To be horrified at the price of food

@Kalevala when they're your only choice, what else can you do? You can sit there and be all high and mighty and judge people, but when it's their only choice it's all they have.

Of course you can spend your NMW on whatever you choose.

But to moan about the cost of expensive imported fruits and veg is, frankly, laughable - no, Shameful

You are foolish at best. But your argument is totally nonsensical.

I've been poor for a number of years with a child. I work full time for just above minimum wage now. What would you buy for a day for £1? UPFs just makes me feel tired and generally crap and still hungry. They are not a solution.

Yes, they should be subsidised by a tax on the processed food industry. Currently we are subsidising that industry through the NHS and welfare system which must support people with health problems caused by eating shit processed food.

People have preferences. They should be able to afford those preferences. Especially when their preference is fruit and vegetable

@BMW6 Very easy if you buy expensive fruit like berries. I have porridge in the morning. If you see people on MN talking about porridge they nearly always add berries or other nice but expensive fruit.

But that’s a choice, grated apple is good in porridge, so is banana or pears, hardly a peasant diet to not buy strawberries in March. The OP was asking how people can afford to get sufficient fruit and veg in their diet, when peppers cost 60p. Not buying expensive fruit and veg out of season is entirely possible without feeling deprived.

@kitsuneghost if that's what I choose to spend my money on, that's my choice. They're healthy foods and should be cheaper.

I don't think the peasants are buying raspberries and avocados

@Kalevala the bananas don't get you very far when that's your budget for a day. I'm glad you're so privileged that you don't have to worry about this though

You're right - the increase has not been uniform at all. The poorest are being pushed towards ultra-processed foods to survive.

Shit for them, eh - but as long as poor people buy these franken-foods the government can pretend that the economy is 'working'. It's definitely not in the interest of the Tories to tell the poor how much damage is being done to them - because that's the way it's got to be if they and their cronies are to cream off a sufficiently corrupt 'commission'.

As citizens and individuals, we are literally subsidising both this repulsive governnetn and the shareholders of industrialised food conglomerates - because ultimately it will be the welfare system and the NHS which picks up the pieces when poor people's health collapses.

And we haven't even seen the beginning of the extent of the impact on public health - even ten years ago, UPFs didn't dominate the supermarket aisles to the same degree.

Also I'm on minimum wage so don't go there

@BMW6 you seem to be of the opinion that anything that's enjoyable (I.e fruit) shouldn't be consumed in favour of only things you can pick up in your local vicinity

What is a Peasant concernedchild?

Someone poorer than you?

A meal deal of what? 200g chicken bites consisting of 100g chicken and 100g crap between two? I'd rather have the bananas.

"Peasants diet"?

Who are you calling a Peasant?

@BMW6 oh sorry, am I meant to eat a peasant's diet? You're allowed to eat food you enjoy and also reflect on the fact that food, in general, is too expensive.

You're not wrong op. I recently started keeping all our receipts and logging everything we spent to try and figure out where all our money was going. It's food. I don't know how I'm supposed to cut back on food. It's very depressing.

Lol this one?

Avocado? Strawberries? Pineapple? Raspberries?

Are you a Climate Change denier?

Of course YOU can spending £30pw on fruit and veg, because you are buying non essential things that have to be grown or imported at great monetary and Carbon Footprint cost.

You don't need these foods at this time of year.

You just want them.

Slow handclap for you.

@Kalevala 5 bananas are around £1. That could also be a meal deal to feed 2.

I was saying that not everyone chooses expensive berries or other fruit. Banana is very cheap, as are sultanas. Frozen blueberries are a reasonable cost for the nutrition. If I lived in a city with no blackberries I would still only buy frozen berries as I can't afford fresh.

When I was at uni in 2000 I could barely manage on £20 for a weekly shop and that included buying value for almost everything and cooking from scratch.
So if you were spending the same in 2017 it shows how little things went up in those 17 years and how massive price adjustments were needed

Same as salaries then. Barely gone up in the last 20 yrs which is why people are feeling this so much.

Until wages go up, energy prices come down and education improves, that'll do nothing.

I think the government should put more tax on unhealthy foods and use it to subsidise fruit and veg.

With bread or rice. Most adults are not struggling to stay out of the underweight range though.

@Kalevala congrats. What about those with no room to grow or nowhere to forage?