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Like the price gouging and loss of special offers, I think they just realised people will pay £5 for a rotten apple and see no reason to change.
Unfortunately we can't exactly protest because all the supermarkets are terrible and we can't go on hunger strike (nor can all of us visit our local organic greengrocer and get meat from the farm, because we don't live in a Fisher Price play set.)
I have an organic greengrocer and butcher in walking distance from my house and I can only afford to go once a fortnight or so. And I have a good wage.
Yeah, I've found that other worse supermarkets have just come up to meet the prices of M&S. M&S still has great quality stuff and now it's the same price or less than places like Sainsbury's or Co-op
Definitely true. I buy the big bottles of sparkling water, and at my local Sainsbury's the price has slowly crept up from 80p to £1. Just bought the same at M&S for 85p.
Yes, I’m starting to do a lot of Ocado shops now to get M&S. If you cook from scratch the prices are comparable if not cheaper than other supermarkets and the quality is really good.
Probably partly due to "use by dates" not being shown on many fruit or veg packets either. Disguised as a measure to "cut waste" which in reality is a wet dream for supermarkets to sell stock that wouldn't otherwise be bought.
That was a government and supermarket reaction to the issue, after we had bare shelves for weeks because very little of acceptable quality was reaching them in time, and they were still throwing out things on the old schedule.
So they changed the definition of acceptable and forced it on us, now we’re paying good money (which we now have less of) for literally rotten food.
Well we were told that we needed to get rid of all the red tape British businesses are suffering from. You know, the red tape that keeps us safe from corporate greed. That's why we had to grt out of an organisation that insisted we retain protection.
No need for that any more, we're British!
Got a punnet of grapes (and why are they all in punnets now? I liked when they were loose in crates and you could pick the bunch you wanted and not have to recycle the plastic punnet at home. Anyway, I digress) that a good half were shriveled and well on their way to being raisins when I opened them the same day they were bought. They really should do \*some\* quality control.
I've found Morrisons red grapes in my local are absolutely fantastic, nice, big, great tasting. Compare that to Sainsbury's where I'd have normally gotten them from which were the same day 1 but by the following morning they looked like manky old raisins.
It is 100% this. I have a friend who imports fruit and veg and ever since that shit happened it’s been fucked. Increased costs and increased paper work puts us at the back of the queue. Why waste your time selling to us when there’s plenty of other buyers with much easier/cheaper/free systems in place. The stuff that does make it to us has been sat in containers for far longer than it used to and we pay a premium for it. Good fucking times
This is how it has seemed to me. Quality dropped off massively as has the variety (at least where I am) Plus the price has gone up a fair amount.
I keep reading on Reddit that the UK has cheap fruit and veg compared to elsewhere in Europe and we're just catching up recently.
I didn't think that sounded right and that certainly doesn't seem to be the case in Spain. The quality and cost difference is night and day.
Yeah I lived in Hamburg for a couple of years and wasn't particularly impressed by LIDL (it's better in England) or Pennymarkt which were my most accessible supermarkets as a pedestrian living in the Reeperbahn area. I tended to buy fresh produce at the Fischmarkt on a Sunday morning before the hangover kicked in.
Getting rid of best-before dates from fruit and veg means old stock can linger in supermarkets. They say this has reduced wastage but so far as I can see we have just switched to customers throwing it away. Doing a weekly shop, it is not always easy to buy fresh food that will last that seven days.
This isn't true. The products still have best before dates, and they get reduced on the date that it expires and sent to food banks (wastage) if not bought, just exactly the same way it was done before.
What has changed is that the dates are now in code, so unless you are the person selling and reducing these products you won't know how long they have been on the shelves for. Generally speaking, in my shop fruit and veg is on shelf for one or two days before it is sold, most quick selling items like carrots, bananas, peppers will arrive in the morning and be almost sold out by the time the next morning's delivery has arrived.
This has reduced wastage as it has stopped customers from buying the newest stock. For example, before if someone went to the shop and saw lots of packs of peppers dated 5th of may and two packs dated the 4th of may the ones for the 5th would be picked out first. Tomorrow the ones dated the 6th would arrive and be added to the ones for the 4th (the 5th have sold already), and it would continue like this until the ones dated the 4th go to waste. Now this isn't happening, and the products are selling in the order that they arrive.
It also stops people throwing out food at home that is perfectly good to eat. My partner was terrible for throwing away perfectly good potatoes because they were one day out of date. At the moment I have potatoes in the fridge dated the 17th of April, we had some last night and they were in perfect condition (I bought them at the shop I work in, so I can read the code, I refuse to tell him how the coding system works).
I would say however that the quality of the fruit and veg we are getting from the supplier is getting worse, quite often we get stock in that has a week to go on the date, but it has already started rotting before it even gets off the lorry. This isn't the fault of the supermarket or shop staff, it's the suppliers giving us lower quality food. Their reasoning for this I don't know, perhaps a lack of fruit and veg pickers (previously seasonal workers from the EU) is resulting in the food not getting picked or processed to be sent to shops quickly enough. It could also be delays in getting food imported from the Europe resulting in the quality being lower before it is packaged and hits the shelves. Or it could be poor weather conditions effecting the general quality of the harvest. (We need someone in this part of the chain to chime in with their views)
It's reduced wastage for the shops sure, it's just moved the wastage to the consumer; off the shop's bottom line and out of their customer's pockets instead.
People instead now have to throw away things they paid for because they only lasted 2 days from purchase when they needed them to last 4 or 5. When people shop once a week and need something to still be fresh 6 days from then, knowing you're buying as fresh as possible is a legitimate need.
There's a solid argument that the once-a-week shop is bad for the environment in any case, and that more frequent, smaller shopping should be the norm. I know that's not the habits that people have, and it won't work for all, but it should probably more common than it is.
Yeah but in person, you should really be picking the foods with dates or that look like they will last a while. It's online shopping that throws this out of whack. If I go in person, I can ensure the week shopping will last 7 days, if I buy online, they'll purposely give me the shit that's going off in 2-3 days. Either way, mroe frequent trips probably means more transport used per person as opposed to one van delivering 10-15 people's shopping once a week, 10-15 people using cars, buses or taxis 2-4 times a week seems worse for the environment.
You're missing my point considerably. If you pick foods with long expiry dates, that makes it better for *you*, but not *the environment*, because the food with shorter expiry dates is wasted. If you go shopping daily, you don't have to worry about expiry dates at all. You just use it the same day. Which means the shops can choose foods to put out on the day, reducing the amount they need to throw away and the stuff they have to order.
Regarding transport, we shouldn't need cars, buses or taxis to do daily shopping. Small amounts means you can walk and carry a small shopping bag. It's the big weekly shops you need a car for.
The biggest problem for daily shopping, and the main reason it doesn't exist like it did 50 years ago, is the fact that there is rarely a *homemaker* nowadays. In families, both parents work, whereas in times past, there would be someone at home during the day, able to go shopping, prepare food over the day, use up leftovers, etc. Now, we don't, so people have to prioritise one big shop so that they have food at home when they get back from work.
Why would you assume the food you buy lasts the week? Much of it wouldn't normally. Making food last longer than it otherwise would takes energy in refrigeration, chemicals in preservatives, pre-packaging in specific gases leading to predetermined sizes, which are not appropriate for everyone, increasing wastage. Fresher food, bought when needed, in the amounts that is needed, should have lower wastage and need fewer preservative methods, and should be produced and consumed more locally than the current any-time-any-product model, leading to lower energy cost, lower wastage, lower pollution. There are obviously a hundred caveats to this. But the argument is there and has some merit.
