In lidl...brocilli, cucumber and tomatoes are99p,

[malificent7]

That is an increase from.around 70p a few weeks ago. In lidl. Very concerning. Anyone else noticed?

I just heard Alan Titchmarsh on Times radio speaking in a related issue about Avocados and how they simply are not a sustainable food, particularily in the quantity we are now eating them.

They require rainforest deforestation, long distance haulage and huge amounts of water in a place that has water pressures.

They should be a hugely expensive luxury if we were made to pay for the real cost of them - but we don't.

If Lidl was a true budget shop that sold only what was seasonally available in the UK you would be on a diet at this time of year of cauliflower, kale, leeks, purple sprouting broccoli, salsify, spinach, spring onions, swede.

It would be very healthy, lots of greens, but maybe not what we're used to.

I've tried growing vegetables in the past few years and it's really quite costly and labour intensive, especially dealing with the many pests that flourished in the wet weather.

It made me appreciate quite how good we have it in our food variety and pricing.

I do appreciate the issue with housing costs - but that is something that has been created and I'm not sure is going to slow down soon.

Not the organic ones.

And anyway that’s true of fruit all year round.

Strawberries I won't touch unless they're British ones, not worth the money
Never feels like they're fully ripe after eating a local grown one with it spilling juice everywhere

This thread (well at least the first page) has surprised me.

Telling someone who already lives on a very strict budget that we're lucky "food is so cheap in the UK" is not helpful at all.

It may only be a few pence here and there but it's across all supermarkets and across all food items. Everything is creeping up in price and some people just cannot absorb these extra costs easily.

I was in Spain last week - the prices of the fruit and veg in the supermarket there were more than in the UK!!!

Just checket my receipt -
cucumber 1 euro 39 each (more expensive than uk)
tomatoes 2 euro 39 kilo (cheaper - local product)
brocolli 2 euro 50 kilo

12 large free range eggs were 3 euro 88 - I pay £2.79 in Aldi here.

Are wages higher in those countries?

@keyboardtypo
In the 1980s the UK spent 25% of their take home money on food, it's now less than 10%.
Our country have devalued - literally and figuratively - whole food in our priorities over the last 40 years. Buying UPF has also exponentially grown.

It's only now, when we're in an obesity crisis, that some people are starting to prioritise their diets and buying nutritionally high value foods.

And then of course there's Brexit, which means anything we buy from the continent will be more expensive

Yes, I agree 100%!

I'm sceptical about food poverty generally.

If people were widely in food poverty, they would not be buying chocolate biscuits, crisps or carbonated drinks. None of those are nutritionally good, needed, or cheap. Perfectly good alternatives exist at a fraction of the price. No-one needs chocolate biscuits or crisps. Tapwater is potable across the UK.

Cucumber is not essential. Who makes salads in Winter anyway!

To get fruit in the off season I buy frozen raspberries and blueberries. No waste, no going off . That'll do me over the gap season. I suppose I'll now be told off for doing something wrong for the environment or something, but hey ho.

I also use frozen broccoli and cauli which I steam cook. Fine for me in the hungry season.

No chopping, peeling or washing either. The price is consistent too.

People are also very squeemish about eating true local cheap food.

I shop at supermarkets but I will buy a chicken and use it for a couple of meals, and then boil up the bones and use the bits of chicken for soup. As a society, we have literally lost sight of how tasty and nutritious simple beans and lentils, and root vegetables (swede, carrot, parsnip and a bit of celery are all you need) can be.

No-one really wants to eat turnips, carrots and bacon all winter. But this is what our native food would be. Not many people really like eating apples, pears or plums. I have trees full of apples and plums in autumn and I can't give them away. There are fruit trees and brambles on the heath near us and the fruit rots on them every year. We get a glut of raspberries for a few weeks which are amazing and then they are gone, and we look forward to them the following year. People I know are astounded that we grow raspberries! We stuck a few canes in a few years ago and they have done well. People treat eating rhubarb like it is some sort of weird minority sport - my neighbour gives me what she has spare and it is delicious.

I think what we mean often with food poverty is that we cannot eat our choice of food, in the volumes that we want to, at the times of year and times of day we want to, with as little effort as we would like. Same for housing - we can't all afford to live in the type and condition of property that we would like to, in the location we prefer.

It has been forever thus.

Well you shouldn't be buying salad veg at this time of year - other than rocket which grows pretty well all year round it is such a weed. Root veg should be cheaper and you can always substitute grated carrot for cucumber. Frozen veg is cheap too.

