ShareThisCheap fruit and vegetables
With the rising prices of everything including food it can be difficult to try and stick to your weekly food budget. However with a bit of shopping around and keeping an eye out for offers you can still eat healthily on a budget and have your 5 a day.
First of all, it makes sense to try and buy seasonal produce as out of season produce will be priced up. Also opt for products on offer. Personally I prefer the half price offers rather than Buy One Get One Free (BOGOF) as I find if I have too much of one particular fruit or veg it won't all get used and will just end up going rotten. I'd rather open my fridge and have a variety of fruit and vegetables to chose from to make meals more interesting and avoid monotony.
Lots of supermarkets are trying to promote and encourage people to eat their 5 a day by having special weekly offers. For example Tesco have recently started selling various fruit and vegetables really cheap each week in their Fruit and Veg Price Pledge. My advice would be to grab it when you see it as the same offer might not be on the following week - I've been caught out before! Check out your local Aldi store for their Super 6 offers. Every month they sell selected packets, bags or items of fruit and vegetables at a promotional price, usually 59p or 69p. I have often bought a pineapple or punnet of grapes for 69p and a pack of 3 courgettes for 59p. This can be quite a big saving especially when I've seen grapes normally retail at £2.49 a punnet in Tesco!
Unlike Tesco and Aldi, Asda don't have regular weekly offers on fruit and vegetables but they do have various offers in store and are always reducing their prices through their Roll Back Price promotion. When I went shopping there a couple of weeks ago they were selling melons and punnets of plums for £1 and last week they were selling 2 punnets of blackberries, raspberries, cherries and strawberries for £3.
Some supermarkets don't actively have special weekly offers/promotions on fruit and vegetables but will do every now and then. For example at the time of writing Somerfield were selling bags of new potatoes, fresh pineapples, packets of salad, 8 packs of tomatoes and punnets of plums all for £1 each. It's worth keeping an eye on all the different offers and promotions supermarkets have. Many of them offer an email subscription service to their newsletters and special offers. This means you can carefully plan your shopping trips and save time because you know exactly what you're buying. If you're lucky enough to live near a Farmfoods, Kwiksave or Netto store it's worth keeping an eye on their offers too.
On a recent shopping trip to Morrisons I noticed that are doing Price Crunch offers where they sell various things including fruit and vegetables for 50p. Sainsburys also have half price offers on various fresh produce. Just to give you an idea, when I visited they were selling strawberries, cherries, blueberries and apricots all half price at £1.99 a punnet. They also had broad bean, peas, courgettes, sweetcorn and salad potatoes on half price offer at 99p a pack. Their best half price offer was on broccoli and bags small red onions and sweet onions at 49p each. Your our local Co-operative food store has also got half price offers on various fresh fruit and vegetables and are trying to encourage people to mix their colours to get the most goodness our of their 5 a day.
Another great place for cheap fruit and vegetables is your local market. They often sell selected fresh produce at £1 a bowl and if you visit the stalls after 3pm on a Saturday they'll be selling their stock cheap. For example my local market will sell 2 bowls for £1.50 towards the end of the day to try and get rid of their stock before packing up.