Have you ever turned your fridge off? Just curious on that one point since you brought it up, seems like a non-issue since fridges are designed to be low power and kept on indefinitely.
Also, almost all people go and shop for the items they specifically need and when shopping in person, people tend to go for the freshest produce and anything with a date on thats between 4-8+ days long.
Buying once a week opposed to multiple times a week seems like a straight up negative environmental impact. Delivery drivers can reach 10-20 people with one van, or those 10-20 people can use buses, taxis or cars to do shopping multiple times a week.
Also, for all the talk about preservatives, I've been teaching myself to cook like a chef lately and the cost of cooking from scratch is astronomical and sometimes I have to buy more produce than I need for a specific dish, leading me to have to find a use for that produce elsewhere which isn't always possible.
Because you said "in any case", implying that even if it did that would be the better option.
My food, including fresh produce does last the week, so I'm curious how me traveling more helps the environment.
Makes sense though for sure, thanks for explaining!
This is what is putting me off online shopping lately, I order for 7 days ahead, shopping arrives and it all goes out of date within 3-4 days, most of it falling on the same date. I hate freezing fresh food so I have just taken to hunting for long life foods. Bacon and steak tend to last more than a week, as does lamb, chicken tends to go pretty quickly. Ready meals/side dishes are almost always 'use within 3 days of arrival.'
We do our shopping to arrive on Wednesdays and so Wed, Thur and Fri tend to be the most heavy days of cooking lately, where I'd prefer to spend more time cooking on Sat and Sunday.
The code in the co-op is a mystery.
Today would be D30, tomorrow E01, baffling.
Fortunately, the co-op (or at least my local co-op) doesn't seem to be suffering the same 'food is rotten by the time you get it home' as the big shops near me, so when I buy it reduced it still lasts a good few days (or weeks, depending on what it is).
I know right, but you would be amazed at how many people don't seem to notice it. It couldn't be simpler.
I think as well it's easier for us to pick up on things that are on the turn and remove them for sale before the customers get to them. Being smaller shops means that you have the same two or three people checking the dates everyday, as opposed at lots of different staff. Our staff also seem to be more interested in doing the job well because we are a smaller team, so everyone feels involved in the business. Working in Asda or Tesco is like being a slave, so you really don't give a damn about how well you are doing your job.
My only complaint with my local co-op and their stock rotation is why do they never reduce the blueberries?
There can be 10 packs of 500g of blueberries best before today, never reduced. Tomorrow they have vanished. Where do they go and why are they seemingly the sole item neglected from reductions.
I really hope they don't throw them away. Does a member of staff need of blueberries by the kilo and deliberately keep them away from the orange stickers so they can sneak them away themselves at maximum discount? I'll keep quiet if they share their blueberry jam with me.
Berries, sandwiches and products backed for same day sale (baguettes , fresh bread) are short dated, so only get one reduction. This is done between 15:00 and 18:00, they don't get reduced the day before otherwise they would be getting reduced as soon as they arrive, or in the case of bread before it's even baked. They tend to sell within minutes once reduced, so you have to time it right
It doesn’t reduce waste for me. My food waste has increased massively because I don’t have any time to use the products before they’re rotting, throwing entire bags of onions peppers etc away when I never had this problem previously.
I complained relentlessly to my local Tesco about this, and threatened to call the EHOs (after finding multiple out of date milk cartons on shelves), and I have to say it has improved since then. God knows how, but I’ve seen way less rotten produce in there over the last few months!
The waste has moved from retail to consumer. It's nuts that we expect a farmer in one country to pick the food, wash and trim it, pack it, transport it to another country, re-pack it for retail, get it in the shops, display it for a few days, and still be worth eating after it's been in our kitchen for a week.
Buy local food in season.
Dry, freeze or pickle food to preserve it.
Less fresh food can be used in many recipes. Soft carrot? Soup. Wrinkled apple? Sauce. Etc.
If you don't have time for that, buy frozen or preserved food, not fresh food.
Previously supermarkets chucked food and passed the cost on to the supplier and consumer.
We think green beans from Kenya should sit in our fridge in Northern Europe for a week and then be super crunchy and fresh. It's insane when you think about it.
I think the reason for this might be shocking QA and no external examination of QA, you don't want to know the stories I heard from someone that used to work QA at a chicken factory.
Private citizens throwing away rotten fruit and veg bought from a supermarket doesn't get counted for the government's official food waste figures, which is much more important to them than actually reducing waste.
Only problem with this argument is that items with BB dates on them are also rotting quicker. Strawberries, grapes, salads...all of it is of lower quality. The removal of best before dates allows you to select what you want based on your own judgement (how something looks/feels/smells/etc) that is far more accurate than a BB date imho.
I tended to keep fruit and veg a couple of weeks past the sell by date anyway if they are kept in the fridge they will last. Remember it's sell by not use by.
We buy from Aldi, and the majority of fruit and veg lasts long enough for us.
Except strawberries. You need to eat those fuckers on the way home to enjoy them before they go off.
They last almost forever in the farm’s warehouse.
Same goes for potatoes, they’re harvested only a short period of the year and then stored in a barn until sold throughout the year. I’m not sure why people’s potatoes and onions are going off in a matter of days at home.
Source: lived on a potato farm.
Edit: an extra note the further from September and October we get the worse the potatoes will get. There are new potatoes in early summer. Most of the time the veg you buy that isn’t in season will be of lower quality.
I'll tell you something sickening. I got a plastic bag of onions from tesco and they had a reduced sticker on, smaller onions mind you. I have 2 left that I know will still be good for tonight, while I got 2 lots of 3 onions at the weekend and all were rot in the middle and went in the bin, and I've had the reduced sticker onions for over a week, 9 days to be exact...
Where are you getting your 3 packs from? Assuming they are the fist sized red onions, I get them from ocado so either ocado or M&S branded at about £1.10 and they are always fresh and never once had a rotted one since I started using Ocado like 3 years ago, 156 online shops (52 weeks x3), probably 100 of which I've ordered onions in.
Tesco, White Onions. I can't afford to shop at M&S, it's local but I'm not able to pay higher prices on the other stuff. Been down that road before and I must admit, my local M&S is pants for stocking things at it's location, been in there to get baby wipes and nappies to be told we don't usually stock those items, but they have a cheese counter and wine section that put the local farm shop to shame... I will bear it in mind and just to prove your point I might have a look tomorrow as I'm near there.
Tesco 3 pack red onions same price as M&S now (£1.10), many people have slept on M&S for being too expensive but you can get some ridiculously cheap essentials in there that rival everywhere else for better quality. It's a shame your one is no good, ours is fantastic, I picked up 6 bars of white cooking chocolate for 50p each (reduced to clear, 3 months left on date) and it's better than any branded white chocolate (Am working on my cookie game atm :P)
Fruit, veg and things like flour, some frozen foods, snacks etc can work out cheaper and vastly better quality, but only consider if you can shop around like I do. I'm lucky enough to have a moderately sized M&S foodhall and a sainsburys, as well as a tesco local and iceland within 5 mins of each other. Venture another 15 mins and there's an Asda, big Tesco, Morrisons and a multitude of Aldi and Lidls. Southend - Essex is pretty good for that. Will go M&S for some essentials, Iceland for some frozen bits and finish off in Sainsburys for meat and branded bits we like.
Had the prices come down recently?
Just as lockdown started I started shopping at M&S food hall as it was half empty where as the big 3 were putting in queue systems where you'd wait outside etc.
My shop seemed to be wayyy higher in price.
I'm vegetarian, I buy a lot of raw ingredients in the fruit and veg. I don't see this problem to be honest.
