To think that the vast majority of people can't afford or won't buy 7 portions of fruit and veg a day

[LaurieFairyCake]

After listening to the debate on radio 5 yesterday Richard Bacon was making the point that it was easy as the portions were small.

No, they're really, really not!

I've just looked at the Daily Mail run down of how much you have to eat and I think it's actually prohibitive financially.

2 nectarines,
3 heaped tablespoons of sweetcorn,
Quarter of a big broccoli or cauliflower,
3 heaped tablespoons of mangetout
7 spears of asparagus
Half a pepper

All one portion

Seriously no one can afford that. In Aldi it's only 4 spears in a portion to buy for 79p so I need £1.60 to buy one portion of asparagus - obviously I wouldn't as I'm not an eejit.

Eating seasonally not so easy either as you can only get your nutrition from one thing twice in a day. So only two apples.

I reckon shopping in Aldi I'm going to need to spend about £8 a day for a family of 3 adult eaters for fruit and veg. So that's £56 a week just on fruit and veg.

Its not too expensive for fresh fruit & veg at all. GO TO THE MARKET...
Also I think some of it is too cheap. I saw an advert the other day from Morrissons or aldi one of the cheap ones. For a PINEAPPLE for 75p I thought that's ridiculous. They take ages to grow and take a fair amount of space for 1 plant/1fruit. The farmers must have been screwed over to sell it for that. Disgusting really. I demand to pay more for my fruit! And erm how much are chocolate bars nowadays?

One SMALL can of sweetcorn = 2 portions.

80g of peas is tiny!

I do 7+ already and I'm not a health freak! Breakfast + midmorning snack= 2 fruit, lunch 2 or 3 veg depending on what I have and always 3 veg for dinner. Then I usually have 1 juice on top.

Beastofburden I did say in my post that even if people are working etc during the week, then its easy enough to buy fruit & veg at weekends.

yes, I know, but your point was about when they are cheapest. They're not cheapest at weekends.

When do I do my shopping? it is delivered at 8.30 am on a Sunday. Takes me ten minutes to update my online order on a friday night. I do buy shedloads of veg, as it happens, but I also spend a lot of money on it, because I earn enough to do that. I have a lot of sympathy with ppl who work FT, have three Dc as I do, and don't earn what I do (yet- hang on in there).

That's possibly where i'm going wrong stealth, i've been making baked bean smoothies for the family instead of serving them picked straight from the tree.

Stealth the issue with juicing is that it leaves all the plant fibres behind. If you cook veg and blend it in a soup, then the whole thing is still in there.
There is also the sugar problem, which is that if people think they can just have 5 smoothies a day and they are covered then they are consuming a huge amount of sugar. It takes time and effort to eat your way through 5 bananas, a whole punnet of grapes, 5 apples, 2 punnets of strawberries - nothing like so long to down a few smoothies.

It is good to eat some raw things as well, but there is nothing wrong with vegetables blended in a soup.

Our market is not cheaper, in fact most of it is a lot more expensive than the supermarkets. Our council is determined to close down the market so are pricing the stall holders out of business, the ones that are holding on are only doing so because they put their prices up and reduce nothing.

Expensive as the fruit and veg are supplementary to meat products?

Quite. Turn it around so that the meat is supplementary to the veg and you'll save money.

One of my favourites at the moment is this, which makes 4 portions:
140g spicy chorizo
1 chopped onion (softened in the oil liberated from frying the chorizo)
1 chopped butternut squash
2 tins of tomatoes, blended (the original recipe says passata).

• stewed together till the squash is soft. I usually add some dark green veg (asda was doing cavalero nero cheaply recently but spring greens would do) and some smoked paprika. Loads of veg, loads of flavour. Smoked bacon would work too I think. Add cheese if you want more protein.

Though can I bring us back to what pp said- the way forward is to replace meat with veg. Eat less meat (but ideally higher-welfare meat) and more veg. It is not hard for two or three evening meals in a week to be vegetarian.

Or as some bloke said, "eat food, not too much, mostly plants".

xpost with errol

Mistress i shop online usually. i don't live anywhere near shops which put magical reduced bowls of fruit outside. i don't drive. Sundays we are often doing something family oriented at 3-4pm so i rarely get a chance to go to the tesco express to see if anything has been reduced. That's if we are not using the weekend to visit family. i suppose i could revlove our only days off together around getting cheaper veg, but i'm not going to.

Whoever thought up this 7 a day needs brain surgery. The best I can do is three or four a day, mainly because of cost but also because my stomach just can't take anymore. Yesterday, I had no breakfast, two small easy peelers from Aldi, lunch was a tablespoon of prawns in marie rose (home made) sauce, three leaves of little gem lettuce, six cherry tomatoes and seven slices of cucumber. My evening meal was half a chicken breast, cooked with sliced onion, tomato gravy, a tablespoon of mashed potato and a handful of broccoli florets. I'm not dying!

