Cheapest Way to Five a Day.

artybear

I think this a problem many many people worry about. I think the government lead us to believe that all the nutrients we need to function as healthy humans are gained from fruit and veg and so we think they should take a large proportion of our shopping budget. When in fact it is vital we get essential nutrients from other food sources, fats for instance.

I didnt know this until recently and it has certainly started me questioning what is a 'healthy' diet.

shandyclover

Do you have any friends who are also MSE and like alot of fruit and veg?

I live in Ireland now, but when I lived in UK hubby would go to the whole sale market every 10 -12 days and buy a box of apples, bannanas, oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers as well as a selection of seasonal veg very cheaply. This we would split with another big family. We had a basement pantry at the time so storage wasn't a problem and everything stayed fresh. Was well worth the savings for us as our kids are big fruit and veg eaters.

valk_scot

I grow a lot of my own fruit and veg so I have trouble visualising what £25 worth of Lidl veg looks like tbh. But I have to ask how many people is that meant to feed? If you're a 2+2 family that's only £6.25 per week each after all. Is that so very bad? I'd rather cut back on less nutritious foods, like biscuits and crisps.

I'm not totally self sufficient in fruit and veg though so I do buy some, especially in the winter and early spring.. I do buy a lot of frozen and tinned ...frozen peas, french beans and sweetcorn are almost as good as fresh, especially imported "fresh" and a lot cheaper too. Tinned sweetcorn. Tinned and frozen fruit is cheaper £ for £ and very convenient. Dried fruit and some dried veg (mushrooms, for example) are useful for cooking. So there's plenty of alternatives to greengrocer fresh.

I don't buy much out of season or imported fresh fruit and veg as they're more expensive and don't taste as good anyway. Half of it has been in store or flown thousands of miles to get here and can hardly be described as fresh anyway, not in my opinion. I'll make an exception for bananas, avocados and pineapples though! I try not to buy the big, perfectly shaped "Finest" type however. The smaller and less perfectly formed items are cheaper. And usually I find my local greengrocer is a LOT cheaper than even Lidl...and he sources a lot of produce locally as well, which is a bonus.

Pitlanepiglet

We live fairly rurally so shop once a month or every six weeks. The majority of our veg is therefore frozen, I find it really good value, with a big freezer you can keep a variety of veg and it doesn't go manky if you forget about it for a few days!

We also buy sacks of potatoes over the winter and add some seasonal fruit and veg from the farm shop or from Costco depending where I'm visiting. This winter I'm also going to try a sack of horse carrots if they are cheap!

I tend to buy most of our fruit from the supermarket near to work but we stick with whatever apples are cheap, bananas, grapes (in season) and oranges/satsumas, plus we have tins of peaches, pears and grapefruit. I don't buy exotic (and expensive! fruit). As we've got more freezer space this year I'll buy a couple of bags of frozen fruit from Costco as well.

I also freeze or bottle the apples from the tree so we eat a lot of stewed apple/apple cake/apple crumble over the winter! I'm hoping to buy a dehydrator this winter so next year I hope to be able to store more in the way of fruit/veg when it's cheap.

Pink.

Hi strawberrypud,

Some things I do to try to cut the price is to buy fruit and veg when it's in season, visit markets/supermarkets at price reduction time and I grow a fair bit myself which although not free is much cheaper than shops bought if it's grown from seed. Also don't forget that tinned (value?) fruit and frozen veg can sometimes be cheaper than fresh and still count towards your five a day.

We have an existing thread on how to get your five portions a day with lots of advice that should help:

Cheapest Way to Five a Day.

I'll add your thread to that one later to keep the suggestions together.

Pink

jellycattwo

Buying a sack of spuds save £'s. The last one I got was £6 and had pots of all sizes but most big jacket size and have been cooked everyway possible! And they last much better than the little supermarket bags.

Mols

We used to spend a fortune on food and this week's bill for two was £17.75 at the farm shop!

It took me ages to work out how reduce our spending because I had no idea how much things cost.

If I'm working late and have to go to a Supermarket for vegetables and fruit the bill will be almost double.

I also tried Farmers markets but found them more expensive than the farm shop we use now.

Do you have a farm shop near you that you could try? If so then check the prices of the vegetables online before you go so you know if you'll be spending less.

weezl74

weezl74 wrote: »

Hi I'm not sure if you mean a cheaper way to get your 5 a day, but this is the current cheapest way to get all your colours and your 5 a day, so this is how I usually do it, for example:

80g tomatoes from tinned tomatoes: 6.2p
80g onion from 5kg sack: 3.15p
80g carrot: 5.6p
20g raisins: (dried portions are smaller as more nutritionally dense) 2.6p
40g marrowfat peas: 3.2p

total per person per day 20.75p or £5.81 for a family of four for the week. (costings at asda using mysupermarket)

HTH

apologies for reposting, I have just spotted that by buying the carrots in the 1 kg polybags you can reduce this by a further 1.6p to 4p per carrot portion. £5.35 a week for a family of 4.

HTH

MrsE_2

strawberrypud wrote: »

I'd love to lower my grocery bills but we spend at least £25 per week on fruit and veg alone (mostly veg) and thats from lidl so we do eat a lot of veg!

Some people seem to manage to spend that amount on their entire weekly grocery bill and I'm sure those who do are eating a healthy diet. So without growing my own I'd love to know how to spend less on fruit and veg without eating less of it please.

Any advice?

Totally agree, we must spend easily £25 on fruit/veg/salad every week & there are only two of us:eek:
I don't really like frozen veg - except petite pois (which I love).
Tried buying a sack, but no point as things bought in bulk go off before we use them.
I went in Lidl the other day & was amazed at some of the prices of the fruit & veg, I thought some of them really good.
I get most of mine from Waitrose, it does cost a little more but it really does last longer than anyone elses, so I waste none.

I think they only way we could save would be to give over 30 ft or so of the garden to growing our own & while I love the idea as two full time workers (DH long hours) I don't want to spare the time it would take, especially this time of year when its dark going to work & dark coming home.

Pitlanepiglet

MrsE wrote: »

I don't really like frozen veg - except petite pois (which I love).

Can I ask what you don't like about frozen veg? The whole idea of it or the taste?