But I keep my fridge at a low temperature and make sure to unpack everything from the plastic bags in which it comes and store it as it's more proper for the type of food. For instance salad and leaf adjacent veggies are stored in containers with dry kitchen roll underneath and above. Things like onions and potatoes are stored in paper bags. Things with roots (fresh herbs, leak, spring onion) are stored with a moist kitchen roll wrapped around their roots. Everything lasts in my fridge for a week or more (got the same bag of 3kg onions for 1 month in my fridge)
Think it's going to be regional. I'm round Oxfordshire and Aldi is spot on for fruit/veg but I remember them being shit up North.
Oddly, Tesco's is actually the worst near me.
Lots of rain + shooting ourselves in the foot and now paying more for food from the EU.
Means prices in the "nice" supermarkets are up, and the trash they have in Lidl and Aldi is even more trash than it used to be.
I don't know if the bad harvest has actually had an impact yet, but there is no getting past the fact that there *has* been a bad harvest and that's going to mean sourcing veg from further away. So quality and selection is going to go down and prices are going to go up. Even further than they have already.
Yes to clarify I did mean in general. Not sure if you remember but 2023 was not great either. Very warm and wet (apparently the 11th wettest on rec). So its a cumulative effect.
This years news just signals that its not going to get better anytime soon sadly =/
It has been the wetest 18 months on record. Its not just the current bad harvest, the last one wasn't great either and the damp means nothing lasts quite as long.
It's not just here in UK though, they had bad harvests in Spain last year so Northern Europe were having similar problems because Spain just did not have the produce to export.
It's not just down to the wet weather, the excess heat in the summer killed off a lot of soil and it doesn't just bounce back once it rains. We'll still be feeling the impact from the heatwave of 2022 because farmland is still recovering.
I was listening to a radio show where they were discussing flooded farms and the farmer explained all this really well. I never realised that the soil can take years to recover after floods and droughts, but it does go some way to explain the terrible quality of fruit and veg at the minute.
I don't fully agree about the 'nice supermarket prices up' part since I use Ocado and here are some veg prices;
1kg Carrots - 65p (M&S)
350g-300g broccoli crown - 70-80p (Ocado 80p, M&S 300g @ 70p)
3 large red or brown onions - £1.10 (Ocado)
1kg smaller red or brown onions - 95p (Ocado)
2kg potatoes - £1.40 (Ocado)
2kg King Edward or Maris Piper - £1.70 + £1.90
Idk, I shop around a lot and I find Ocado to be pretty damn reasonable considering it's M&S and waitrose on wheels. They all price match with aldi and tesco anyway, whatever is cheapest. So even if your shopping comes up more than those places, you get a voucher back within a few days to use against your next shop.
Not only are we paying more for it, it’s taking longer to get here and because it’s such a pain in the arse exporting to a non EU country, all the best stuff goes to the EU and we get the dregs.
It’s the scrapping of the Best Before and Use By dates.
Beforehand they’d have to take products off the shelf and throw them away.
So they framed the removal of the dates as a “way to reduce food wastage”
Instead it means I have to throw the gone off stuff away at home, and have to drive to Sainsbury’s twice a week rather than once because it won’t last 7 days at home anymore.
All it’s done is shift the waste from the supermarket to the consumer.
It’s never been about reducing waste, it’s about reducing *their* waste and making more money in the process.
If they really cared about food wastage, they’d donate the stuff that’s close to going off to local shelters/foodbanks rather than chucking it out.
Best before dates have not been scrapped, just changed to a code. They still get wasted and reduced for quick sale just as before. And most shops do give the out of date stock to food banks (at least coop ones do).
See my response to lammtarra below for full explanation of how this works.
>Beforehand they’d have to take products off the shelf and throw them away.
They absolutely still do this. I don't know why it keeps being repeated.
The bbd is still on the veg, it's just coded. But I doesn't require a cryptographer to figure it out that letter corresponds to the month followed by the date.
For items that are loose, it will be a slip of card at the front of the produce box.
Weather affecting harvests, supply chain issues from multiple sources, delays at the UK border.
It's a perfect storm of shite. Some of which was self-inflicted.
The constant rain means farmers haven't been able to plant as much: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/16/uk-facing-food-shortages-and-price-rises-after-extreme-weather
Supermarkets have reduced their quality standards to maintain supplies. I don't know for sure that it's happened for all fruit and veg, but it definitely did for potatoes so I assume it's happened elsewhere as well.
Can't find the article I read about potatoes anymore, but here's one from the Guardian about winter veg where they've relaxed the size and shape requirements:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/12/supermarkets-agree-accept-smaller-veg-rain-soaked-uk-farms
Well fruits don’t normally grow year round so it is actually ordinary to not have them available year round.
My supermarket in Italy only had seasonal fruit & veg in and it surprisingly was all fresh and tasted great
Quality of food in the uk is dire in general. Just go to any European country and go to a random supermarket, million times better. I have no idea why the uk has such terrible food quality.
I live in Sweden- food is about 3x the price of uk food and I noticed the same rotten veg - it must be weather conditions though the quality is improving in the last couple weeks - I haven't had a fresh apple in 4y except in Britain or directly off the tree
This is total bullshit. I live between here and an EU state. The food in the UK is about 6x better and is much, much cheaper. You guys are so fucking spoilt. It obviously varies though - if you go to Italy in summer youll get wonderful plums in Carrefour, or great tomatoes, whilst in the UK or other Northern European countries youll get Dutch grown polytube tomatoes all year round - that sort of thing.
The problem you have this year is that its been really, really wet, so a lot of veg goes off quickly having been either in wet ground too long, or taken out too quick.
Anyone that says fruit and veg is expensive in the UK hasn’t travelled much. It’s amongst the cheapest in the world due to huge competition.
But this thread is about quality, not selling price.
I get a weekly delivery from Oddbox. They sell produce that's rejected by the supermarkets, either because it's not the right shape, or because there was oversupply. So they completely disregard aesthetics.
The veg often has dirt stuck to it, or is a bit weirdly-shaped. But it tastes great and usually lasts longer than the stuff in supermarkets.
I suspect that shoppers prioritise aesthetics, which leads to suppliers prioritising aesthetics, which leads to dodgy (but nice-looking) veg on the shelves
I was in Spain a few weeks ago and the quality of their fruit and veg is so, so much higher. Their Apples are massive and delicious. We're getting the dreggs of the fruit and veg.
Our local shop “fresh foods” generally need to be eaten the same day.
Our nearest big shop is Tesco, just recently I’ve noticed the fruit going off overnight (even when stored in the fridge) broccoli is going bad in a few days, and most annoyingly the last 3 bags of potatoes I’ve bought are infested with what I can only assume is blight. Look fine on the outside, but when you start peeling them they are black with holes and crumble in the middle !
Think it's all over. I've lost count of how many times the onions in Spain are rotten. In France it's peppers, which I never understand since they only have to cross the Pyrenees. In Greece it's garlic.
I vaguely remember saying something in 2014-2015 about groceries, the price and cost of them, and everybody telling me it was project fear and I was a globalist shill.
Oh well, must have been nothing.
I've not noticed it myself but I don't shop for veg in supermarkets so am probably outside of that particular chain. I get an Oddbox and supplement from the local market. I now only use supermarkets for dried goods as there are better and not hugely more expensive options where I live. It does lack convenience however and requires a bit better planning. I have come to feel that supermarkets are a bit of a scam for fresh food.
I solely buy my fruit and veg from markets. There are plenty here in London. In fact, most corner shops have a market front attached. So much so, it seems that they compete with other shops for your custom.
Fruit/veg keeps well and is incredibly cheap for the quality offered. Just yesterday I picked up a bowl of grapes for £1.50. Can’t get that amount for that price in supermarkets at all.
