To be horrified at the price of food

Single pepper from somewhere hot and abroad 60p. Single fat carrot from down the road? A whole bag of them for 39p. Along with the chubby British potatoes and a can of baked beans (Stockwell's, Tesco) for 28p. Wonky veg boxes from all major supermarkets for £1-2. It's not that you can't eat veg cheaply and healthily, it's just that the prices of your more exotic overseas veg have skyrocketed.

Wow I’m in America and I wish I could pay that for a pepper! Here peppers have been $1.50 (£1.18) for over a year and my state is supposedly one of the more affordable ones.

Canadians indeed sometimes use cup measurements. Is it necessary to be so rude?

Without getting on a boat and travelling for a day co-op is my only option :(

I’m thinking that when people say ‘ fresh fruit and veg’ they’re thinking of fruit. A kg of carrots is 15p atm, usually 65p. 500g, a potato and an onion can make wholesome carrot and coriander soup for quick lunches all week for about 60p ( not counting the 15p deals) Carrot sticks are a tasty snack, bananas are cheap, big oranges are reasonable, 99p for 5, you can get lots of serving out of a honeydew melon at less than £2. Cabbage is cheap, onions are cheap - bubble and squeak is tasty. Vegetable soup. omelette. Jacket potato. All cheap and healthy.

I completely agree to you. So many people post about how they can still manage to eat without a scary shopping bill. I don’t want to be in a ‘race to the bottom’ to be able to avoid decent meals. I used to buy organic fruit and veg. That went by the wayside a long time ago now. Even without them, our food bills have risen by about 30% We can afford to continue buying the fresh foodstuffs we want, but need to compromise on other areas of life to do so.

Some people might say that pharmaceutical companies love us eating this..more money for them later. Processed food is cheap, and I will be processing a payment to the private doctors later. Because obviously NHS will be de funked. To be honest ..the way this country is going, the price of pepper will be light relief.

France is exactly the same, fish is eyewatwring from the fishmonger, we don't eat meat, but I refuse to pay the price of some fish out there. The only thing that remains a constant price is the humble baguette.

So what do you think “needs to be done”? Government subsidies on food? Vouchers for those on benefits? Supermarkets not buying such food as peppers, so that even those who understand why they are expensive but are still prepared to pay, can’t actually buy them anymore? Obligatory allotments for all? We are extremely lucky in the U.K. because we can buy almost anything we want every day of the week and it is still cheaper than most other countries. Many countries only offer seasonal foods.
Just say what you think needs to be done.

£1.25 for 8 slices of reformed ham with added water. Not worth the money, cheese or peanut butter is better value for sandwiches.

I bought a big red pepper in Lidl yesterday, 59p

🙄More like £2 to £3 at least

Where I live we only have a co-op and a pepper is 85p, 3 for £2, where are you shopping to get things so cheap??

Legit about to say this haha local tesco express £1.10 for 10 slices and big asda next closest £2.75 for the bigger pack haha

I spend about 3 months a year at our place in barcelona, a lot of items are much dearer than uk, its odd that some items from spain are to be found cheaper in the uk. we now have a Pepco shop which has uk items cheaper than uk. last summer, oranges were very expensive and cauliflowers, saw some at almost 4 euros yet asda were selling same for about 90 pence...!!

So more like party foods, not staples?

Who is sneering? I must be reading your post wrong, or something. I am certainly not sneering at anybody.

@LadyKenya It is easier to sneer at others I agree.
And I cook a lot of home made meals. But after a string of bereavements we ate mainly ready meals as I could not cope with much. Sneer away though.

And I lover celeriac but rarely have it. It is not a cheap veg in Britain.

This. I agree, but I have lost count of the number of times I have come across this attitude of cooking from scratch with healthy ingredients, being derided, on MN. As if there are better things to do with a person's time, then cook to produce a homemade meal. I think that it is not doing anyone any favours by eating the plethora of ready made meals etc that are in the supermarkets.

Heron Foods are seriously cheap. The stuff on their website is the stuff they always have in and is not that cheap. But that takes up very little shop space.
Heron Foods are on high streets in poorer areas. They are used by people who are looking for bargains, and those who have no car and just need somewhere local to shop.

The vast majority of the shop is given over to food near its sell by date or discontinued ranges or food that does not meet manufacturers guidelines e.g. broken items. Its cheapest range is its XSell range. These are unbranded foods made by branded manufacturers that do not meet the manufacturers guidelines. You can buy pack of broken chocolate brownies (£1.25 a pack), hash browns, breaded cod, oven chips and more. What they sell varies each time and none of this is priced on their website.

They often have things that you will never see again. I bought a can of pina colada for a £1 that I have never seen again on the shelves. It is a store you have to physically go into, you can not judge it by browsing on the internet.

The one in our town is only branded, yes. It's quite a small one though. I think the milk etc is from local places.
I've not bought tinned stuff or packet stuff from there tbh, apart from one famous Christmas Eve when it was the only place left that had trifle sponges!
My freezer is always full of the fabulous frozen desserts and I've creams though (all branded)
Whenever new flavours appeared on TV my mum would say "oooh lovely, we'll get that when it ends up in Heron".

It is expensive. I just assumed my kids were getting older and therefor I was buying more food but I actually don’t think that’s the case. My last weekly food shop was £125 (I did buy extras for a nice Easter roast) I used to spent anywhere between £65-£80.
however that said tesco were doing a lot of the veg for 15p so I did get a few bargains

Essentially yes. Their branded products are cheaper than supermarket own brands. I popped in recently and bought Muller rice 6 pack for £2 (2.65 lidl own), Costello blue cheese for 69p ( over £3 every where else), 4 knorr stock pots for 50p ( £1 plus every where else ), box of halloumi fries for a £1 (£3 in Sainsbury's). Like the poster said before, it's an odd shop as in you can't use it to do your weekly grocery shop because they constantly rotate stock lines, and the every day stuff like tea bags most likely will be more expensive, unless they've got a special job lot. It's a shame they're not everywhere. I dont live local to one but will make a special trip every few months to stock up.

So you're not too keen on rhubarb then 😂😂