Just counted the vegetables and fruit I ate yesterday and wonder if what I had does count as seven portions .....

I have to admit that the marie rose sauce was just mayonnaise mixed with tomato ketchup.

Errol, that recipe wouldn't even feed 2 of us. No where near enough of anything. If i was cooking that for Dh and myself, i would use a whole chorizo, there would also be a whole pepper, a tin of cannelini/butter beans and probably served on rice or with crusty bread.

MrsKoala
Errol, that recipe wouldn't even feed 2 of us. No where near enough of anything.
I have to admit I'm with Errol on portion sizes here.
That looks yummy and a whole squash between four is masses

According to this I have just eaten 4/5 portions in my lunch.

3" Cucumber
1.5 Carrots
3 Sticks of celery
Big bowl of lettuce
Banana
(and some grilled halloumi)

I will have some mixed veg with my dinner later so hopefully I'll manage 6. I think I generally manage between 4 - 7 depending on the day.

I find it harder to get 5 a day into DD - she loves fruit and veg but she eats small portions, do children need the same size portions as adults? That makes no sense to me, she's 6.

Today she's had
Glass of orange juice
Banana
Strawberries

She will have broccoli/cauliflower/carrot with her dinner too.

So she will have had 6 types of fresh fruit/veg - but there is no way she can consume them in the quantities mentioned.

DH on the other hand is unlikely to eat 7 portions in a week, he is extremely fussy and eats a pretty beige diet, with an occasional top up of peas/broccoli/new potatoes. I suspect the cats eat more veg than he does.

Fruit and veg is fairly expensive - though luckily I only have to provide it for the two of us - but we do grow our own carrots/strawberries and herbs. And we forage in the autumn... I love blackberry picking.

It's partly that we have high expectations now. Ppl are happily discussing melon, asparagus, squash, purple sprouting, peppers, courgettes.... When I was a child they were all luxury items. In the summer life was good, the back garden produced beans, sprouting white and purple broccoli, courgettes, plums, blackcurrents, gooseberries, etc. But in late March/ early April? you ate cabbage and carrots and liked it. Or not, of course. As for fruit, there were last year's apples off the tree. We eat so much better now.

Frozen veg, three vegetarian meals a week, and all puddings and snacks become fruit. Cant see how else busy people can afford to do this. But that sounds OK to me.

Where I live, there is a market 6 days a week (on sundays it's huge!) from 8am to 1pm.
From 12.30 onwards, loads of stuff is reduced - especially on Sundays, as there's no market on a Monday, so they sell off anything too ripe to keep until Tuesday!

Coruskate
I agree with you about markets.
My nearest supermarket is a Sainsburys.

How to get cheap fruit and veg :
on 'hard' stuff : buy the basics ranges (especially apples)
Buy in season
Never buy anything prepackaged without checking the price per 100g
buy the biggest pack you can
all the trendy exotic stuff is generally a rip off
mixed veg is always dearer than single sort bags

Shrink wrapped broccoli is nearly twice the price of loose

I generally buy fruit/veg twice a week for DD and I

For eg.

Bunch of bananas x 2 - £2
Strawberries or cherries - £2
Grapes - £2
Apples - £2
Orange Juice - £1.50

New potatoes - £1
Sweet potatoes x 3 - £1.50
Bag of carrots - £1
Leeks x 3 - £1
Frozen peas - £1
Broccoli - £1.50
Bag of Sprouts - £1
Cucumber - £1
Celery - £1.50
Bag of mini sweet peppers - £2
Onion x 2 - £1

So generally I spend about £25 on fruit/veg a week for the two of us.

I expect I could probably get a similar amount for less, maybe get it down to £15 if I shopped around and ate seasonally, but the cost even of that is probably prohibitive for someone on a tighter budget and with more and larger mouths to feed.

I go to the Asian supermarket when I am passing, 4kg of onions £1.99, 10 bulbs of garlic £1.99, Tomatoes £2 for about 2.5kg, tinned tomatoes 31p each. Large bags of dried herbs 80p. Spices are a lot lot cheaper than anywhere else.

If you don't have a car or live near by its not easy to shop there as most things are bulk buy and the store is not near an easily accessible bus route and there are not many things that you can 'Buy British'

I feel a bit overwhelmed at having to choose, buy, store and prepare approx. 200 portions of fruit and veg a week.

nostress there's a possibility that you're not wrong about the 75p pineapples. Or even some £2 pineapples, to be honest
www.makefruitfair.org.uk/sites/default/files/competition_law_and_slavery_from_blnationalcoordinatorpc.pdf

I appear to be lacking a convert links automatically box. Has that been changed, or something?

Yes, it has :o