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.

Forgot to add and freeze half of it and there is another 1 or 2 meals (toddler size portions for dc or to have for dinner/lunch in a jacket pot) 3 meals for the price of 1!!!

It has got more expensive over the last few years. When I was a child we grew our own vegetables and only had fresh fruit for special occasions.

Then it seemed to get more affordable when I grew up but it is rapidly rising and is more of a "treat" food again. I ration our fruit, the children do get a portion of fresh fruit each day but we are falling short of the 5 a day guideline.

You can freeze the unused celery and peppers. You'll find they come in handy one evening when you're in a hurry.

Is five a day not really sensible advice?

I'm surprised that people recommend Greengrocers, our Greengrocer was way more expensive than the Supermarkets.

I really don't think the basics are expensive, most supermarkets sell large bags of their value range apples, pears, oranges etc for around £1 which is cheaper per piece than lots of junk type snacks. Things like carrots and onions are also very cheap. Its when you start buying things like grapes, mangos, strawberries etc that supermarkets can become very expensive. I use a large Asian grocers for my fruit and veg. I can get 2 large bags of good quality potatos for £1, last week a got a sack of onions for 99p, 2 punnets of grapes for £1 and a huge tiger melon for 59p! If you have somewhere like this near you take a look.

Freezer is already full of bread (a loaf goes off before it's eaten), butter from when on offer, frozen veg and left overs.

That's the trouble you can't really meal plan if there is just you and a young one. We always end up with someone extra or mine goes off for tea somewhere else. I then end up with a yet another meal for the freezer.

Veg is the worse because if you don't have a plan it goes off. I have a cabbage that has been used for colesaw three times and now is sat there. I have a turnip that never went in the stew (because it's been hot for two weeks) and over ripe plums that never got made into crumble for the same reason (but cost the same as six bakewell tarts that I took when we went out for the day).

Ime markets are far far cheaper than supermarkets for f&v. They are ripping us off (again!).

My freezer gets like that too. This week, I've decided to buy no food and am busy turning out the freezer. There is just so much stuff in there. And although it sounds austere, we're actually eating very nice food.

You need freezer night! We eat a meal from the freezer at least once a week. No point freezing if you don't eat it!

I don't agree with markets being cheaper necessarily. Our local market has a well-stocked fruit & veg stall but it is even more expensive than Tesco.

most of the food I cook has a lot of carrots and onions as they are cheaper. (still not cheap though.) if you get the value stuff and freeze some of the spare ones it works out cheaper. we have been eating a lot of caulifloer recently as the local shop has whoppers for 69p and aldi had some for 59p today.
the aldi super 6 can be useful, especially if you can freeze some of them for a later date.

value kidney beans feature quite highly in our diet too..

Not as much fun meal planning for a whole family I supose but I do for us (myself, 5 year old dd and 2 year old ds) so I rarely waste anything. A freezer full of food is fab! I did live out of mine in jan after christmas and my dc are both jan babies as are two of my sister's dc, expensive time! I have to plan so that on the days we have Rainbows/Ballet/swimming etc after school/my work days I have something planned so I don't grab crisps/toast with butter and jam/some other such yummy-ness that may make me a bit lardy again. I'm with you on the hot weather though, missed peas/carrot/brocolli and not a massive salad fan here.

I used to work in a town about 15 miles away on a tuesday and it was the highlight of my working day going to the fruit and veg shop there. Best local shop I have ever known and so so so cheap!! I used to be buckling unjder the weight of my bags. Sad that I am, getting excited about bargainous food

If you want great, cheap fruit and vegetables, Aldi is brilliant. I got a great big bag of bananas for approx 69p there the other day, and you can get bags of apples for about 80p.
They've always been fresh and in great condition when I've bought them, too.

Fruit and Veg is incredibly cheap in the UK. Have you seen what it costs everywhere else?

