Thrifty Ways to Get Your 5-A-Day

If you’re anything like me then you’ll love a good bargain and here are some ingenius ways to get your fruit and veg for less (even free in some cases!).

Grow Your Own
Growing your own dinner is a great way to save. Once you buy the seeds, many crops are cut and come again, so next year it’s free food!

You don’t need to spend a lot of money getting started. Look out for local, free seed swaps at allotments, school fayres and markets to reduce the set up costs, or talk to friends who may have plants to swap.

Even if you don’t have a lot of outdoor space you still have options. Keep an eye on your local Freecyle and Freegle groups as garden shares are sometimes advertised — you work in them in return for free veg. There are also community gardens where you can give your time in return for heavily discounted or free surplus produce.

Buy Ugly Veg
Everyone and everything is beautiful, supposedly, but still almost 40% of fruit and vegetables worldwide will go to waste before they even reach consumers, according to figures from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation. However, there is a campaign for buying “ugly veg” and supermarkets are making this easier.

Asda’s Wonky range is now in 25 stores and sells carrots, apples, pears, citrus fruits and more. Prices are around 30% cheaper than its standard range — for example, while aesthetically pleasing carrots are on sale at 57p for 1kg, in the Wonky range they are 64p for 1.5kg (42p per 1kg). Waitrose has begun selling £2 bags of weather-blemished apples, and its Waitrose limited selection tomatoes are already on the shelves priced at £3.39 for 1kg. This compares to £7.60 per 1kg for similar tomato varieties in the store’s standard range. Sainsbury’s sells less than perfectly shaped fruit and vegetables in its Basics range — for example, four avocados for £1.75.

At markets, boxes of bashed or ugly fruit can go for a few pence — or even free — at the end of the day. You can also buy heavily discounted veggies which need to be used that day, at markets, supermarkets and on the high street.

Foraging
Picking wild food means you eat for free, and you can forage in urban environments as well as the countryside or seashore.

Common law allows foraging for personal use, but some by-laws prevent it (look out for notices), and in some cases you need to ask permission from the landowner. Generally, though, foraging is about taking a bit here and there — never hurt the plants and don’t take the lot, leave some of the bounty for others.