To say that the majority of UK fruit and veg is awful in comparison to other countries?

Buy local organic seasonal fruit and veg & it will be good. Mass produced cheap out of season stuff from overseas is not good, no.

God I nearly started a thread about this recently

Yes OP completely

Tomatoes watery and tasteless, we try to grow our own but thats only for a few months a year, cucumbers watery and tasteless, the variety we just dont have. It makes me sick actually just how bad our diet is because of the availability of good fresh produce.

quite literally never eaten a turnip. What is it like?

This weekend, we've had asparagus with hollandaise, carrots, buttered swede, leeks, new potatoes with mint. Rhubarb and cream. All fresh and great. British & in season.

Imported tomatoes, polytunnel lettuce and greenhouse strawberries are never going to taste great no matter where you are.

I agree, a few years ago I fancied cherries but didn’t bother as the price was extortionate, as was that of watermelon.

You can get great fruit and veg here if you venture outside the supermarket and mainly eat the stuff that actually grows here.

If you live in a city, local shops in areas with significant Turkish communities (or frankly any nationality other than British 😂😭) often have decent veg.

I do agree, however I also remember going to Florida in the summer and there was very little fruit and veg in the supermarkets and NO oranges which I thought they were famous for!

Yes! I don’t have a greengrocer near me but am going to start going to one on the way home from work to see if that makes a difference from what’s in the supermarket.

I think supermarket veg is about supplying a large population at a price they can afford, all year round more than flavour.

I do think some things taste nicer abroad because they are local plants, in season, in abundance.

I bought some carrots when I was in Australia and when I bit into it it literally tasted of absolutely nothing. I think it depends on which fruit or vegetables you’re talking about.

Yes it is awful. As to why,
BREXIT

we now have border delays so fruit and veg is days older by the time we get it.

Yuck lol.

We have way better turnips. Best turnips in the world, probably.
Eat more turnips.

There is markedly less nutritional value in our vegetables/foods since the 1950s. You can research it online. Soil erosion has not helped but the drop in nutrients is quite startling. I am sure food tasted better when growing up for example apples. I can remember the flavour!

Everything tastes like cardboard! Not just fruit and vegetables even.

The UK population expects food bills to be very low.

If the UK consumer is so powerful, we can demand and get cheap food, how come it doesn't work the same with other commodities like housing or gas?

I'm guessing you weren't familiar with the fruit & veg available in the 60's 😂😂😂

Even before it was stewed/overcooked to death

Totally agree.

Much better quality in France and Italy and I also noticed it when I travelled to the Netherlands.

However it is mostly noticeable in supermarkets. I live on the Kent coast and you can still get some great suits and vegs through local greengrocers.

''@HoskinsChoice · Today 17:24
Move to Spain/France, then you can live happily ever after with your superior vegetables! Bye.''

You are embarrassing yourself with your petty comment...

“Unless you pay “…

food in the uk is cheap compared to the countries you listed

It depends on the fruit or veg. Italian apples and strwberries are generally not as good as ours but the peaches and melons are a lot better.

Agreed 100%. Ours look pretty and uniform but taste like water. When I go abroad my tastebuds go crazy over fruit and veg.

That's not been my experience. Fruit and veg that I've bought in Spain, Italy and the Canary Islands has often been very inferior compared with what I can get in my local supermarkets in the UK. However, I was not buying in big towns/cities but in very isolated rural communities with tiny shops where the fruit and veg section is one little mesh shelf with maybe half a dozen slightly squishy tomatoes, a couple of brownish bananas, a few potatoes, a couple of giant onions and maybe a beetroot or two. None of it would be deemed fit for sale in my local Sainsbury's!

What did people think would happen when you buy by weight ?

Good strawberries are early this year though. Sainsburys stock some nice Finest ones from a New Forest grower.

It's a tough one isn't it? A small north atlantic island with unpredictable, often cold weather patterns, reliant on importing food. And yet that food doesn't taste as good and fresh as that in large, sunny agriculturally based economies. Hmm need to get our finest minds to work out this one.

It not just you who thinks this. Coming from a family of greengroucers (although none of us have been in the business for 30 years) I have some ideas as to why they are so poor.
You used to buy veg from the greengroucer near you who DIDN'T refrigerate everything, which means that the veg you pick up isn't as fresh and will be much older than what your local shop had. They would have picked it up from the market at about 5 this morning, the grower would have picked it yesterday.
We ate seasonally. When did you last see spring greens. Now food is flown in from spain/North Africa and further afield...again not as fresh.
The excellent old varieties which were packed with flavour have been replaced with crops that are more likely to be uniform and be ready all at the same time. Flavour is secondary to this.

Only thing is to grow your own.