YABU... fruit and veg is dirt cheap. So cheap, in fact, that the suppliers can't afford to do BOGOFs the way packaged brands do because there's no margin to give away. Not talking about the fancy out-of-season imported stuff - if you really want to eat beans flown in from Kenya, expect to pay through the nose. British seasonal produce costs next to nothing.

It depends what you mean by expensive OP. You can get a lot of fruit and veg for quite low prices, yes. If you live near the right places and/or have transport, anyway. But if you're on a low budget, fruit feels like a bit of an expensive luxury when you can get stodgy, not necessarily healthy stuff to fill you up for cheaper. To some extent this can be tackled by buying in season, but not always. Raspberries are horrendously expensive even in season. I understand the reasons why, but they're really dear. Strawberries suffer from similar squashability but it's usually possible to get them on offer in the summer. And the price of rhubarb is an outrage, when it's so easy to grow!

Additionally, using veg to bulk out meat dishes can work out more expensive. Carrielou's chilli sounds lovely and is no doubt better for the waistline than one dominated by meat. But bell peppers can be more expensive pound for pound than most mince, especially if you have to get them from Tesco. So unless you're buying premium mince, it doesn't work out cheaper. There's always frozen peppers I suppose, but they're not as tasty!

Forraging is great and there's a surprising amount available even in cities. but that's only because so few people do it. It isn't a solution to the widespread problem of many poorer families struggling wih nutrition.

I don't think basic fruit and veg is expensive at all.

Where do you live OP- very generally, town or rural?
Don't buy food out of season and don't be too prescriptive when you go shopping.

Aldi, Lidl and markets are definitley cheaper than little packaged soft fruits from Waitrose.

It varies entirely on where you are

My town has no supermarket, and whilst most of us can access the city easily enough if you are elderly or have mobility issues, or just can't afford the bus fair, you are restricted to the Spar and their squashy costly apples.

Allotments have a six year waiting list.

OTOH if you live a walk away from the Saturday market you are laughing frankly. Cheap as you'd like.

I hadn't bought a lot of food recently (between DH doing a HUGE stores shop on his own about 2 months back, and he did the last 2 weeks shop also, so I have only needed to get a few bits) but got the main shop last weekend!! O M G!!!

I spent ?30 in the fruit and veg shop ALONE!! (I know I spent more than ?6 on peppers, but we are eating a lot at the moment and I'll live with that if it means DD and I get more fresh veg, and we needed 2 for fajitas tonight). I didn't even need potatoes - will this week though. I had run through almost everything in the fruit and veg stocks though - so I needed lots.

But then, I went to the main supermarket. I couldn't get deecnt lettuce in F&V shop (I prefer cos to iceberg in my lunch salad for a bit of flavour), carrots and peppers were cheap so got extra, and I couldn't get sugarsnaps in F&V shop either (salads and DD's dinners). And I needed 2 days worth of meat, washing powder and other cleaning stuff, the last couple of easter eggs, 2 bottles of wine (?6 each though so cheap), Guinness for overseas visitors (4 small cans), eggs, cooked meat, there was an offer on cans of coke etc (and I needed 1 pack anyway but stocked up on the offer - if I buy cans, the DD and Au Pair go through less than if there's a fullsized bottle in the fridge - so I actually spend less overall) - but it seemed like not THAT much for ?153. I nearly went into a swoon when I had to pay!

I have spinach almost ready to use in salads, and soon for dinners. The first radishes are edible sized. And I have a few lettuces struggling up, a handful of caulis to plant out, some peas poking their heads over the earth and some broad beans starting to grow properly - with the amount I spent over the weekend, I will be planting more this week!!

I find that organic fruit and veg has so much more flavour but it is so much more expensive that I can rarely afford it.

Market fruit and veg is seasonal and far cheaper than supermarkets, plus you don't have to wait a fortnight for it to ripen!! Find a local market.

.....Plus, you can look online at the supermarket deals on certain fruit and veg, and plan your meals around the cheaper ones if you have no nearby market.

I think the prices are predicted to rise hugely, if we continue in a drought