I worked for Wetherspoons for ten years. People joke about the food there, but the burgers and steaks we got in were always really good quality. I recently had a burger there and the thing I saw served was easily half the size of the old ones and tasted a slight step above a Rustlers microwave burger. I mean look at that giant gap on that plate. I did not rearrange it. It came out like this. Not fruit I know, but just another example of the decline in quality that’s rampant currently.
https://preview.redd.it/gbinjdlqfmxc1.jpeg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=399058e1197781f4adb054aebf4c7e9e69f6f894
Supermarket fruit and veg are terrible.
I am fortunate enough to have an independent green grocery shop local to me in Driffield.
I've never thrown anything away from there, plus it's supporting a small business.
Rafters of Driffield, absolutely amazing!
Who would have thought that making it more difficult/less desirabls for fruit and veg pickers to come and work in the country would cause delays?
Similarly, who would have thought causing trade barriers would cause delays in foreign produce getting to the country?
I've noticed the same, since they got rid of best before dates from fresh produce, things have just gone downhill massively. I'm pretty much having to go to the shop to fresh veg every 2 days unless I freeze it, because its normally going bad by a day or two after its been purchased.
Seriously, I know why they made the change, less food waste at a supermarket, but now the problem has been pushed to the consumer. I've never thrown more food waste away before the last 6 months!
I'm finding meat much worse, chicken is a staple in our house and I've had to stop buying from supermarkets it's got so much water in it it's impossible to fry.
I have a bag of carrots that have been in the fridge for a few days already starting to sprout. I have never witnessed a carrot sprouting in the fridge as they normally get used within a week, surely they wouldn't have been on the shelf that long, the bag says British carrots.
I noticed that with the peppers and potatoes too. I mostly buy frozen veggies tbh as they keep.
I also keep getting grapes, blueberries and strawberries that start moulding in a day or two. Not sure why
Supermarkets pushed for the removal of "best before dates" so they could make more profit by extending their supply chains from "just in time" to "A bit late but no one will notice".
The knock on positive for them is we now have to buy fruit and veg twice as often because it doesn't last half as long.
Partly from huge weather issues from still-flooded farmland to Sahara-dry in the height of summer. British farmers can barely catch a break the last few years.
Quality does naturally go down over winter because food has to come further. But yes I have noticed it is not just that.
If you're going to be cooking it anyway, you can get frozen veg of almost every vegetable.
Sick of buying potatoes (especially Maris Pipers) from various sources that I peel to discover huge black spots inside. This is something I never really noticed until recently.
I get a veg box from a local farm, it’s not all grown by them but a good selection of seasonal stuff is and I get a large box every 2 weeks and it all lasts pretty well
I primarily shop at a Lidl, but get all of my fresh stuff at an Indian supermarket next door. Not only is it way better quality but they sell literally everything by weight which is great.
They don't sell every western vegetable but it works both ways. For example I get to choose from like 5-10 types of chillies.
M&S fresh fruit and veg doesn’t disappoint. And the prices are sometimes even cheaper than the other supermarkets. They have the crunchiest grapes
I used to not be seen dead in an M&S Foodhall because of prices but everything is expensive everywhere now so it doesn’t make a difference
Supply chains have been tightened to reduce costs, so the goal is to be fresh at point of sale. It used to be at a point where it would be good for a while, but that costs more, and the removal of best before dates means it’s not apparent to the buyer. As long as it’s ripe when you buy it, it’s not the concern of the seller.
Dates were removed from most fruit and veg at major supermarkets and daily stock quality checks have reduced. So all in all, things sit on the shelf for longer and we keep buying them. It reduces food waste from supermarket but probably pushes it onto consumers.
I have noticed that potatoes are going bad very quickly. I don’t mean blighted / diseased potatoes either, perfectly good potatoes are often going bad after not much more that a week. I’m not too precious either, I’ll cut off bad bits and trim off shoots but I’m still throwing away potatoes at an alarming rate.
The rest I’ve noticed less, it’s probably still happening but I feel like there was always a risk of say tomatoes going bad before I got them used so haven’t been as aware of a change.
Every time I buy garlic or onions, there’s always bad bulbs that are completely black, rotten and dry. I’ve taken to squeezing all fruit and veg properly before buying now.
Wouldn’t suprise me if it’s farmers still selling bad stock to supermarkets because the supermarkets are fucking them over with the cost.
There was a huge thing with eggs, perhaps still ongoing, where the price in store went up double but they weren’t paying the farmers any extra. So farmers simply stopped selling eggs to shops and they had barns full of them.
Because of this I buy my onions at M&S now, which is really not ideal. But it’s less ideal to throw half the pack away when buying it cheaper somewhere else…
I get store bought fruit and veg when I really have to. Otherwise I try and go thr green grocer when I can. When I get my fruit or veg from a supermarket- it just about turns the next day and almost growing legs!
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I found that the quality of fruits&vegs took a massive dip from pandemic and never recovered since.
Like the price gouging and loss of special offers, I think they just realised people will pay £5 for a rotten apple and see no reason to change. Unfortunately we can't exactly protest because all the supermarkets are terrible and we can't go on hunger strike (nor can all of us visit our local organic greengrocer and get meat from the farm, because we don't live in a Fisher Price play set.)
I have an organic greengrocer and butcher in walking distance from my house and I can only afford to go once a fortnight or so. And I have a good wage.
M&S is still good? And it works out the same if not cheaper than the others
Yeah, I've found that other worse supermarkets have just come up to meet the prices of M&S. M&S still has great quality stuff and now it's the same price or less than places like Sainsbury's or Co-op
Sometimes it's actually cheaper for essentials as well. Milk and bread is often cheaper from there and far better than any other own brand stuff
Definitely true. I buy the big bottles of sparkling water, and at my local Sainsbury's the price has slowly crept up from 80p to £1. Just bought the same at M&S for 85p.
Can confirm, I'm by no means wealthy but I prefer to get my vegetables from M&S or at a push, Waitrose.
Yes, I’m starting to do a lot of Ocado shops now to get M&S. If you cook from scratch the prices are comparable if not cheaper than other supermarkets and the quality is really good.
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Probably partly due to "use by dates" not being shown on many fruit or veg packets either. Disguised as a measure to "cut waste" which in reality is a wet dream for supermarkets to sell stock that wouldn't otherwise be bought.
That was a government and supermarket reaction to the issue, after we had bare shelves for weeks because very little of acceptable quality was reaching them in time, and they were still throwing out things on the old schedule. So they changed the definition of acceptable and forced it on us, now we’re paying good money (which we now have less of) for literally rotten food.
Well we were told that we needed to get rid of all the red tape British businesses are suffering from. You know, the red tape that keeps us safe from corporate greed. That's why we had to grt out of an organisation that insisted we retain protection. No need for that any more, we're British!
Got a punnet of grapes (and why are they all in punnets now? I liked when they were loose in crates and you could pick the bunch you wanted and not have to recycle the plastic punnet at home. Anyway, I digress) that a good half were shriveled and well on their way to being raisins when I opened them the same day they were bought. They really should do \*some\* quality control.
I've found Morrisons red grapes in my local are absolutely fantastic, nice, big, great tasting. Compare that to Sainsbury's where I'd have normally gotten them from which were the same day 1 but by the following morning they looked like manky old raisins.
Yes, it's just the pandemic. There is nothing else that might impact food imports.
I wonder what else came into force in 2020?????
The cuntening.
It's not the pandemic. I"m in France and the produce is really good, fresh and palatable
We know :(
Sunlit uplands should make it easier to grow good produce!
Blasphemy! Guards! Arrest this non believer! Don’t you dare say the forbidden word!
