The average UK household is spending nearly £119 per week on food shopping, amounting to more than £6,000 per year. For families with children, the cost can increase to £170 weekly. Rising costs mean that 61 per cent of people in the UK claim they’ve had to cut back. In a new series, The i Paper asks families how they manage their weekly budget.
This week, we hear from Annelie, a 39-year-old from Malmö in Sweden. She moved to Kent with her British husband five years ago for his work and still brings in Scandinavian ideologies to their mealtimes as best she can. Here she explains why. She’s currently studying for a nutrition qualification and shares her meals and ideas on Instagram @nutritionwithannelie.
We live with our kids who are seven and three. We definitely have a mixture of both cultures, but I’m the cook in the house, so I decide most of the food we eat, and I bring a lot of things from Sweden, not only in the dishes but in how we eat together.
Attitudes towards food differ in general, but there’s a lot I’ve noticed since moving over to the UK, especially since my eldest has started school and I see the culture around kids’ food. The main thing that surprised me is the divide between food for adults and children; there’s a kids’ version and an adult version of every meal. Even in people’s homes, they’ll make a separate dinner for the children. That happens a lot less in Sweden; it’s more common to eat together, with everybody eating the same meal.
I use a few different supermarkets but my main shops are Sainsbury’s or Tesco. I go to Lidl for the things I can’t find in the supermarkets, like organic pork or Swedish products. I order from Ocado every other month in bulk. I have a monthly budget of £675, but that also includes household items like washing up liquid, toilet paper, dishwasher tablets and anything to do with the house.
I usually make a plan on a Sunday and do a weekly online shop that I collect. I sometimes do a top-up shop in the middle of the week. I always buy broccoli, potatoes and whatever vegetable is in season; right now we have cabbage. We also buy raw vegetables because the kids love peppers, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes, and we always get Greek yoghurt.
I make overnight oats and that’s pretty much what we have for breakfast every day. I just make one breakfast for everybody in the family and we’ll have our oats with an apple on top with cinnamon and peanut butter, or berries. In the winter time we typically have more porridge.
The children have a mixture of packed lunches and school dinners. My youngest one (who goes to preschool) has a packed lunch every day he goes in and my eldest will have a packed lunch three days a week. Lunch boxes are very simple and often I make the same thing. It may seem pretty boring, and I see a lot of people posting themselves making a whole new lunch for their child every single day, but I like repetition as it keeps it easy; a cheese sandwich with wholemeal bread. On the side they have a variety of raw vegetables like carrots, peppers and maybe olives. Then they have either a piece fruit or a Greek yoghurt with some berries on too.
When it comes to my own lunches I’ll often make a base at the beginning of the week that I can use for everything. Throughout the summer, I made a base of grains, cabbage and beans, and I would have that for lunch every day and I would use different toppings depending on what I had at hand. Sometimes that would be cottage cheese, grilled chicken or avocado.
I was very surprised by the fact that dessert is served in school after every single lunch. That’s a big difference. In Sweden, you’d never have a dessert at lunchtime, especially not for children, and you certainly wouldn’t find that in schools. It’s something that isn’t necessary, as it just adds extra sugar to their diet. I’m all for having desserts that are fresh fruit and things like that, but not a sugary treat. I just don’t see any reason, or any benefit, to doing that.
Processed food is more the default in the UK than it is in Sweden. It’s surprising how common it is to give ultra-processed packaged snacks to kids, even sweets, in the playground for pick-up after school. I’ve had a lot of comments about what I give my kids. If I give them a carrot while we’re out, a lot of people will comment and say, “Oh, you’re so good”, or, “You’re so healthy”, but that’s just normal to me. In Sweden, sweets are saved for special occasions or the weekend. There’s even a tradition in Sweden called Saturday sweets, and that’s when there’s a specific day when you would go to the shops and get some sweets for the kids.
For dinner, we often have a one-pan pasta with broccoli, sausage, courgettes and peas and wholewheat pasta. That’s just a quick and easy dinner. You can get some really good sausages now that are less processed and nitrate-free, which are a healthier option. There’s the brand Finnebrogue, which is really good. They also do nitrate-free bacon and Waitrose do their own nitrate-free bacon now. Also, if you want to buy ham to put on sandwiches, there are a few different ones. Bearfield’s do nitrate-free options. Those are the typical ones I would go for when it comes to meat.
We also have salmon burgers quite often because I find that’s an easy way to get the kids to eat fish. I make Swedish meatballs too, and also homemade pizzas or oven-roasted veggies with grilled chicken.
There’s not a very good selection of really dark rye bread in the UK, so that’s actually something that my family often brings over when they come to visit. I also make a lot of my own bread because I like to make sourdough with wholewheat.
We place some of the responsibility on the kids when it comes to feeding. I wouldn’t say my eldest son is a fussy eater, and I think a lot of that is because he’s used to having adult foods and also the exposure over time of just being offered a variety of different things. If I make dinner and he doesn’t want to eat any of it, that’s his responsibility in a way; it’s up to him to make sure that he feels full. Obviously, I don’t put something in front of him that I know he absolutely doesn’t like; I always make sure there is something that I know they will eat included in the dinner.
There is also a lot of talk about healthy eating being expensive, and I completely understand that prices have gone up on food, but there are a lot of really healthy foods that are actually really cheap, like the pasta dish. I think sometimes people get into the habit of continuing to buy the same things they’ve always bought and they miss that there are other healthier and cheaper options.
When we go out, either for a day out or if we’re travelling, even flying somewhere, I always pack food to take with us because I find it very expensive and also I’m not really keen to pay that amount of money for what I often find to be disappointing. The quality of what you get or the nutrition that you get for your money is not worth it and doesn’t make me feel that good. I’ll be hungry quickly again. I want something that’s really filling and that we’re all going to like so it’s easier for me to just pack it and bring it with us and it’s cheaper.
A Swedish philosophy that I grew up with and that I like to apply to our eating habits in general is “lagom”, which means “just the right amount”. If you look at your diet in general and apply that then there is room to enjoy things without overdoing anything.
I want my kids to be healthy and grow and learn now that they’re small, but I also think that the habits we form when we are little can stick with us for the rest of our lives. Their diets are one of the most important gifts I can give them as they grow and build their own lives and have their own kids.