The country is currently in the midst of cost of living crisis which is seeing many households unable to keep up with the rising costs of essential items. Inflation is seeing food prices soar as well, making the weekly shop more expensive than ever before, but is it possible to do a weekly shop for £5.
Asda has brought out a bigger Just Essentials range to deal with the costs, and limiting items to three per basket, but according to Which? Aldi is still the cheapest UK supermarket reports MyLondon.
The consumer group compared a basket of 47 items from different shops and found Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's to be 18% more expensive than the basket from Aldi. CEO of Aldi UK and Ireland, Giles Hurley, said he would do "whatever it takes" to maintain this discount and to "keep prices as low as possible."
Read More: DWP announces changes to PIP decision making process
One shopper shared their weekly haul at Aldi on Tik Tok, which came to just £4.97. The user posts under the name Cost of Living Crisis Tips, and showed how she got penne pasta, spaghetti, bourbon creams, baked beans, chopped tomatoes, tinned garden peas, cornflakes, a loaf of bread, two tins of rice pudding and long grain rice for less than £5.
When asked what meals she planned on making, they said: " Tomato pasta, rice and peas, beans on toast, rice pudding etc." The Tiktok creator made it clear this was about "surviving on £5 for the week" and "not having a nutritional protein rich diet for £5 a week."
A reporter at MyLondon decided to see if she could do a £5 weekly shop with different items, and ended up adding enough for seven dinners for one person to her basket. The meal plan started with baked beans (23p - one big tin split between two days) on baked potatoes (19p each) with crispy leaf salad (57p).
On Wednesday and Thursday they planned to eat pasta (a bag of penne was 35p) with stir in sauce (65p - one jar split between two days) and the remainder of the salad as a side. The most expensive food item was a bag of frozen chicken goujons for £1.25.
They then planned to eat the chicken goujons with garden peas (21p) and home-made carrot chips (29p for a big bag of carrots) on Saturday and a 66p pepperoni pizza on Sunday. This left them enough to pay for a 36p loaf of bread.
Whilst she managed to cover dinner, her lunches were not included in the basket. Although she did consider that the bread could be used for breakfasts, so long as someone already had butter in the fridge.
They found that no matter how careful they were, the items in the basket added up quickly and the meals were small, making it hard to include protein as fresh meat would cost half of the £5 budget.
It was found that carbs were mainly the cheapest items, such as potatoes, pasta, pizza. Whilst it was impossible to get a well-rounded weekly shop for under a fiver, even in Aldi, they were impressed with just how much they could get for their money.
Read Next:
