To think "big" weekly shops just don't work anymore (produce freshness)

[necromumda]

Do you find fruit and vegetables are spoiling really quickly these days, compared to the past? I've tried a few of the supermarkets and have come to the conclusion that , if you want fruit and veg to stay fresher for longer, a few shops a week is the best. Goodbye to the big weekly shop?

I don't want my fruit and veg to last a week.

Produce that lasts that length of time are picked too soon, transported in refrigerated trucks, kept in artificial gaseous conditions to extend shelf life.

I prefer to buy my fruits and veg every couple of days.

speakout

Only having a couple days of food at any one time would have my inner Prepper freaking out!!

I agree with this. I grow a lot of my own veg and even in the recent hot weather and not necessarily refrigerating things, it all still lasts longer and is way fresher than anything I buy in any supermarket. I think what this tells you is that by the time you buy your 'fresh' produce, it's actually quite old and depending on how it's been stored is at pretty much at the end of its life. I suspect supermarkets of aggressively refrigerating fruit and veg to massively extend its storage life and then bringing it up to room (or shop) temperature, which then accelerates the spoiling process just in time for you to buy it. Convenient for them but not so much for you and me - and contributes enormously to food waste. All you can do is stop buying it and supermarkets will eventually stop stocking it once it's their food waste rather than ours.

I hate that the sort of lifestyle where you can shop for fresh local food daily is kind of a thing of the past in this country, but I think as a nation we haven't traditionally valued good quality food and this is the result.

RedneckStumpy I don't have just a couple of days of food.

I buy in bulk, I have huge stores in the garage if tinned, jarred dried supplies. I have a large chest freezer in my garage and a large upright freezer in my kitchen.
I could feed 5 of us without visiting a shop at all for the next 6 weeks if necessary.
But we eat a lot of fruit and veg, so I buy these every 2-3 days.

I work for one of the big supermarket chains and as a company, we now serve more basket shops than trollies. Shopping habits have changed massively in the last 2 years

I’m mostly shopping at my local large Co-op unless I want a herb or spice I can’t get there. Fresh food lasts well, everything is good quality and the member rewards mount up v quickly.

I get 2 deliveries a week now.

I've been shopping at Aldi for over 20 years and fruit and veg always lasts fine. I've got 2 courgettes, half an aubergine, a sweet potato and a pepper that's over a week old and they're perfectly OK. Fridge is also close to 20 years old so it's not a fancy new magic fridge either.

But I do agree that the concept of buying the same stuff in the same supermarket on the same day each week is not great if you want value for money. Shopping around and make use of offers and bulk savings by rotating to get the best and cheapest from different places can save loads. Just go to a different supermarket when you need things if you have more than one nearby.

I don't have an issue with stuff going off (weekly shop at Tesco's and new fridge). Will not buy at Aldi as things don't last- they would sometime go off on the same day!

We have no local independent grocers - nearest market is over an hour's drive away on the motorway so we eat what we grow or what we buy in the supermarket!