Things that are inexplicably cheap

[ChewChewIsMySpiritAnimal]

Inspired by the thread about things that are inexplicably expensive!

My pick is bananas. You can buy a huge bunch of bananas for a few pence - I'm always shocked when i get to the till and find I've got about 22 bananas for less than a quid exaggerating but they've been imported from halfway round the world - yet the British apples next to them are twice as much.

What do you find inexplicably cheap?

@Hohofortherobbers

My other is jam doughnuts, 25p in Sainsbury's. And they are awesome. Best jam doughnut by far, bag of 5 for £1, utter bliss

I totally agree!

Meat. It's so sad that a life is worth so little. The cheaper it costs the less has been spent on it in life. I cant imagine raising a chicken for less than £4. Horrifying.

Carrots and other veg - huge bag for about 40p in some shops. Also DS bought some smoked salmon and a tub of cream cheese in Tesco yesterday for less than £3.50. I would expect to pay more than that for the cheapest salmon, but this was their Finest range

Oats. Magical stuff

Some food are loss leaders though. So are cheap in order to get you in the shop. Maybe not so relevant now though

Just bought a wireless printer, scanner photocopier from argos for £40. We've never had one as always thought it would be really expensive, but £40 for that kind of tech is incredible. I always think what things like this would have cost when they were first available, probably hundreds and hundreds of pounds. But tech is really really cheap actually

This is why ink is so expensive, to make up for the printer being cheap. It locks you in to spending more money then you ever wish to on replacement cartridges

Carrots, got a massive bag in morrisons for 50p

Food prices will be going up shortly anyway.

Yep, doughnuts, bananas, carrots, pasta and eggs (not that I buy the v cheap eggs as they’re not free range).

I would expect to pay more than that for the cheapest salmon, but this was their Finest range

In the 1980s and 1990s. Smoked salmon used to taste amazing. Wild and beautifully smoked

Now it is cheap, farmed and has no taste

Buy some decent wild, small batched smoked and you will never buy the cheap stuff again. A less id more item- but a small amount of good stuff.

"You can still buy second hand tvs. My local charity shop has quite a few in."

I thought old TVs wouldn't work with digital? Or are they just a few years' old?

British food standards are high. Farmers are getting shafted .
Imported meat is cheap ( and their farmers get shafted).

How much is everyone buying a pint of milk for from supermarket? We have a milkman (direct from family farm) and I pay 90p per pint but no delivery fee (I understand I'm not paying for the nasty plastic, but still they have to clean the bottles for reuse).

Jar of own brand jam. 15p. I think 14p must be the jar

HonestlyHello

I've skimmed through the thread to post this so sorry if it's been said but I agree with a lot of PPs - food in general is so cheap in the UK!! Especially fruit and veg. It really was brought home to me recently as when I was a child in the 80s we used to holiday as a family in the South of France every year, driving down and camping to keep costs low (not even going to go into how now it's cheaper to fly somewhere and get an apartment! Crazy!!) and the food in French supermarkets was so cheap yet so delicious!! We used to feast the whole holiday and drive back at the end with the car heaving with 'foreign' goodies... 😋
Wanting to restart the tradition with my DC last year we did the same and were stunned at how much more food is over there!! Fruit, veg, dairy and meat, all at Least a third more sometimes double what we pay here. It's bizarre, even French brand food that we can now get here in the UK is actually cheaper here than there, even though it's traveled further??! I could barely get my head round it all holiday (& was fairly grumpy at having to restrain my greed, I'll admit). We kind of came to the conclusion that the french paid less in other areas (property prices/rent, for eg) so it probably worked out their day to day expenses weren't much different to ours but it really bought home how cheap food is here!

The good thing is I now am more inclined to spend more on food here to get a decent Product as one thing we definitely noticed is even the own-brand stuff was just so much tastier than ours... We're sold a lot of !! But at least it's cheap crap ..

Yep someone else has already said it (& with waaay less waffle!)!

@Snugglepumpkin tbf, if you were earning that much it was more than a teacher of a few years experience (not absolutely certain, but in 1992 an NQT with a second-class degree was on just over £12k).

I was looking for work in 1987, and bar work was £1.90 - £2.05 an hour.

Food in general. It's far cheaper than in many other countries and many farmers are struggling, both in the UK and those we import from.

Someone mentioned petrol at £1.20 a liter. Until last week, ours was 69 cents a gallon.

Where's that in the USA? We were paying around $3-$3.50 last October, still cheaper than the UK, even for the shorter US gallon, about 20% less by volume than a UK gallon.

It is certainly a lot cheaper in London than in Paris, I can vouch for that.

@VenusTiger 90p for a pint of milk is expensive - I thinks it's about £1.50 in the supermarkets for 4 pints.

Bread.
Actually food is so much cheaper in Britain than in my native California. Friend from PA says same about her state. We never stop being stunned by how cheap groceries are in England.

You can find abysmal quality cheap food in places like DollarTree. Type of stuff you find scary to eat.

@merryhouse
I know I was lucky (I had very rare at the time skills that were massively in demand) but it still shocks me that people are still earning less now than decades ago.

-turkey legs in morrissonis you need to ask a butcher not always outside on the shelves, I cook 2 meals from it, some water with stock cubes and slow cooker we love it and I think is around £4 for 2 legs. Turkey meat is much so healthy.
-vinegar instead of fabric conditioner, just started a week ago to use and I'm suprise so good no smell of vinegar 2 bottles of vinegar from amazon 10L £14 last for ages

• £2 for diswasher tablets from morrisons excellent
• bananas

-elbow grease and pink stuff last long and £1 -bio di washing up liquid 5L for £13 on ebay last me for over a year