Of *course* bulk buying and batch cooking is cheaper!

But that is not accessible to a lot of people!

Our fridge and our flat were tiny when I was growing up, & we had no freezer. We couldn’t save leftovers & we couldn’t store large amounts of food in our flat!

I never grew up eating leftovers, & when people who grew up middle class hear that, they assume we were wealthy and wasteful.

We were actually just poor and food-insecure. We had to do grocery shopping most days as we could only afford to buy and store a couple of days of food.

My mum didn’t have a car, so she couldn’t drive to a big supermarket out of town, and we had to pay higher prices for food at the smaller local supermarket.

Being poor is so much more complicated than rich people think it is.

So yes, lots of people with no money KNOW that they could save money if they could bulk buy and batch cook food. But without space to safely store that food, or without the means to buy it (such as a car), it isn’t an available choice for them!!!

Two more things:

1. I got free school meals as a kid, which was probably a life saver. I was desperate to have little sandwiches and crisps and things like all the cool kids with packed lunches. It must have been heartbreaking for my parents to deny me that, but I was being fed!

2. Another thing my parents did so that we could eat was to go to the greengrocer at the end of the day and buy all the veg that had fallen on the floor or was bashed up/a bit mouldy. That veg probably wouldn’t have lasted more than a day or two even if we could store it.

People really do live from meal to meal. It’s hard to imagine when you have a pantry full of tins, condiments, a few packets of pasta, a fruit bowl, etc.