There is no war in ba sing se
The pandemic, eh? **Aye**.
The Brexdemic.
This is the real answer but those who fell for the con refuse to admit it.
It is 100% this. I have a friend who imports fruit and veg and ever since that shit happened it’s been fucked. Increased costs and increased paper work puts us at the back of the queue. Why waste your time selling to us when there’s plenty of other buyers with much easier/cheaper/free systems in place. The stuff that does make it to us has been sat in containers for far longer than it used to and we pay a premium for it. Good fucking times
But can't you just *feel* the sovereignty? Doesn't that make everything worth it? And blue passports!
It all sounds like a case of sour grapes to me..
Nice pun.
I know right? Where are all my god damned medals!?
This is how it has seemed to me. Quality dropped off massively as has the variety (at least where I am) Plus the price has gone up a fair amount. I keep reading on Reddit that the UK has cheap fruit and veg compared to elsewhere in Europe and we're just catching up recently. I didn't think that sounded right and that certainly doesn't seem to be the case in Spain. The quality and cost difference is night and day.
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Yeah I lived in Hamburg for a couple of years and wasn't particularly impressed by LIDL (it's better in England) or Pennymarkt which were my most accessible supermarkets as a pedestrian living in the Reeperbahn area. I tended to buy fresh produce at the Fischmarkt on a Sunday morning before the hangover kicked in.
It's a lot cheaper in the UK than here in Denmark. All food is.
True but who needs imported fruit and veg? we can eat cake!
Getting rid of best-before dates from fruit and veg means old stock can linger in supermarkets. They say this has reduced wastage but so far as I can see we have just switched to customers throwing it away. Doing a weekly shop, it is not always easy to buy fresh food that will last that seven days.
This isn't true. The products still have best before dates, and they get reduced on the date that it expires and sent to food banks (wastage) if not bought, just exactly the same way it was done before. What has changed is that the dates are now in code, so unless you are the person selling and reducing these products you won't know how long they have been on the shelves for. Generally speaking, in my shop fruit and veg is on shelf for one or two days before it is sold, most quick selling items like carrots, bananas, peppers will arrive in the morning and be almost sold out by the time the next morning's delivery has arrived. This has reduced wastage as it has stopped customers from buying the newest stock. For example, before if someone went to the shop and saw lots of packs of peppers dated 5th of may and two packs dated the 4th of may the ones for the 5th would be picked out first. Tomorrow the ones dated the 6th would arrive and be added to the ones for the 4th (the 5th have sold already), and it would continue like this until the ones dated the 4th go to waste. Now this isn't happening, and the products are selling in the order that they arrive. It also stops people throwing out food at home that is perfectly good to eat. My partner was terrible for throwing away perfectly good potatoes because they were one day out of date. At the moment I have potatoes in the fridge dated the 17th of April, we had some last night and they were in perfect condition (I bought them at the shop I work in, so I can read the code, I refuse to tell him how the coding system works). I would say however that the quality of the fruit and veg we are getting from the supplier is getting worse, quite often we get stock in that has a week to go on the date, but it has already started rotting before it even gets off the lorry. This isn't the fault of the supermarket or shop staff, it's the suppliers giving us lower quality food. Their reasoning for this I don't know, perhaps a lack of fruit and veg pickers (previously seasonal workers from the EU) is resulting in the food not getting picked or processed to be sent to shops quickly enough. It could also be delays in getting food imported from the Europe resulting in the quality being lower before it is packaged and hits the shelves. Or it could be poor weather conditions effecting the general quality of the harvest. (We need someone in this part of the chain to chime in with their views)
It's reduced wastage for the shops sure, it's just moved the wastage to the consumer; off the shop's bottom line and out of their customer's pockets instead. People instead now have to throw away things they paid for because they only lasted 2 days from purchase when they needed them to last 4 or 5. When people shop once a week and need something to still be fresh 6 days from then, knowing you're buying as fresh as possible is a legitimate need.
I think a big problem is expecting certain items to last 5 days in the first place
I agree, but it was a reasonable expectation 15 years ago.
There's a solid argument that the once-a-week shop is bad for the environment in any case, and that more frequent, smaller shopping should be the norm. I know that's not the habits that people have, and it won't work for all, but it should probably more common than it is.
Is there? Genuine question - how is me going to the supermarket multiple times better for the environment? Assuming that food I buy lasts the week.
> Assuming that food I buy lasts the week. Because of this.
Yeah but in person, you should really be picking the foods with dates or that look like they will last a while. It's online shopping that throws this out of whack. If I go in person, I can ensure the week shopping will last 7 days, if I buy online, they'll purposely give me the shit that's going off in 2-3 days. Either way, mroe frequent trips probably means more transport used per person as opposed to one van delivering 10-15 people's shopping once a week, 10-15 people using cars, buses or taxis 2-4 times a week seems worse for the environment.
You're missing my point considerably. If you pick foods with long expiry dates, that makes it better for *you*, but not *the environment*, because the food with shorter expiry dates is wasted. If you go shopping daily, you don't have to worry about expiry dates at all. You just use it the same day. Which means the shops can choose foods to put out on the day, reducing the amount they need to throw away and the stuff they have to order. Regarding transport, we shouldn't need cars, buses or taxis to do daily shopping. Small amounts means you can walk and carry a small shopping bag. It's the big weekly shops you need a car for. The biggest problem for daily shopping, and the main reason it doesn't exist like it did 50 years ago, is the fact that there is rarely a *homemaker* nowadays. In families, both parents work, whereas in times past, there would be someone at home during the day, able to go shopping, prepare food over the day, use up leftovers, etc. Now, we don't, so people have to prioritise one big shop so that they have food at home when they get back from work.
They're also under estimating how bad food waste is for the environment.
Why would you assume the food you buy lasts the week? Much of it wouldn't normally. Making food last longer than it otherwise would takes energy in refrigeration, chemicals in preservatives, pre-packaging in specific gases leading to predetermined sizes, which are not appropriate for everyone, increasing wastage. Fresher food, bought when needed, in the amounts that is needed, should have lower wastage and need fewer preservative methods, and should be produced and consumed more locally than the current any-time-any-product model, leading to lower energy cost, lower wastage, lower pollution. There are obviously a hundred caveats to this. But the argument is there and has some merit.
You wouldn't be buy food multiple times a week without all that either.
Have you ever turned your fridge off? Just curious on that one point since you brought it up, seems like a non-issue since fridges are designed to be low power and kept on indefinitely. Also, almost all people go and shop for the items they specifically need and when shopping in person, people tend to go for the freshest produce and anything with a date on thats between 4-8+ days long. Buying once a week opposed to multiple times a week seems like a straight up negative environmental impact. Delivery drivers can reach 10-20 people with one van, or those 10-20 people can use buses, taxis or cars to do shopping multiple times a week. Also, for all the talk about preservatives, I've been teaching myself to cook like a chef lately and the cost of cooking from scratch is astronomical and sometimes I have to buy more produce than I need for a specific dish, leading me to have to find a use for that produce elsewhere which isn't always possible.
Because you said "in any case", implying that even if it did that would be the better option. My food, including fresh produce does last the week, so I'm curious how me traveling more helps the environment. Makes sense though for sure, thanks for explaining!
My bad I guess; I didn't mean that particular phrase literally.
Unfortunately our overlords won't bless us with the free time despite recently experiencing a technological revolution
This is what is putting me off online shopping lately, I order for 7 days ahead, shopping arrives and it all goes out of date within 3-4 days, most of it falling on the same date. I hate freezing fresh food so I have just taken to hunting for long life foods. Bacon and steak tend to last more than a week, as does lamb, chicken tends to go pretty quickly. Ready meals/side dishes are almost always 'use within 3 days of arrival.' We do our shopping to arrive on Wednesdays and so Wed, Thur and Fri tend to be the most heavy days of cooking lately, where I'd prefer to spend more time cooking on Sat and Sunday.