Interesting viewpoint, especially when you also throw into the equation the explosion in food delivery apps such as Just Eat, Uber eats etc. Also the sheer number of takeaway outlets, coffee shops etc in comparison to just a decade ago. All these businesses are not just surviving but thriving.

I have 5 children, we eat organic and no UPFs, meat from butcher etc and we don't even pay that much 🤣🤣 You're either lying or very bad at shopping

Useful site with UK seasonal veg:-
hubbub.org.uk/how-to-eat-seasonally-in-the-uk-a-month-by-month-guide

For March: cauliflower, kale, leeks, purple sprouting broccoli, rhubarb, salsify, spinach, spring onions, swede, wild nettles, wild garlic

@MissMarplesNiece

Wages in Spain are quite a bit lower than the UK

Cucumbers are 89p in morrisons today. I never go to Lidl but I say they are normally 90p or 80p in Aldi and Tesco and have been for months.

Have we? I’ve been making carrot, swede and horseradish soup all winter, also celeriac and apple and vichyssoise. Love roast parsnips so have them most weeks. Equally I don’t know anyone who doesn’t eat apples and pears, over the winter I cook them add spices to make them warming.

I disagree that it's better. I shop regularly in both places and I think the fuss made over the quality of French fruit and veg is often a case of Emperor's New Clothes syndrome. Obviously you see fewer rock hard anaemic tomatoes because the French just wouldn't buy them. I don't understand why the Brits do frankly, but some people obviously do. But in general I think people waffle on about how much better the produce is in France to justify the eye-watering cost compared to the UK. Apart from things we cannot compete on due to a very different climate, like beautiful tomatoes, melons and apricots in the height of summer, I find everything else no better, no worse, but much more expensive.

I saw some old, huge, gnarly carrots in France recently that didn't look fit for anything except feeding to horses and they were 2.50 euros a kilo in Carrefour. Absolutely insane. A winter root veg, so no arguments about unseasonality and polytunnels to be made. Cucumbers obviously grown in polytunnels in Morocco or Spain are more expensive in France right now compared to the UK. Even basic onions and potatoes are always so expensive in France regardless of the time of year.

Cauliflowers regularly cost over 4 euros and even when they are at their best and most readily available they rarely cost less than 2.50 in a supermarket. And they are often imported from the Netherlands anyway, the same as the ones in the UK, so how our supermarkets can sell the same cauli when we are OUT of the EU for half the price that the French supermarkets sell them when they are IN it is anyone's guess.

And before you come at me with 'buy locally in the market' I have done and that's not any cheaper or better either. In fact it seems to be a reason to charge a premium, with 'it's local and it's seasonal therefore it's the best' being a justifcation for the expense. Especially in the summer when the markets are full of tourists in my area.

I have a fantastic fruit and veg market where I live in the UK and the quality rivals anything in France. Lots of the warmer climate stuff is imported obviously, but the prices are much cheaper than my French market. We often like to blame Brexit to explain the rise on the COL but actually it's the same everywhere and has been since Covid and Ukraine. Food banks are alive and well in France too. Fresh produce really is a luxury here, hence why there is a such a wide range of tinned and jarred vegetable and legumes.

But Lidl do £1.50 Too Good to Waste boxes. The one I bought yesterday contained potatoes, a cauliflower, peppers, tomatoes, spring onions, bananas and tangerines. The contents vary from day to day. They really help to keep the food bill low.

I didn't say in the UK, we were in Germany and lived behind Aldi, in fact their car park was useful when we had visitors! Lidl wasn't around then though.

We have those boxes in Ireland and they cost €3! robbery

But still fantastic value and between them, and the weekly super six offering, and their good frozen section, it's possible to avoid scurvy. As with everything it helps to be a competent and adaptable cook.

@ExcessiveNumberOfNinjas that was a long and rather defensive post but I disagree completely as that is not my experience of living between UK and France. Also I didn’t mention Brexit but as you have, it has undoubtably made groceries more expensive in the UK and was a act of economic self harm. Soon I won’t have to live with it as I will reside permanently en France. Anyway have a good day.

Depending on where you were in Germany it might not have been the same shop. Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud are different companies,

Wages are a lot lower in Spain than the UK.

whoever said their Mercadona shop is cheaper in Spain than their one in the UK - Mercadona is where food goes to die! Shopped there once - never again!