It’s increasingly unaffordable to eat 5 a day

[HappySnake]

Is anyone else struggling with this currently? I know some veg is not too expensive, but I just find with fruit it’s so expensive now. My kids particularly like blueberries and strawberries - I’m spending about a fiver a day. I feel like others who are less well off financially must be finding it even more difficult.

Any tips on affordable fruit etc and how you ensure you get 5 a day would be welcome!

Look on the packet at the country of origin.
What you are doing to your children by supporting this ridiculous carbon footprint far outweighs the benefit of the actual food.

Agree, frozen fruit and vedge, very cheap

Thaw fruit / berries and mix with yogurt and honey, put them in smoothies and also muesli, lots of options

Then buy the cheaper fruit fresh

Have a good look around the freezer section of Aldi,
Frozen prawns are also good to mix in pasta dishes and curries

There are cheaper varieties.

5 a day can include a glass of juice. We typically have
Banana and apple juice at breakfast
Apple at lunch
Satsuma for snack
Veg with dinner

Thats 5 a day

My kids like fresh cherries. I might buy some once a year, definitely not every week.
Hard luck but they can't have everything they want.
Increase the veg and tell them it's apples or no fruit at all.

That’s coz you are buying posh apples

just normal ones

they do kids smaller ones normally 6 for £1

larger gala ones 6 for think £1.39. Price varies

I agree it is expensive. I get whatever is the fruit of the week from lidl and work with it. Add Grated carrot into my meals, don't forget beans / pulses count and also plants are good too (as in herbs and spices which count as plants!) .

Apples pears bananas plums and oranges are fairly cheap. Melon is per portion. Pineapple can be depending on the time of year.
Carrots are very cheap, peppers aren't too bad per portion.
Berries are the expensive thing, we tend to buy one punnet of strawberries or raspberries and one large punnet of blueberries per week and the rest of the fruit is cheaper. We don't buy blackberries, just pick them in season.

Like a few people have said, look at getting your 5 a day from cucumber / carrots / tomatoes etc, and then 2 pieces of fruit.

RE: strawberries, they’ll be in season soon and these are the most important fruit to buy organic. If you can’t afford, it’s honestly best to skip all together and go for thicker skinned fruit.

Are they not the most expensive apples though?

My kids will have a fruit juice daily which count. A banana with/after breakfast, apple for a snack, cucumber and satsuma with lunch, broccoli and carrots for dinner, that’s 7 without going much over £3 for 3 kids!

Autistic child with ARFID - strawberries and blueberries are the only fruit he eats… its expensive.

So don't buy pink lady apples.......there are plenty of others, grown in the UK, much cheaper.

Cheaper fruit and pile up the vegetables.

Consider growing some fruit/veg. Strawberries are fairly easy and don't need much space. My FIL grows blueberries too because the kids love them. We have raspberries and blackberries growing up our fence and we also grow runner beans and tomatoes (which are really easy and super tasty fresh from the garden).

Or frozen veg - peas, sweetcorn, carrots, children tend to like those.

I think with cheap fruit, presentation can go a long way.

Apples,.bananas, pears, oranges melon and grapes can be affordable. Vegetables are even cheaper, I eat celery, carrots, sweetcorn and cabbage most days.

I often wonder how others on low budgets manage with some prices. Supermarkets have a lot to answer for.

I am not on a tight budget but i always look for the value in items and hate waste and try to mix things up to give different things.

Each week as standard I buy bananas, apples- usually easy to get some on offer and my kids like them thinly sliced to eat with cereal or on the side with toast but don’t like them whole. Also, clementines and Tesco does a box for 1.95 I think and usually about 12 in the box, they taste good, nice and sweet unlike some bland cheaper varieties.

i buy one punnet of strawberries and slice them usually and they last a few days, sliced in lunchboxes. If you don’t already, washing strawberries in a bowl of water with teaspoon bicarbonate of soda and leaving a few minutes then rinsing, drying and placing in a glass tub in fridge makes them last much longer. Really works. Buy Grapes sometimes if on offer. I buy tinned value peaches and usually rinse the syrup off and have with Greek style yoghurt, they’re under 40p a tin so I think great value.

I do sometimes by blueberries and frozen mango is great to combine and add to a handful of porridge oats with Greek yoghurt and milk and blitz for a really lovely smoothie, the frozen mango lasts a good while.

For veggies, my kids eat most things and I realise that makes things easier but I buy regularly cucumber, peppers, carrots, celery, tomatoes, spinach, broccoli, cabbage (very finely sliced they seem to like ok), turnip with carrot mashed and butter they eat fine, mushrooms, not hugely expensive.

We make tomato sauces for pasta and pizza bases and freeze in small portions, made using decent quality tinned tomatoes, red onion, diced pepper, spinach, garlic, smatter of herbs, any veg really, sometimes celery, all blitzed. Takes time but I do loads at once and lasts about a month. You can pick up reduced veg on offer and use quickly and good savings there too. That’s great for getting veg in.

I think you can still give strawberries and blueberries, just not every day.

I'm going to try tinned pear. Also, tinned pineapples in juice are good.

As others have said, they don’t need five portions of fruit. Veg is important.

A £2 bag of frozen mango is 6 portions. Pop it in a plastic tub and it's defrosted by snack time.

4 portions from a punnet of grapes.

6 apples is 6 portions for a couple of quid even if you buy 'better' ones.

A punnet of berries is £2 and 2 portions max.

At the end of the summer, go blackberrying. We froze about 10kg.

There’s fruit and there’s treat fruit in our house.

Well I like Chateau de Chassilier but don’t spend £35 a week on it.

Really? The only vegetable in harvesting at the moment is asparagus. But maybe you have a microclimate in London.

I didn't know about this from uber eats.

Ds is autistic with arfid and will also only eat things like strawberries which for most of the year have to be imported as they are very seasonally grown in England.

We spend a bomb on them so I'll check this out.

We buy one punnet of both strawberries and blueberries per week, along with other fruit. The DC aren’t allowed to help themselves to the berries as I’ve seen other DC do; they can only help themselves to things like apples, bananas, oranges. With the strawberries and blueberries I make up a fruit salad for them, with a few chopped up strawberries each and a handful of blueberries, plus grapes or whatever. It means the punnets last a good few days.

I often wonder how others on low budgets manage with some prices. Supermarkets have a lot to answer for

Are you kidding? Supermarkets discount fruit and veg to obscenely low prices. This week in Aldi: 6 red apples, 59p. 6 organic bananas 99p, kilo carrots, 49p, 5 pears 69p, asparagus 89p...

Other supermarkets do similar very low prices. It's not hard to get plenty of fruit and veg at a low cost.