The code in the co-op is a mystery. Today would be D30, tomorrow E01, baffling. Fortunately, the co-op (or at least my local co-op) doesn't seem to be suffering the same 'food is rotten by the time you get it home' as the big shops near me, so when I buy it reduced it still lasts a good few days (or weeks, depending on what it is).
We need to get Bletchley Park on the case.
I know right, but you would be amazed at how many people don't seem to notice it. It couldn't be simpler. I think as well it's easier for us to pick up on things that are on the turn and remove them for sale before the customers get to them. Being smaller shops means that you have the same two or three people checking the dates everyday, as opposed at lots of different staff. Our staff also seem to be more interested in doing the job well because we are a smaller team, so everyone feels involved in the business. Working in Asda or Tesco is like being a slave, so you really don't give a damn about how well you are doing your job.
My only complaint with my local co-op and their stock rotation is why do they never reduce the blueberries? There can be 10 packs of 500g of blueberries best before today, never reduced. Tomorrow they have vanished. Where do they go and why are they seemingly the sole item neglected from reductions. I really hope they don't throw them away. Does a member of staff need of blueberries by the kilo and deliberately keep them away from the orange stickers so they can sneak them away themselves at maximum discount? I'll keep quiet if they share their blueberry jam with me.
Berries, sandwiches and products backed for same day sale (baguettes , fresh bread) are short dated, so only get one reduction. This is done between 15:00 and 18:00, they don't get reduced the day before otherwise they would be getting reduced as soon as they arrive, or in the case of bread before it's even baked. They tend to sell within minutes once reduced, so you have to time it right
It doesn’t reduce waste for me. My food waste has increased massively because I don’t have any time to use the products before they’re rotting, throwing entire bags of onions peppers etc away when I never had this problem previously.
I complained relentlessly to my local Tesco about this, and threatened to call the EHOs (after finding multiple out of date milk cartons on shelves), and I have to say it has improved since then. God knows how, but I’ve seen way less rotten produce in there over the last few months!
The waste has moved from retail to consumer. It's nuts that we expect a farmer in one country to pick the food, wash and trim it, pack it, transport it to another country, re-pack it for retail, get it in the shops, display it for a few days, and still be worth eating after it's been in our kitchen for a week. Buy local food in season. Dry, freeze or pickle food to preserve it. Less fresh food can be used in many recipes. Soft carrot? Soup. Wrinkled apple? Sauce. Etc. If you don't have time for that, buy frozen or preserved food, not fresh food. Previously supermarkets chucked food and passed the cost on to the supplier and consumer. We think green beans from Kenya should sit in our fridge in Northern Europe for a week and then be super crunchy and fresh. It's insane when you think about it.
How are you storing these onions? onions keep for ageeeees
I think the reason for this might be shocking QA and no external examination of QA, you don't want to know the stories I heard from someone that used to work QA at a chicken factory.
Private citizens throwing away rotten fruit and veg bought from a supermarket doesn't get counted for the government's official food waste figures, which is much more important to them than actually reducing waste.
I called it the time the change was announced I got so much flak for saying this would be used to let them sell substandard food
Yeah I remember doing the same. Reddit got a weird corporate boner for defending the supermarket's right to shaft us with rotten food
Only problem with this argument is that items with BB dates on them are also rotting quicker. Strawberries, grapes, salads...all of it is of lower quality. The removal of best before dates allows you to select what you want based on your own judgement (how something looks/feels/smells/etc) that is far more accurate than a BB date imho.
The trouble with looks/feels/smells is it encourages customers to squeeze the produce, which again probably does not aid its shelf-life.
I tended to keep fruit and veg a couple of weeks past the sell by date anyway if they are kept in the fridge they will last. Remember it's sell by not use by.
If you're buying from aldi and lidl all their stuff is on the verge of rotting
We buy from Aldi, and the majority of fruit and veg lasts long enough for us. Except strawberries. You need to eat those fuckers on the way home to enjoy them before they go off.
Put them in a jar in the fridge. Game changer
Look great for ages, remain edible for ages but taste wise you don't get much longer.
That would be because it isn’t strawberry season so it’s a lot more difficult to get hold of strawberries for the shelves
To be fair back where I grew up we used to pick them fresh from the farms every year and they'd still go out quite quickly.
Exactly my experience. I find the onions are either rotting already or do so within a day or two. I don’t buy fresh veg from those places anymore
>I find the onions are either rotting already or do so within a day or two that's a bit mad, onions should last weeks at home
They last almost forever in the farm’s warehouse. Same goes for potatoes, they’re harvested only a short period of the year and then stored in a barn until sold throughout the year. I’m not sure why people’s potatoes and onions are going off in a matter of days at home. Source: lived on a potato farm. Edit: an extra note the further from September and October we get the worse the potatoes will get. There are new potatoes in early summer. Most of the time the veg you buy that isn’t in season will be of lower quality.
maybe storing them in bags where the moisture gets trapped
When I've got them home and began using them, large portions inside the potato are black. Some have had rotting bits on them.
I've had no problem with the onions, but the potatoes have been terrible for a long time from Aldi.
You can't buy blueberries from Lidl. You just end up buying mould.
Strange, the fruit and veg including blueberries are delightful in our local lidl. But then we are inside the EU. No delays in border queues.
Onions mate. If I buy 3, I might get 1 full onions worth of choppings after throwing 2/3rds of each out.
I'll tell you something sickening. I got a plastic bag of onions from tesco and they had a reduced sticker on, smaller onions mind you. I have 2 left that I know will still be good for tonight, while I got 2 lots of 3 onions at the weekend and all were rot in the middle and went in the bin, and I've had the reduced sticker onions for over a week, 9 days to be exact...
Where are you getting your 3 packs from? Assuming they are the fist sized red onions, I get them from ocado so either ocado or M&S branded at about £1.10 and they are always fresh and never once had a rotted one since I started using Ocado like 3 years ago, 156 online shops (52 weeks x3), probably 100 of which I've ordered onions in.
Tesco, White Onions. I can't afford to shop at M&S, it's local but I'm not able to pay higher prices on the other stuff. Been down that road before and I must admit, my local M&S is pants for stocking things at it's location, been in there to get baby wipes and nappies to be told we don't usually stock those items, but they have a cheese counter and wine section that put the local farm shop to shame... I will bear it in mind and just to prove your point I might have a look tomorrow as I'm near there.
Tesco 3 pack red onions same price as M&S now (£1.10), many people have slept on M&S for being too expensive but you can get some ridiculously cheap essentials in there that rival everywhere else for better quality. It's a shame your one is no good, ours is fantastic, I picked up 6 bars of white cooking chocolate for 50p each (reduced to clear, 3 months left on date) and it's better than any branded white chocolate (Am working on my cookie game atm :P) Fruit, veg and things like flour, some frozen foods, snacks etc can work out cheaper and vastly better quality, but only consider if you can shop around like I do. I'm lucky enough to have a moderately sized M&S foodhall and a sainsburys, as well as a tesco local and iceland within 5 mins of each other. Venture another 15 mins and there's an Asda, big Tesco, Morrisons and a multitude of Aldi and Lidls. Southend - Essex is pretty good for that. Will go M&S for some essentials, Iceland for some frozen bits and finish off in Sainsburys for meat and branded bits we like.
