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!

Thanks @WomenInSTEM I thought that might be the case when I posted. Looking back on photos from the last 5 years I'm only 2/3 weeks ahead of average but I suppose those few weeks would nearly span May.

I chop up and apple and add a couple of strawberries to it for a fruit snack. We also do carrot and cucumber sticks as a snack.

Supermarkets give some fruit free for kiddies.

Which supermarkets?

Don't know how old your kids are but with my young ones, I also find they will happily eat any amount of berries any time. They will happily eat cheaper fruit and veg too, but it does need more thinking about from me. As others have said there is plenty of cheap fruit and veg options - some basics like bananas and carrots and then whatever is currently on offer, or weekly super 6 or equivalent.

In terms of getting my kids to actually eat those cheaper options, my success with veg is to "start preparing a salad" before I start preparing any meal so I put out a couple of things on the table like a small bowl of tinned corn, and a small bowl of cucumber slices or sticks, caerot sticks, some sliced tomatoes and then carry on making lunch/dinner and whilst the kids see what is going on they quite enjoy "stealing" some of it (which often ends up as a lot of it!) whilst I am preparing the rest of the dinner. Probably helps that ours is quite open plan with an island that we prep on.

In terms of cheaper fruit, mine loved having "sharing fruit" as a snack where I get a pasta bowl and put in 3 or 4 piles of different chopped fruit, say apple slices, tinned peach slice chunks, easy peelers segments and whatever else is lying around. Get a fork each and we'd sit and share it, adults included although we would eat slow as it was for the kids but they liked that we joined in.

Snacks like bananas were good for taking to school as a snack for on the way home when they are generally hungry for anything to have on the way!

Tinned tomatoes in EVERYTHING (almost). Cheap and nourishing. Baked potato/sweet potato with skin on, and sour cream. Curried sweet potato soup with root ginger and cilantro. Make them a fruitbowl for pudding, 1 pear, 1 apple, small mandarin orange, a handful of grapes, 1 kiwi, cut up and served in a pretty bowl with a sprinkle of berries on top for colour. Apple cake for snacking - you can squeeze a lot of apple into a slice of cake. Or carrot cake or banana cake with walnuts and icing made with lemon juice...there's a lot of goodness in there. Stirfried veg with added spinach and capsicum for colour. Colcannon with lots of cabbage was always a favourite with mine. Focus on veg rather than fruit. My problem is that I have far too much fruit in my garden, and having made dozens of jars of jams and jellies, frozen tomatoes, figs and stewed apple,

Not in the uk , all our berries are imported at this time of year , but unless organic
most pesticides used on strawberries ( with the exception of grapes ) which carry a heavy load
check it out

I wouldn't count potatoes in the 5 a day, but something like jacket potato, baked beans and broccoli would probably count as 2.

Spinach can go in all sorts of things, and you can easily grow things like spinach beet and pak choi in a planter.

My local supermarket often has cheap veg in the late evening. I eat quite a lot of these and plan batch cooking around them. I buy things that keep well and that I can use a bit of it at a time.

Sainsbury's do three for the price of two on some frozen fruit (e.g. mixed berries, blueberries etc.). These are great in porridge, smoothies and natural yoghurt.

A pp mentioned adding more veg in meals (e.g. carrot, courgettes, celery, mushrooms, peppers etc) in a spag bol. This can help too.

Apples,bananas and pears are not too expensive. A big mango in season would be enough for two children . Watermelons are quite cost effective in Summer.

I buy the blueberries when they are reduced and put them in the freezer. They freeze well and are perfectly fine defrosted. I put them in yogurt. A fried of mine buys strawberries reduced. Not tried frozen/defrosted strawberries though!

It’s borderline inedible, particularly Aldi. I’ll buy anything there but fruit, unless it’s something like lemons.

I suspect your kid is like mine and just likes fruit that tends to be expensive.

My DD would live off steak, strawberries and raspberries if she could. It adds up quickly.

