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.

if you buy british things in season its generally pretty cheap.

If you buy imported or out of season fruit and veg, then its more expensive, and quite rightly so.

I dont think it should be made cheaper as its always the farmers who lose out.
Buy your fruit and veg seasonally from a greengrocer or the market and its cheaper still.

If you like lovely pink lady apples all year round, then it might be £2.50 or £3 for 4, but you can buy a bag of british coxes for 75p
Strawberrries in the middle of winter are ridiculously expensive and also tasteless, but you can buy punnets in midsummer from the market for cheap.

Another point... a lot of fruit and veg has seen deflation, even price-cuts. Apples that were £1/bag five or six years ago are still £1/bag. Bananas have been 68p/kg in most supermarkets since last autumn. Two or three years ago they were more regularly 97p/kg.

i really think it is cheaper than junk food tbh, but maybe that is just me

It's not really.

You can feed a pack of sausages, some beans beans and savers chips to six kids for under £2 and fill them

Which a bag of apples simply will not do in the same way.

However, there are definitely affordable options about IF you can get them.

I tend to find our Sainsbury's doesn't always have the Market Value/Basics stuff, which I see online or elsewhere. I struggle with Aldi as they don't do loose stuff and I'm only shopping for one, so if I want a carrot for a Shepherd's Pie or something, I end up having to buy a big bag.

Makes it difficult to eat a variety of stuff without spending a fortune. I do use frozen as I can eke it out, but I don't have the space to get frozen everything.

where are you getting your sausages from?

Petro-chemicals and over reliance on oil is what fuels high prices and low income for farmers.

I think we need to produce and consume locally and take back the rights to feed ourselves, allotments and co-operatives would be more cost effective and cheaper plus better for the environment.

Ok I take that back £1.97 for chips beansx2 and sausages from tesco
but I wouldn't feed those sausages to my dog let alone my children which is probably why I find other, minimal cost, ways to feed my children more healthily

well no, a bag of apples wouldn't fill 6 kids in the same way.

but pasta, with mixed veg sauce, would and I can do that for under £2.

do you really expect all food suppliers to reduce their prices to match the prices of factory floor sweeping loss leader type crappy foods?

It IS possible to get cheap fruit and veg and it is possible to get other food cheap too. The difference is that value/economy fruit and veg is absolutely as good nutritionally as the more expensive stuff, and in most cases, just as tasty, whereas cut price shitty sausages are not in the same league. Food costs money to produce. There needs to be something in it for the farmers to grow it

Bronze me neither but I am lucky not to have to.

SF yes that's an option, but IMEW the grinding thing about poverty is that it seems permanent- temporary brokeness being a different thing I think. So the same meal every day forever? Nah.

I remember as a child having my Uncle's home laid eggs with chips for weeks when the bank lost my dad's wages but it never seemed permanent.

Dinah i agree when there's a supermarket close bybut access to fresh food is a major copntributor towards rural poverty and the problems it brings

Peachy, I know all about grinding poverty, believe me.

but the beauty of knowing what to do with veg is that it is always variable.

we were homeless (properly homeless, in B&B and temp accommodation) for years when I was young. and I don't remember the meals being too monotonous. lots of rice and pasta, yes. but sometimes in a white (or cheese if we were feeling flush!) sauce, sometimes tomato based.

rice-wise: tin of tuna, tin of tomato soup, bung in rice and bake. use mushroom or vegetable soup for variation.

vary the veg bias, and the meal will taste different.

I lived on pasta and pesto as a student. really properly lived on it. a couple of veg fried up, mix in the pasta and pesto, sometimes tuna with it, sometimes cheese on top - relatively easy to change how it tasted using different veg. I honestly ate this every day for 2 years (partly through finances -we were still dirt poor - and partly through manky kitchens and I only needed to use one pot and one plate!)

I agree. Fruit and veg, esp quality organic ones, are rather expensive. But less expensive than meat, esp decent organic free-range meat. Being a vegetarian can save you a fortune. But it is possible to get creative to be economical. For instance, you can find new creative ways of cooking basic veg like carrots, beetroot, and cabbage (pancakes stuffed with stewed cabbage - yum!). Also make use of lentils that, I think, technically count as veg, come in a zillion different-tasting varieties, and work very well as "filler" food in place of rice, pasta or potatoes. Value-price canned tomatoes are also a blessing. Onions+garlic+red lentils+can of chopped tomatoes+whatever veg you have (maybe not cabbage)+some spice=cheap and healthy meal. . . . But things like grapes, berries, asparagus etc. are extortionate and probably best bought in season, and not flown in from Peru.

And anyone can grow some
perpetual salad/spinach is fantastic
Ok it wont make you self sufficient but everything helps

I grew this lot a while back using free seeds in empty formula tins. It go really big and I had to move some onto a different windowsill to allow more light in

it's easy to grow some veg - definitely get an allotment and a good book on growing fruit and veg.

some fruits are perennial - i recommend you get some raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries if you like then, blueberries, rhubarb. they all come up every year.

vegetables aren't, but the easiest to grow are courgettes, runner beans (other beans too), peas (although you need a lot of space to grow enough!), potatoes, onions, cabbages, kale, broccoli, salad veg.

if you start sowing now, you'll have loads of veg to go at in late summer.

most of them will freeze.
If you can't get an allotment this year, then you can still grow some things without a garden. use window boxes of even a sunny windowsill.
If you've got a yard, then you can grow in big containers.

and never buy fresh veg from the supermarkets - they're stupidly expensive and kill farmers.

if you want to start this year, then go down to your local allotment and offer labour in exchange for produce.
it'll give you an idea of what needs to be done, and you'll make friends and it'll help your recommendation for a plot.

I always seem to be posting this on here
another option www.landshare.net/

ah yes, land share is a fantastic idea!

Honestly, in the UK you don't know you are born! Go to any other country and its more expensive. As a percentage of income your food spend has been decreasing for decades. As a nation you spend less than 10% of your income on food costs.
Have you any thought for the suppliers of your cheap food when you want to keep driving costs down?

nothingoldcanstay I have the cabbage problem too. Cabbage goes a long way. But my in-laws and a friend have the problem so we share cabbages. About 20 yrs ago I worked in a greengrocers and we would sell half a cabbage as there would always be someone along to buy the other half within an hour. Same with cucumbers. I don't know if they (are allowed to) do that anymore.

My greengrocers does it with cucumbers so yes presumably they are

"My greengrocers does it with cucumbers"

teehee

There's always one

just reviving this as I just dragged my children to the grrengrocers to act as pack horses

We got
9 coxes
8 pink ladies
2 lge peppers
pineapple
8 pears
13 bananas
8 kiwis
lge grapes
9 med. tomatos
lrge broccoli

for £20.60

I think thats good value myself. We don't regulalry buy things like pineapples but it's ds1s birthday and he hasn't asked for much (except broc. for lunch strange, but lovely child)

The earlier threads about feeding six kids for £2 - I can't see how. Yes, pasta and tomato and veg sauce. But cheese would push it over that amount. And any meal involving meat or fish - no chance. What sausages cost less than £2?

Asda Smartprice sausages are really cheap, and probably any from Farmfoods/Iceland.