The big fruit and veg rip-off

It costs more to eat healthily. But can you afford not to?

So what’s your idea of a healthy meal? A slap-up, deep-fried feed of sausages, bacon, eggs, white bread and lashings of butter? Or a dutiful chew through your five-a-day fruit and veg, potatoes and pulses?

If you answered “I’ll take the fry-up, thanks!”, you’re wiser than you think. That great British breakfast may clog your arteries and raise your cholesterol, but financially speaking, you have chosen the healthy option.

The wages of thin

The price of fruit and vegetables has risen twice as fast as the great British fat-fest over the last five years, according to new research from BM Savings.

This means that eating healthily doesn’t just require lashings of self-discipline and denial, it requires lashings of money as well. With British household budgets facing their biggest squeeze in 90 years, that’s something fewer of us will have.

Low fat, high price

Over the past five years, a loaf of (unhealthy) white bread has risen just 29% from 91p to £1.17, for example, and a kilo of fatty bacon is up a mere 18% from 5.74p to £6.80.

Eggs and butter have risen at a faster pace, but the average cost of assembling a cooked breakfast has increased “just” 33% over the past five years, from £12.40 to £16.55 in total.

Shockingly, the average price of your healthy five-a-day faves such as grapes, bananas, oranges and onions rose 66% over the same period – that’s twice as fast. A low-fat diet is likely to thin out your wallet.

Fat is a financial issue

Governments have squandered millions telling us we have to eat more healthily (remember the Change4life campaign? Er, me neither...) but increasingly, only the well-off can afford to eat well.

This is one reason why poor people are more likely to be overweight than wealthy people. To add insult to obesity, researchers have found that healthier foods are harder to find in more deprived areas of Britain, and typically cost more. That makes it even harder for people on low incomes to eat well.

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True, you can also blame the obesity academic on “poor lifestyle choices” (the polite term for stuffing your kids with turkey twizzlers), but many hard-pressed mums don’t have the time or money to knock up a vegetable tagine and fresh fruit salad for their kids (especially if most of it will be left on the side of their plates).

You’re killing your kids

This literally is a matter of life and death, because unhealthy eating can knock years off your life. New research shows that people who consume eight portions (yes, eight!) of fruit and vegetables a day have a 20% less chance of dying from ischaemic heart disease than those consuming less than three portions.

Yet there are ways to eat healthily, and cheaply. Buy your vegetables loose, rather than pre-packaged, as they often cost half the price. Look out for buy-one-get-one-free deals at your local supermarket. Check out frozen vegetables, which are often cheaper. Don’t throw away old veg, whizz them up into a soup.

You might find cheap fruit and veg at a nearby farmers’ market - you can search for one here. And if you want a snack, an apple or banana is certainly cheaper than a bar of chocolate or packet of crisps.

There are plenty more fruit and veg-related tips and ideas on the NHS Choices website. Better still, subscribe to lovemoney.com’s Frugal Food weekly blog.

Vegetable, mineral or crisp?

It might also be worth boning up on your five-a-day rules (some scientists say we should be aiming for nine-a-day!), because you might be surprised to find what does and doesn't count towards your five-a-day survival target.

Wham bam, no more yam

Some surprising things don’t count. Potatoes don’t. You can only count fruit juice as one of your daily five, no matter how many glasses you drink. The same goes for those sugar-rich smoothies.

You also need to eat a big enough helping. One kiwi fruit isn’t enough, you need to eat two. And you need to swallow 30 olives before counting them as part of your five-a-day. Are you up for that?

Tragically, tomato ketchup doesn’t cut it either - although one in 10 Scots think it does. Nor does strawberry jam or, um, yams. Sorry, yam lovers.

So fat really is a financial issue. As the country’s wealth shrinks, our waistbands may be set to thicken. So can you afford to eat healthily? Or rather, can you afford not to?

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