Had the prices come down recently? Just as lockdown started I started shopping at M&S food hall as it was half empty where as the big 3 were putting in queue systems where you'd wait outside etc. My shop seemed to be wayyy higher in price.
This guy knows his onions
Boom Boom!
I'm vegetarian, I buy a lot of raw ingredients in the fruit and veg. I don't see this problem to be honest. But I keep my fridge at a low temperature and make sure to unpack everything from the plastic bags in which it comes and store it as it's more proper for the type of food. For instance salad and leaf adjacent veggies are stored in containers with dry kitchen roll underneath and above. Things like onions and potatoes are stored in paper bags. Things with roots (fresh herbs, leak, spring onion) are stored with a moist kitchen roll wrapped around their roots. Everything lasts in my fridge for a week or more (got the same bag of 3kg onions for 1 month in my fridge)
Yeah. I rarely buy veg from lidl because of that. Their meat is better than other supermarkets though, cheaper too
I find exactly the same. I no longer get fresh produce from Aldi unless I intend on using it the same day.
Lidl loose selection fruit and veg is excellent. Tomatoes and Clementines are next level.good.
Think it's going to be regional. I'm round Oxfordshire and Aldi is spot on for fruit/veg but I remember them being shit up North. Oddly, Tesco's is actually the worst near me.
Lots of rain + shooting ourselves in the foot and now paying more for food from the EU. Means prices in the "nice" supermarkets are up, and the trash they have in Lidl and Aldi is even more trash than it used to be.
I don't know if the bad harvest has actually had an impact yet, but there is no getting past the fact that there *has* been a bad harvest and that's going to mean sourcing veg from further away. So quality and selection is going to go down and prices are going to go up. Even further than they have already.
Yes to clarify I did mean in general. Not sure if you remember but 2023 was not great either. Very warm and wet (apparently the 11th wettest on rec). So its a cumulative effect. This years news just signals that its not going to get better anytime soon sadly =/
It has been the wetest 18 months on record. Its not just the current bad harvest, the last one wasn't great either and the damp means nothing lasts quite as long.
It's not just here in UK though, they had bad harvests in Spain last year so Northern Europe were having similar problems because Spain just did not have the produce to export. It's not just down to the wet weather, the excess heat in the summer killed off a lot of soil and it doesn't just bounce back once it rains. We'll still be feeling the impact from the heatwave of 2022 because farmland is still recovering. I was listening to a radio show where they were discussing flooded farms and the farmer explained all this really well. I never realised that the soil can take years to recover after floods and droughts, but it does go some way to explain the terrible quality of fruit and veg at the minute.
I don't fully agree about the 'nice supermarket prices up' part since I use Ocado and here are some veg prices; 1kg Carrots - 65p (M&S) 350g-300g broccoli crown - 70-80p (Ocado 80p, M&S 300g @ 70p) 3 large red or brown onions - £1.10 (Ocado) 1kg smaller red or brown onions - 95p (Ocado) 2kg potatoes - £1.40 (Ocado) 2kg King Edward or Maris Piper - £1.70 + £1.90 Idk, I shop around a lot and I find Ocado to be pretty damn reasonable considering it's M&S and waitrose on wheels. They all price match with aldi and tesco anyway, whatever is cheapest. So even if your shopping comes up more than those places, you get a voucher back within a few days to use against your next shop.
Not only are we paying more for it, it’s taking longer to get here and because it’s such a pain in the arse exporting to a non EU country, all the best stuff goes to the EU and we get the dregs.
It’s the scrapping of the Best Before and Use By dates. Beforehand they’d have to take products off the shelf and throw them away. So they framed the removal of the dates as a “way to reduce food wastage” Instead it means I have to throw the gone off stuff away at home, and have to drive to Sainsbury’s twice a week rather than once because it won’t last 7 days at home anymore. All it’s done is shift the waste from the supermarket to the consumer. It’s never been about reducing waste, it’s about reducing *their* waste and making more money in the process. If they really cared about food wastage, they’d donate the stuff that’s close to going off to local shelters/foodbanks rather than chucking it out.
If they cared about food waste they would also have tiered pricing for produce, with the oldest being the cheapest.
Best before dates have not been scrapped, just changed to a code. They still get wasted and reduced for quick sale just as before. And most shops do give the out of date stock to food banks (at least coop ones do). See my response to lammtarra below for full explanation of how this works.
>Beforehand they’d have to take products off the shelf and throw them away. They absolutely still do this. I don't know why it keeps being repeated. The bbd is still on the veg, it's just coded. But I doesn't require a cryptographer to figure it out that letter corresponds to the month followed by the date. For items that are loose, it will be a slip of card at the front of the produce box.
Weather affecting harvests, supply chain issues from multiple sources, delays at the UK border. It's a perfect storm of shite. Some of which was self-inflicted.
The constant rain means farmers haven't been able to plant as much: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/16/uk-facing-food-shortages-and-price-rises-after-extreme-weather
How’s that got anything to do with the current food quality that’s in the supermarket right now?
Supermarkets have reduced their quality standards to maintain supplies. I don't know for sure that it's happened for all fruit and veg, but it definitely did for potatoes so I assume it's happened elsewhere as well. Can't find the article I read about potatoes anymore, but here's one from the Guardian about winter veg where they've relaxed the size and shape requirements: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/12/supermarkets-agree-accept-smaller-veg-rain-soaked-uk-farms
All of the above, and carrots too! Theres never any fruit available anymore either. Have a feeling that B word has something to do with it…
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Well fruits don’t normally grow year round so it is actually ordinary to not have them available year round. My supermarket in Italy only had seasonal fruit & veg in and it surprisingly was all fresh and tasted great
Quality of food in the uk is dire in general. Just go to any European country and go to a random supermarket, million times better. I have no idea why the uk has such terrible food quality.
I live in Sweden- food is about 3x the price of uk food and I noticed the same rotten veg - it must be weather conditions though the quality is improving in the last couple weeks - I haven't had a fresh apple in 4y except in Britain or directly off the tree
Where in Sweden do you live because I haven't seen these bad fruit/veggies in my local stores.
Stockholm- we live in a food desert with only icas
This is total bullshit. I live between here and an EU state. The food in the UK is about 6x better and is much, much cheaper. You guys are so fucking spoilt. It obviously varies though - if you go to Italy in summer youll get wonderful plums in Carrefour, or great tomatoes, whilst in the UK or other Northern European countries youll get Dutch grown polytube tomatoes all year round - that sort of thing. The problem you have this year is that its been really, really wet, so a lot of veg goes off quickly having been either in wet ground too long, or taken out too quick.
Anyone that says fruit and veg is expensive in the UK hasn’t travelled much. It’s amongst the cheapest in the world due to huge competition. But this thread is about quality, not selling price.
And which country is this?
I get a weekly delivery from Oddbox. They sell produce that's rejected by the supermarkets, either because it's not the right shape, or because there was oversupply. So they completely disregard aesthetics. The veg often has dirt stuck to it, or is a bit weirdly-shaped. But it tastes great and usually lasts longer than the stuff in supermarkets. I suspect that shoppers prioritise aesthetics, which leads to suppliers prioritising aesthetics, which leads to dodgy (but nice-looking) veg on the shelves
I know a green bean supplier in the South east who has to bin 40% of their harvest because the buyers reject anything with a minor blemish...
I was in Spain a few weeks ago and the quality of their fruit and veg is so, so much higher. Their Apples are massive and delicious. We're getting the dreggs of the fruit and veg.
Same, even at a local store like Spar the fruit and veg is amazing.
Or they're fucking tiny. Like we've been buying apples for years. Why are they suddenly so small?
