To be horrified at the price of food

[Thorts]

Single pepper, now 60p - everywhere.
Apple juice - 99p everywhere for the cheap stuff

How are people supposed to eat fresh fruit and veg daily (and the right amount) with these prices?

If you were to look at processed food however; pack of ham 20p, custard creams 20p, garlic bread 35p.

You could get two of all the processed items mentioned for less price than one pepper and one carton of 1L value Apple juice.

Surely something needs to be done?

Prepay meters no longer cost more I thought? Processed food leaves me tired, feeling crap and unwell, and still hungry. Soups and daals are more filling. When I was poor for a long time I cooked things like that.

You are wrong. Pre pay meters cost more.

No, your reply isn't answering my question.
I shop. I buy veg and fruit. I know what they cost (Asda, Aldi, Tesco).

How many people are you feeding. What veg and fruit are you buying.

You made the assertion that £30pw is not achievable. I'm asking you to justify your assertion.

Soups and dahls do not have that many calories. There are about 200 calories in a cup of dahl. You have to eat a lot of dahl and soup every day to get enough calories.

@BMW6 I literally listed my weekly shop a few posts ago that cost me £50. For one person. Unless you're denying yourself any joy and only buying the cheapest vegetables, it's expensive.

I use frozen blueberries and banana. Or sultanas and stewed rhubarb. Or frozen foraged blackberries. Only fresh berries when I have my own raspberries.

I have plain porridge, much cheaper.

I've just had a shopping delivery, £91. It included cat food, dishwasher tablets, and wilp feed 4 of us (adult portions) 3 times a day for a week, easily.

There's cereal/toast for breakfast, eggs/beans/sandwiches/soup (I made from last weeks left over veg) for lunches and then 4 dinners with meat and 3 without. I don't have an exact plan, but I know there's plenty. There's fruit for snacks, and if anyone fancies baking we have the ingredients.

I don't think it's outrageous at all. I batch cook, and cook extra when I can, so we have leftvovers in the freezer for the days no one can be bothered to cook. We are poor, so have really learnt how to stretch everything, without feeling poor.

@Kalevala congrats. What about those with no room to grow or nowhere to forage?

With bread or rice. Most adults are not struggling to stay out of the underweight range though.

I think the government should put more tax on unhealthy foods and use it to subsidise fruit and veg.

Until wages go up, energy prices come down and education improves, that'll do nothing.

When I was at uni in 2000 I could barely manage on £20 for a weekly shop and that included buying value for almost everything and cooking from scratch.
So if you were spending the same in 2017 it shows how little things went up in those 17 years and how massive price adjustments were needed

Same as salaries then. Barely gone up in the last 20 yrs which is why people are feeling this so much.

I was saying that not everyone chooses expensive berries or other fruit. Banana is very cheap, as are sultanas. Frozen blueberries are a reasonable cost for the nutrition. If I lived in a city with no blackberries I would still only buy frozen berries as I can't afford fresh.

@Kalevala 5 bananas are around £1. That could also be a meal deal to feed 2.

Lol this one?

Avocado? Strawberries? Pineapple? Raspberries?

Are you a Climate Change denier?

Of course YOU can spending £30pw on fruit and veg, because you are buying non essential things that have to be grown or imported at great monetary and Carbon Footprint cost.

You don't need these foods at this time of year.

You just want them.

Slow handclap for you.

You're not wrong op. I recently started keeping all our receipts and logging everything we spent to try and figure out where all our money was going. It's food. I don't know how I'm supposed to cut back on food. It's very depressing.

@BMW6 oh sorry, am I meant to eat a peasant's diet? You're allowed to eat food you enjoy and also reflect on the fact that food, in general, is too expensive.

"Peasants diet"?

Who are you calling a Peasant?

A meal deal of what? 200g chicken bites consisting of 100g chicken and 100g crap between two? I'd rather have the bananas.

What is a Peasant concernedchild?

Someone poorer than you?

@BMW6 you seem to be of the opinion that anything that's enjoyable (I.e fruit) shouldn't be consumed in favour of only things you can pick up in your local vicinity

Also I'm on minimum wage so don't go there

You're right - the increase has not been uniform at all. The poorest are being pushed towards ultra-processed foods to survive.

Shit for them, eh - but as long as poor people buy these franken-foods the government can pretend that the economy is 'working'. It's definitely not in the interest of the Tories to tell the poor how much damage is being done to them - because that's the way it's got to be if they and their cronies are to cream off a sufficiently corrupt 'commission'.

As citizens and individuals, we are literally subsidising both this repulsive governnetn and the shareholders of industrialised food conglomerates - because ultimately it will be the welfare system and the NHS which picks up the pieces when poor people's health collapses.

And we haven't even seen the beginning of the extent of the impact on public health - even ten years ago, UPFs didn't dominate the supermarket aisles to the same degree.

@Kalevala the bananas don't get you very far when that's your budget for a day. I'm glad you're so privileged that you don't have to worry about this though