Hi BNV
soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
has the credit crunch affected you
has the cost of living going up made times hard

we bought 1k bag of tilda basmatic rice almost 6 quid. a whe de bumba
have decided i will buy store brand rice for now. cheaper by far

went shopping spent 60 quid and i am still looking in my fridge/freezer and cupboard wondering what exactly was bought as i still need to go and buy more food.

Lol my local KFC style place has put the food up by £1 and for real that makes me less keen to order there now. I guess i have to start cooking a bit at home some more.

On a bit more serious note i have noticed an increase in the prices of things but it hasn't really altered the way in which i shop yet. If it continues I might say do without some stuff that I didn’t really need to make the difference up price wise.

Not really because of the credit crunch, more because I bought my first place and am watching the pennies.

I've been checking my shopping on mysupermarket.com more now to see special offers. Tuna for example is half price at the minute at Teefsco (thank you Maat), and 2litre bottle of Domestos is half price too. I've also made more of an effort to go to the market. I've started keeping a pricebook. It's amazing what is actually cheaper where. I followed my dad went to Netto the other day and when he was picking things up I went into my little book and was like 'It's cheaper in....' As they never had a few things he wanted we ended up going somewhere else. lol
I tend to go to the market for fruit veg and meat and then cupboard things from a supermarket.
I've decided to go down to own brand things as an exoeriment. I've not tasted the difference in rice, but have in cream crackers. It has to be Jacobs!

LMAO @ "Teefsco", so true. Morrisons isn't that far behind. Marks and Sparks, forget it.

We get all our fruits and vegetables from market because it's always been cheaper to do it anyway. Since we're eating more holisitcally I guess that helps as Shemsi pointed out, but petrol is the biggest killer. It cost me over £60 to fill my tank yesterday when just a couple of years ago it was £40. Not to mention all the numerous direct debits, school fees etc. All this has made saving up to move back home in the future even more of a killer. If it wasn't for my company covering certain expenses I don't know we'd manage.

The way things are going I may have to become a male gigolo to make ends meet too rahtid.

Just shop at Lidl folks. I know it's like the food version of a car boot sale but you know what, it could be a lot worse.

I keep hearing this about fruits and veg costing less, but it's actually not true. My boyfriend is a vegan and i can tell you that our weekly food bill is just ridiculous. To get a package of organic 6 or 7 bananas, you could buy 10 chicken drumsticks at one of the supermarket here. As a former meat eater, i know that we are spending MORE to eat healthier than we did before. I guess the problem with me personally is that i came here not so long ago(or so i think..lol) having been used to non pesticides farming, so i am mortified of what it is in the skin of some fruits and veg here.

I grew up in a farm which we grew our own organic foods, hence i was raised to think that if it's non organic, you might as well starve because of the chemicals in the everyday fruits and veg. I have tried, really tried becauseof the current economic situations, but i simply can't eat non organic fruits and veg.

So from what i have experienced, it's actually much chaeper for one to eat unheathly....one can get a meal from KFC for £4(about $7 or $8) but it cost us a bit more to buy say organic quinoa, or organic African red rice add the fish adn veg for the meal and your costs just mount up.

People needs to go to healthy food stores to see how bloody expensive it is to leave a heathier lifestyle in the West...funny thing is, people back home take it for granted what they have, all thinking about Europe when they actually have better food and climate to boot...lol

For now i'd rather cut out unecessary snacks rather than buy just any fruits and veg....i'll stuff myself with water if i have to....

i have to stay away from the ice cream counter but sainsburys are doing haagen daz 2for 5quid. oh my goodness. that is 2 boxes or bags of grapes

Oh thats sooo true....and for now, i am so happy that it's summer, meaning a break from the high price of gas as well!

I actually blame Tesco for a lot of the UK food crisis. We let them get too dominant. Now they cn dictate the price to keep their shareholders hapy and all the other supermarkets can follow suit. i refuse to buy from them, they are too expensive for what you get. I get all my veg from Walthamstow market and my cleaning products/toilet paper etc from the pound shop. I don't care if people look in my cupboard and luagh because half the products are written in Polish, bleach is bleach. You get about 10 apples for a pound in the market and Domestos for a pound too plus other things. I'm actually paying far less than when i used to shop a Tesco's despite their claims that they cost less. I go to the chinese store and buy rice noodles and make gigantic stir frys that last for days and the indian shop to get rice and make paellas that also last days. my husband takes homemade sandwiches to work and we get the ham for the sandwiches on 3 for 2 special offers. I always scan the special offers. I make smoothies with fruit thats about to go off and make my own ice-lollys. I'm going back to doing things like my mum used to do to save cash such as using sunday left overs to make soups, hardly nothing goes in the bin. I'm also going to start going back to a proper butcher for my meat because they do bigger cuts unlike that stringy overpackaged water filled crap they sell in the supermarket. Shopping has to be done strategically like a military operation now. Check out moneysaver.com for other ways to save cash.

Hmmm...I don't know if I can agree with that. I can get bundles of greens (turnips greens, mustard greens, calilou, etc.) for the price of a pack of meat. One of those bundles in my pot will last me at least 2 days of dinner and usually even a lunch or snack. As PH stated, the markets are even cheaper. We have a Farmers Market in several places in Central Florida at least twice a week to pick up fresh fruits and vegetables (even organic). I'll agree that buying everything organic is much more expensive, but here's why I only buy it if I have to...

You are not going to eliminate all the chemicals from your body that you eat. In all likelihood, the food you eat when you are out and about will not be organic. So what I do is eat mostly fruits and vegetables, but do a natural detox about once a month. Unless you refrain from non-organic foods because of the taste, I see no reason to exclusively buy organic as you cannot possibly monitor all the food and liquids you put into your body...let alone the chemicals even in the air.