The rising cost of fruit and veg

MavisTheMaven

Edwardia wrote: »

A bunch of organic bananas in Lidl costs the same as a Pot Noodle in Tesco. 2 x 150g bags of Kettle Chips on offer costs £1 more more than 2kg organic Tesco spuds or 5 organic apples.

So really, how expensive are veg when compared to snacks ? It's the snacks people put in their trolley which cost the dosh. The chocolate, the crisps, the cereals..the carp basically.

True but I don't buy junk food (or meat) we are mostly veggie, so my shopping has still gone up quite a lot! I'm going to have to get growing - should save a bit in the summer months at least.

Edwardia

Poundland and 99p Stores stock seeds, spuds and grow your own stuff. If you Google growing potatoes in a bag there are lots of How to articles. Spuds are a good first crop on an allotment to break up soil.

kingfisherblue

In an earlier post, I mentioned foood cooperatives. I order and pay one week, and collect the next. Today I received:

Fruit bag £3:
4x apples
4x bananas
4x pears
4x tangerines
4x plums
1x small punnet green grapes

Veg bag £3:
bag of potatoes
large turnip
large head of broccoli
leek
3x large carrots
2x large sweet potatoes

If anyone lives in St. Helens, it's well worth giving it a try. The scheme is run by Helena Partnerships and there are several venues across St. Helens.

squeekymoo

we have a TFC (I think it stand for Turkish Food Store) near us - they are a small chain and they sell really good 'wonky' veg such as crooked cuecumbers.
I sometimes buy a box of vine tomatoes or a bag of onions and split them with my sister.
Also the bread is wonderful and they tell me the meat is reasonable (I'm veggie so don't buy it myself).

gailey_2

dont know if any help but got

7.5kg maris piper for £3 in farmfoods yesterday.
bag onions 39p.

last week apparently sainsburys had lots things for £1.

marginally prefer lildls veg to aldis.

market stalls can be cheaper.

at nearby carboot theres veg man think must be selling off remaining stick before he buys new batches as very cheap.

my kids loving value peaches right now

we eat more frozen veg than fresh,

hopefully eatehr better this year and ca go foraging again.

MerlinMags

Are there any tinned fruit or veg which retain as much goodness as the fresh stuff? I am assuming tinned is always cheaper, but I worry the good bits have been killed off!

Edwardia

MerlinMags wrote: »

Are there any tinned fruit or veg which retain as much goodness as the fresh stuff? I am assuming tinned is always cheaper, but I worry the good bits have been killed off!

Excellent question :T

In USA, canners are allowed to add extra sugar to the fruit juice and still claim 'canned in natural juice' but don't know about here. It may be natural juice but it won't necessarily be the juice of that fruit, either.

Processed/mushy peas are full of additives - that's not a natural colour !

Hopefully maybe Fire Fox has an uptodate edition of Composition of Foods or something similar which will have a nutritional breakdown. I have a copy but it's years old and I don't think it would be that useful.

kayannie

I find that fruit and veg in the Co-op are a very good quality, but too expensive for me to afford. However, nearly every day they have price reductions on fruit and veg, as well as bread and other items. I tend to go in at about mid-day when stuff is being marked down. Today I got a savoy cabbage 43p, broccoli 52p,cherry tomatoes 50p, and cauliflower 55p. As a bonus, they currently have an offer of 4 items of fruit and veg for the price of 3 with the cheapest item free. This still applies to the reduced items, so I had the cabbage for free and the whole lot cost me £1.57. The Co-op quality is brilliant and the veg I bought today will still be fresh in several days time.

tomtombeanie

camelot1001 wrote: »

Have to say that I shopped at Aldi and Lidl for ages but have been going back to Asda lately, their fruit and veg seems to last longer and has been cheaper too. We don't have a greengrocer or market here and Aldi and Lidl seem to sell their fruit and veg in pre-packs so there's usually more than I need, Supermarkets mean you can just have what you need.

i agree. aldi is still a great place to shop for cupboard stuff & meats/cheese/milk etc, but their fruit and veg has been a lot more expensive than asda recently. as always, you need to know what is a good deal before you set out - i look at asda online as i am writing my lkist for aldi, jot down the price of things, then get the items from which ever cheaper that week. i live right by an asda and aldi is only 2 miles away, so i know i am lucky - this won't work for everyone...

craigsville_2

Source local ethnic supermarkets, I use a local Pakistani supermarket (Pakmart) and a Chinese supermarket, they have the usual supermarket stuff plus loads of exciting stuff I've never seen before and all dirt cheap. Other advantage is you can buy the "expensive" foods of the world ingredients cheap too eg. Big bag of spice for a pound instead of £1.50 for a little jar. It also inspires you to try cooking great ethnic food instead of an Indian or chinese takeaway.