So you are cutting back on the very thing that nourishes you, so you can give your money to someone who doesn’t give a shit whether you live or die? Food is life. Cut back on anything but the food, jeez.

25. Is this like a one-off or a continuous diet?

    I could manage for a week, but it won’t be sufficiently nutritious for a long time

26. Not a lot if I tried (prices are a guess for the whole week)

    Store brand porridge with milk for breakfast and a banana. £4

    Lunch get the cheapest white bread loaf and a pack of value wafer ham, no butter.. £2 ish Maybe some own brand crisps as well £1 for a 6 multipack

    Dinner store brand baked beans (20p a tin) on toast and maybe batch cook some kind of casserole using yellow sticker veg

    Yeah it’s miserable I know but it could be done for a tenner if you felt like a bit of self loathing

27. An interesting challenge would be to see what the lowest someone can live of is, with the following conditions:

    – they must maintain their physical weight and strength

    – they must maintain their cognitive ability

    – they must maintain their current lifestyle (in regard to sleeping hours, working hours etc)

    – they can not be given free food

28. Amazing the number of people on this thread who are entirely willing to forgo vegetables and fruit and just live off lentils and lard

29. £30-50, if I wanted quality and variety. If I eat no meat or cheese, £25?

30. If you’re creative with meals then you could live off a tenner a week. SHop around for economy range products, yellow sticker products and markets before closing. Bald Foodie Guy has a great Youtube channel for cheap food ideas, like ASDA veg soup for 24p

31. I dunno I like to get meal deals on my lunch breaks. Unless you have to why would you live off a tenner?

32. Probably about £30 minimum and £50 maximum

33. It’s not so much the cost of the food ( which is increasing at a horrendous level), but the cost of fuel to cook it…

34. If it’s to just keep yourself alive then you could buy a massive bag of pasta or rice and then some veg or value brine tuna.

    Probably a tenner max

35. 50 quid a week cooking at home.