Even oranges she’ll go through a bag a day making juice if I let her. I’ve had to admit defeat and now I buy mostly bananas, pears and apples because our fruit spending was just unaffordable.

I'm not much of a fruit eater, but veg from Lidl and Aldi seems to last about the same as other supermarkets.
They are fresh produce so you can't really expect them to last.

Carrots, broccoli, cabbage etc are not expensive. Fruit and veg is generally cheapest when in season. And you can grow cherry tomatoes even if you don’t have a garden.

We buy a big watermelon (£3.50 and lasts ages), apples pears bananas plums tangerines and grapes. Berries as a treat.

Plus 5 a day isn’t just fruit. Cucumber and carrots are dirt cheap. Cherry tomatoes as snacks. And that’s not including any vegetables with meals which again can be cheaply done.

Getting your 5 a day is very cheap, but they might not be the 5 you want.

I thought the 5 a day had to be mostly veg.
There is a market where I live a couple of times a week. At the end of the day, the fruit guys are selling 4 punnets of strawberries and 2 of blueberries for a £1. They can't take it with them so they flog it off cheap.
Obviously this is no good if you don't have a market where you live, but that is how I get my soft fruits.
Strawberries keep really well in a glass jar in the fridge too.

I was thinking this earlier when I bought strawberries. I don't know what shocked me more, that they were reasonably priced (decent sized punnets in the 3 for £5 in Morrisons) or that they were British. They taste wonderful too, like peak summer strawberries.

All you Pink Lady lovers need to get yourselves to Farmfoods. They always have them, packs of 4 for £1.30.

I'm not in the UK. But not far, if we can grow them so can you 🤷‍♀️

Fresh Mondays on Ubereats/justeat or farmer markets.

I normally go to the farmer markets however for the past 3 weeks ive been using Uber Eats fresh Monday.

This week I spent £23.08 at Asda and I purchased…

Mixed peppers
Sweet potatoes
courgettes
broccoli
carrots
Purple stem broccoli
cauliflower
broccoli &cauliflower rice
swede and carrot mash
cabbage
spinach
leeks
baby tomatoes
cucumber
baby leaf lettuce
2 x packs of ready made caesar salad packs
red onions
white onions
12 bananas
apples
Oranges
pre packed mangos
2 x strawberries
1 pack blueberries
lemons
raspberries
pre-packed mixed berry
large water melon
honey melon.
pistachio nuts
mixed nuts
cashew nuts.

Unfortunately berries are very much a luxury fruit. You can get cheaper varieties in some
supermarkets but they’ve alway been expensive relative to other fruits and veg.

So whilst it’s increasingly unaffordable to eat these - and I do get that children really like them - it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to eat 5 a day.

Cheaper fruits are still available and there are things like tinned fruit that can be really cheap. Dd and I really like soups which can be a very cheap way to get lots of veg in. She and I are vegetarian and it’s definitely cheaper than eating meat.

I struggle with DS but that’s cos he’s fussy not specifically due to the COL. However luckily he likes carrots which are amongst the cheaper veg!

They do. Only one can be fruit and only one can be a juice.

5 a day isn’t even the real amount you should have though- it should be more than that.

I’m on disability benefits so can’t afford punnets of blueberries, strawberries etc
I stick to apples and bananas and cheaper vegetables in season.
i buy the frozen summer fruits to have with granola, Greek yogurt or I make mini cheesecake( basically crushed digestive in a ramekin, topped with Philadelphia and the fruit)
I also enjoy raw nuts( almonds and brazils) which are reasonably priced( Asda not Holland and Barrett!)

Do you have any outdoor space? Most berries are easy to grow. A friend gave me a single raspberry cane about 10 years ago and it has multiplied and the fruit keeps going all year starting late May even into late October. It means we don't need to buy any all summer. Fruit bushes are good though ours have a relatively short season. Some strawberries go on and on and you can get loads that are good in pots.