to think fruit and veg should be cheaper?!

[ButteryBiscuitBase]

This has probably been said before but why is fruit and vegetables so flipping expensive?!

Surely it would be in the governments interest to make it cheaper or not add VAT on it? I find it hard to afford enough fruit and veg to make sure we eat 5 a day everyday and sure others do too. I know some families get healthy vouchers but there must be a lot of families on low incomes who can't afford it.

I don't think fruit and veg are expensive. Ready meals are expensive. And organic food. But fruit and veg are very reasonable. If I could stop eating meat and fish, my food bills would plummet.

This time of year is a bit crap for it, it's late for the last of the wiinter crops so there will be sprouting broccoli etc but not as much of it and it's too early for the spring crops.

This is a fab webite eattheseasons.co.uk/

here sorry

£1 for 10 kiwis in our local greengrocers for the past year or so, £1 for five apples. Blueberries vary loads, though....and usually when it's more expensive they're bruised and old. Still, not bad.

what are you on about?

fruit is cheap £1 a bag for citrus of some kind from Asda, £1 for a big bag of carrots... can't remember how much a sack of value spuds cost but it wasn't much...and big supermarkets are palaces of cheap fruit and veg for the selective shopper.

or are you saying 'all this hard to-grow in this-country, out-of-season stuff with high wastage and short shelf life' is expensive.

well duh.

I mainly shop online as don't drive and its cheaper than getting taxis its a shame lidl and aldi don't deliver. Yeah I suppose it is because junk is cheap. I buy a lot of tinned but is that really as good for you as fresh?

Sparkling -

Totally agree, you never see the promotions on fruit and veg, if you are skint you can buy a pizza for a quid and feed two small children. And for some people struggling financially, sadly it often comes down to that or nothing.

Eh? Supermarkets have lots of offers/reduce prices on fruit. Not having 2 for 1 offers makes sense as people to often end up with more than they want. Reducing the price of individual items is much better

If you havent a garden then do look for an allotment. Certainly where I am the demand has eased a bit. You may find that there is a waiting list but dont panic, you will find that the list turns over fairly quickly.

I believe that you are allowed to pick fruit/nuts etc if they are growing in a public place. Things to look out for:

• blackberries
• apples - if you look at the side of many new roads there are apple trees
• cobnuts - many country parks have these

Follow the seasons.

They never seem to reduce any fruit I want to buy.

How is it expensive? Seriously? You can buy a pineapple for £1 which is pudding for a family. And a chocolate bar for one person costs about what? 50p?

You can buy huge bags of potatoes for less than £2. And I'm not talking about farmer's markets or street places. But regular supemarkets. If you use markets, the price gets even cheaper.

When I was really broke, I used to buy the punnets of really bruised and slightly past it's best soft fruit from the greengrocer. I used to whizz it up with ice cream and milk to make milkshakes for DS1 and me. Now he's at uni, he does the same thing .

Supermarkets have offers, such as the morrisons 50p offer, but you get much less anyway, ie 4 tomatoes. You don't get the huge price drops, and buy one get one free would be good if it was on the loose stuff, or stuff that keeps like apples.

Two for one offers are a bit of a swizz anyway. When they're always on the same product week after week, then you have to conclude that's the real pirce.

Asda also have quite a lot of 2 for £2 type offers on fresh fruit. The packs of berries and stuff are normally 2 for £3 for pretty decent sized packs

Thanks some very good ideas. I was just meaning to buy enough varied fruit and veg to provide 5 a day is a bit of a challenge on my budget. There is no greengrocer where I live just a local co-op which I find pricey.

In comparison to other foods it seems expensive to me.

There is not VAT on fruit and veg, and it is subsidised too (although indirectly thesedays), so what you are seeing IS the subsidised price! (with a nice premium on it for the supermarkets of course....) The growers will earn virtually nothing though, and I think an allotment is a good idea as it will show you that it's not an easy process, is very labour or machinery intensive, to say nothing of water and fertiliser on a large scale.

Not that 'growing veg' is hard, anyone can sow a few seeds and harvest a handful of mealsworth, but providing what you need year round is a BIG undertaking. If you manage to do it cheap, which may be what you want, just add up all the man-hours you put into it and you'll see why commercial growers have their work cut out to get it to you at that price.

My tip - avoid supermarkets like the plague for fruit and veg. Can get two big carrier bags full for a tenner at my greengrocer - recently clocked up £50 at morrisons for similar!? The really shit thing though is how poor the supermarket fruit was in comparison - looked good, but was underripe to eat. Given time to ripen, it just ticked over to compost before it ever did! What was edible barely had any flavour...grrr!

I buy salad and fruit in Lidl - much better quality that Morrisons and the rest and all british (well mostly, ykwim!). Cucumber £1 in Morrisons last week - 49p in Lidl.

YY to supermarket fruit tasting of nothing. Could go to the local poncey farm shop it tastes fab but twice the price.

I have noticed that the fruit and veg is much much cheaper in aldi/lidl, I wish I could get organised enough to do my shops in a few different place to maximise the budget.

An allotment is quite an investment in terms of time. If you find fruit and veg expensive, I think you are probably buying out of season exotic stuff.

In season, even asparagus becomes affordable.

I am also great fan of frozen fruit and veg as a handy supplement. The fruits don't rot and they provide a quick and nice compote for porridge or pancakes.

Some things are more pricey than others. Certain types of lettuce, cherries, grapes but the main bulk of the stuff is so reasonable.

Normally I would agree, but my last shop at Tesco I got some really good deals on fruit. They had Granny Smith Apples for £1! Yes £1! Normally they're £1.80! I bought Eat Me bananas for £1, some clementines for £1.50 and a lovely ripe sweet Cantaloupe for.....74p! It was the market value range. That actually shocked me a bit.

Iceland is also good for fruit and veg. DH just bought 2 packs of grapes for £2, and a punnet of strawberries for £1.50 (DD loves strawberries, even if they're not sweet). We're lucky and live right door to a Waitrose, Co-Op and Iceland, and so know which stores have the right offers on at certain times thanks to leaflets posted through the door.

Buttery, tinned and frozen are just as good for you.

Also you can freeze your leftover berries cherries etc, and make them into crumbles or sauces. Or you can make jam out of over ripe fruit. You can make banana cake with old bananas, or substitute an egg for a banana in nearly any cake (unless the eggs are beaten).

You are right, fruit and veg are expensive and imo should be subsidised by a "pasty" tax.

If any of you live near Eynsham, Oxon then Milwood market gardens are going to be opening a shop there very soon. I will vouch for the quality