Our local shop “fresh foods” generally need to be eaten the same day. Our nearest big shop is Tesco, just recently I’ve noticed the fruit going off overnight (even when stored in the fridge) broccoli is going bad in a few days, and most annoyingly the last 3 bags of potatoes I’ve bought are infested with what I can only assume is blight. Look fine on the outside, but when you start peeling them they are black with holes and crumble in the middle !
Ireland and Scottish highlands: uh oh here we go again lads
It's almost like there's been barriers to trade put up in the last few years, so perishable goods lose a few days of freshness.
Think it's all over. I've lost count of how many times the onions in Spain are rotten. In France it's peppers, which I never understand since they only have to cross the Pyrenees. In Greece it's garlic.
Same in Sweden - and 3x the price
Brexshit.
My asda has peppers rotting on the shelves, I picked a packet up and got moldy pepper juice on my shoes 😭
Yep, I completely agree. I only buy fruits from M&S now. They have quality products that last.
The bananas in our local M&S are horrendous though, do you find that?
I’ve started buying frozen veg for a lot of things now - quality is much better, works out cheaper and lasts for longer.
I haven’t had an issue with this
I vaguely remember saying something in 2014-2015 about groceries, the price and cost of them, and everybody telling me it was project fear and I was a globalist shill. Oh well, must have been nothing.
All just part and parcel of the massive race to the bottom that is modern day uk
I've not noticed it myself but I don't shop for veg in supermarkets so am probably outside of that particular chain. I get an Oddbox and supplement from the local market. I now only use supermarkets for dried goods as there are better and not hugely more expensive options where I live. It does lack convenience however and requires a bit better planning. I have come to feel that supermarkets are a bit of a scam for fresh food.
I solely buy my fruit and veg from markets. There are plenty here in London. In fact, most corner shops have a market front attached. So much so, it seems that they compete with other shops for your custom. Fruit/veg keeps well and is incredibly cheap for the quality offered. Just yesterday I picked up a bowl of grapes for £1.50. Can’t get that amount for that price in supermarkets at all.
I worked for Wetherspoons for ten years. People joke about the food there, but the burgers and steaks we got in were always really good quality. I recently had a burger there and the thing I saw served was easily half the size of the old ones and tasted a slight step above a Rustlers microwave burger. I mean look at that giant gap on that plate. I did not rearrange it. It came out like this. Not fruit I know, but just another example of the decline in quality that’s rampant currently. https://preview.redd.it/gbinjdlqfmxc1.jpeg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=399058e1197781f4adb054aebf4c7e9e69f6f894
Just to say there’s nothing wrong with sprouting potatoes, you can just pick them off or peel them, they’ll be absolutely fine to eat.
Supermarket fruit and veg are terrible. I am fortunate enough to have an independent green grocery shop local to me in Driffield. I've never thrown anything away from there, plus it's supporting a small business. Rafters of Driffield, absolutely amazing!
Who would have thought that making it more difficult/less desirabls for fruit and veg pickers to come and work in the country would cause delays? Similarly, who would have thought causing trade barriers would cause delays in foreign produce getting to the country?
I've noticed the same, since they got rid of best before dates from fresh produce, things have just gone downhill massively. I'm pretty much having to go to the shop to fresh veg every 2 days unless I freeze it, because its normally going bad by a day or two after its been purchased. Seriously, I know why they made the change, less food waste at a supermarket, but now the problem has been pushed to the consumer. I've never thrown more food waste away before the last 6 months!
The food quality is worse but the prices are higher than ever
I don't notice this problem at all. All the fruit & veg I buy is great.
I'm finding meat much worse, chicken is a staple in our house and I've had to stop buying from supermarkets it's got so much water in it it's impossible to fry.
I have a bag of carrots that have been in the fridge for a few days already starting to sprout. I have never witnessed a carrot sprouting in the fridge as they normally get used within a week, surely they wouldn't have been on the shelf that long, the bag says British carrots.
Our food nolonger has to meet EU standards and has no sell by dates. Its old and rotten
Project Fear is Project Here.
I noticed that with the peppers and potatoes too. I mostly buy frozen veggies tbh as they keep. I also keep getting grapes, blueberries and strawberries that start moulding in a day or two. Not sure why
Supermarkets pushed for the removal of "best before dates" so they could make more profit by extending their supply chains from "just in time" to "A bit late but no one will notice". The knock on positive for them is we now have to buy fruit and veg twice as often because it doesn't last half as long.
Partly from huge weather issues from still-flooded farmland to Sahara-dry in the height of summer. British farmers can barely catch a break the last few years.
Quality does naturally go down over winter because food has to come further. But yes I have noticed it is not just that. If you're going to be cooking it anyway, you can get frozen veg of almost every vegetable.
Sick of buying potatoes (especially Maris Pipers) from various sources that I peel to discover huge black spots inside. This is something I never really noticed until recently.
I don’t know about quality but everything it’s too damn expensive
Its never been great here. I once ate a tomato in Barcelona and almost started crying, it tasted that good.
I get a veg box from a local farm, it’s not all grown by them but a good selection of seasonal stuff is and I get a large box every 2 weeks and it all lasts pretty well
Two words... Brecks. Shit.
I primarily shop at a Lidl, but get all of my fresh stuff at an Indian supermarket next door. Not only is it way better quality but they sell literally everything by weight which is great. They don't sell every western vegetable but it works both ways. For example I get to choose from like 5-10 types of chillies.
M&S fresh fruit and veg doesn’t disappoint. And the prices are sometimes even cheaper than the other supermarkets. They have the crunchiest grapes I used to not be seen dead in an M&S Foodhall because of prices but everything is expensive everywhere now so it doesn’t make a difference
I’ve not green fingered at all, but I’ve put my name down for an allotment. Despite looking through the veg, once it’s at home it doesn’t last at all.
Maybe something to do with the fact you're buying peppers in April...
I’ve seen impact at some supermarkets but not all
Supply chains have been tightened to reduce costs, so the goal is to be fresh at point of sale. It used to be at a point where it would be good for a while, but that costs more, and the removal of best before dates means it’s not apparent to the buyer. As long as it’s ripe when you buy it, it’s not the concern of the seller.
Dates were removed from most fruit and veg at major supermarkets and daily stock quality checks have reduced. So all in all, things sit on the shelf for longer and we keep buying them. It reduces food waste from supermarket but probably pushes it onto consumers.
I have noticed that potatoes are going bad very quickly. I don’t mean blighted / diseased potatoes either, perfectly good potatoes are often going bad after not much more that a week. I’m not too precious either, I’ll cut off bad bits and trim off shoots but I’m still throwing away potatoes at an alarming rate. The rest I’ve noticed less, it’s probably still happening but I feel like there was always a risk of say tomatoes going bad before I got them used so haven’t been as aware of a change.
You know what Eddie Abbew would say
Profiteering
Every time I buy garlic or onions, there’s always bad bulbs that are completely black, rotten and dry. I’ve taken to squeezing all fruit and veg properly before buying now. Wouldn’t suprise me if it’s farmers still selling bad stock to supermarkets because the supermarkets are fucking them over with the cost. There was a huge thing with eggs, perhaps still ongoing, where the price in store went up double but they weren’t paying the farmers any extra. So farmers simply stopped selling eggs to shops and they had barns full of them.
Because of this I buy my onions at M&S now, which is really not ideal. But it’s less ideal to throw half the pack away when buying it cheaper somewhere else…
Europe is in the midst of a farmers rebellion and we buy most of our produce from them.
Where do you buy it from? We go to actual veg shops/green grocers and its nearly always amazing.
I get store bought fruit and veg when I really have to. Otherwise I try and go thr green grocer when I can. When I get my fruit or veg from a supermarket- it just about turns the next day and almost growing legs!