To be horrified at the price of food

One parsnip does not go very far.

Spinach and leeks are never cheap. Spring greens, carrots, cabbage and potatoes are about the cheapest veg you get. You can eat veg cheaply, but with very little variety. I know because we do this.

Eat local seasonal food. Much cheaper.

A carrot or brown onion is about 10p, a red onion, potato, parsnip about 20p. There are plenty of cheap vegetables available.

Oh and I get tinned pears and peaches too

I usually cook with the cheaper veg so onions, carrots, tinned tomatoes
I do like salads but I get the cheap cherry tomatoes, tinned sweetcorn, pickle some red onion myself..
Frozen veg for with meals

Fruit I stick to apples and bananas, or frozen mixed berries. Summer I mainline British strawberries as I love them
Love mango but too expensive

Sainsbury's frozen mixed veg 99p for a kilogram bag.... Nothing wrong with frozen nutritionallly.

Bought a small 1 kg smoked ham joint (to cook) in Sainsburys for £5, so 100g for 50p, 50g for 25p. How big a pack of cooked ham for 20p? But probably 50% water anyway and tasteless! (The Sainsburys joint was very nice btw and did a main meal and a load of sliced for a salad and sandwiches).

Yep. I'm in Italy and olive oil, cheese and things like packets of ham etc are all tagged.

I was thinking about the 60p pepper in the UK. One single one here would be about €1,20. Strawberries are in full season now (nearer to the end than the beginning) and I paid €2,99 for a small punnet this morning which had €1 off.

I agree, it’s about clever buying, rather than trying to have things out of season. I bought a bag of parsnips for 19p yesterday, and a savoy cabbage for something like 30p. Frozen veg can be cheaper, and is fine for everyday dinners. A kilo of sliced peppers costs 99p.

Buy seasonal veg that's uk-grown.

In spring you can have spring greens, spring onion, red cabbage, potatoes, spinach, leeks, carrots. For fruit, apples, pears.

If you want stuff out of season, consider buying it frozen or tinned. It keeps much of its goodness

100% agree with this.

I also think that a lot of people simply don't have the skills to know how to make cheap healthy meals by using what is in season and end up spending a fortune on food.

I was taught to cook by my gran (born 1906 and raised 3 children on very little through the war). I am so grateful for the skills she passed on to me! I have taught my dd to cook and she teaches her friends!

Lots of vegetables are rather inexpensive I think, especially when bought in season. A big bag of greens for less than a pound, carrots, broccoli etc. Lots of people would just rather eat poorly.

I live in Spain and food is very expensive here too. Olive oil is the most shop lifted item in supermarkets. The weather has a lot to do with prices as it affects harvests and there’s been very little rain here. There isn’t anything that can be done about it that I can see - what do you suggest?

20p ham, if it exists, is not something I would want to eat.

Bananas are known as "loss leaders" in supermarkets. Price is low to attract customers in store.

Asda do a very cheap garlic bread for about that amount.

Lidl had the same - big bag of carrot for .15p. Swede, cabbage (and a few other bits I can’t remember) at .15p each too.

But yeah, mostly food prices (especially fresh stuff) are absolutely ridiculous now.

I agree with this.

Food in the UK has been very very cheap for a very long time. (I always remember thinking wtf to find that the same weight, and brand of made- in- Italy pasta in Italy cost twice as much, in Italy than it did in Asda)

Ham for 20p ? That would surely be exceptionally poor quality ?

I agree, processed shit is cheaper than real food, especially fresh fruit and vegetables.

However if you buy frozen veg and use dry pulses, you can eat cheaply and healthy.
It really depends what you are used to buy and cook... and that's an other discussion!

I think 20p ham = 🤮🤮🤮

Well given that a pepper takes around 3 months to grow to harvestable size, and will either have been grown in a heated, lit glasshouse in the UK or under glass elsewhere in Europe, probably heated, harvested, probably by hand, and then transported to the UK, while leaving a profit for the grower that grew them and the retailer that sold them £0.60 seems pretty cheap to me. And processed ham for 20p seems very unlikely so I think you are being unreasonable and unrealistic. If you want cheap vegetables then buy what’s in season in the UK at the moment - a kilo of carrots is £0.65 in Aldi, and reduced to £0.15p over Easter. Cabbage, kale, potatoes are also in season and relatively cheap.

I'm sure the value garlic bread in Aldi and Lidl costs about that

Where is garlic bread 35p?

If you can get to Tesco you can stock up on some cheap veg today, Christmas style 15p on some veg

I was buying leeks for our roast tomorrow this morning. Put two (admittedly very big) on the self weigh scales and it came to about £2.50!! I put one back and just got the one for £1.44. Honestly couldn’t believe it.