Poor quality fruit & veg. What's yours like?

[Cheese]

Aldi fruit and veg has always been just awful. Good meat though!

Currently eating an excellent flat peach for once, the whole pack was excellent. At Aldi this deserves to be mentioned.

I have an Aldi across the road, I could go there with my slippers. But for fruit & veg I wouldn't. Aldi onions are the worst. And foul onions are yucky.

 

[dan m]

Locally grown strawberries from Booths have been great this week.

 

[Big Tabs]

I shop various.
Firm believer in squeezing/hand weighing fruit and veg.
Local Polish shop has good stuff .

 

[Tony L]

Bad quality and scarcity here. I only shop at supermarkets (Asda, Tesco) as there isn’t anything else in easy reach. Lots of stuff out of stock, veg quality poor, e.g. in a pack of three onions I end up throwing most of at least one away as it is rotten. Another Brexit benefit I guess. Welcome to dumpster-fire Little England.

 

[Mike Reed]

Let’s not forget the so called “ripen at home” fruit that refuses to ripen and seems to resemble cannonballs for days before going straight to rotten.

I remember those well; difficult and even nigh impossible to find the fruit bowl which would do the trick; we never did. Haven't seen that terrible range in S'bury's for a few years and assume it's died a rotten death elsewhere as well. The peaches/nectarines started as cannon balls and ended up as walnuts

 

[gintonic]

walnuts

nuts - now you are talking, I like nuts

 

[Pravda]

Let’s not forget the so called “ripen at home” fruit that refuses to ripen and seems to resemble cannonballs for days before going straight to rotten.

Exactly......I've had pears here for 6 days, still like bullets

 

[kensalriser]

Pears in July? Of course they're not good.

 

[mercalia]

I have found recent Lidl "easy peeler" oranges tastless and not sweet at all. Luckilly they were all freebies from last months vouchers so thrown away. Otherwise I find their veg fine. Conference pears fine, as they sold to ripen at home

 

[RJohan]

I would be worried if every fruit was perfect. If the worms can't live of them, what good do they do to me?

 

[Copperjacket]

Pears in July? Of course they're not good.

Fair point, but what about Peaches, Nectarines or even Avocados?

 

[Tony Lockhart]

Deliveries from Waitrose for us, in Suffolk. I haven’t noticed any decline.

Greengrocers? What are they..?

 

[boon]

Being fortunate enough to live in the garden of England ie Kent I have 17 farm shops in my area, and 2 good fruit and veg shops locally, we also have some of the biggest greenhouses in Europe on our doorstep, however they do not sell to the public just the big supermarket chains and veg markets like New Covent Garden I believe. One problem there is though is since brexit the fruit growers here are struggling to get fruit pickers as most of this was done by foreign labour.

 

[Bananahead]

The fruit and vegetables I bought from my favourite market stall in Besançon on Friday were excellent.

 

[wulbert]

I know that extra physical checks on fruit & veg imports were introduced in April '24, which grocers say has pushed up costs. I'm wondering if one way they are trying to keep costs down is by selecting lower-grade produce? Mind you, it seems to be mainly taste & texture which has suffered, so maybe it's a time-dependant, logistics problem.

Sad. The Clyde Valley here used to be full of tomato growers (decades ago). The product was excellent, albeit with a short season. An ex-grower told me it was the cost of energy that put them out of business and makes a return unlikely. The previous small-holdings are all garden-centres now. Full of white haired old farts buying patio tat and pest-control products.

 

[dweezil]

Great display in Fontainebleau market a couple of weeks ago but very expensive.

I guess there lies the rub. Supermarkets struggle to get decent food on the shelf at the low prices we're come to expect.

Good run on sprouts at Asda recently but they're from Morocco, the English ones are poor quality.

We start lifting onions and potatoes in a couple of weeks so home grown will soon be arriving.

The fruit you've been buying for the last 6 months is either cold stored or shipped from Southern hemisphere or both, this costs and maintaining quality is a total nightmare.

 

[Tigerjones]

Locally grown strawberries from Booths have been great this week.

Ya posh fecker :>

 

[dan m]

Ya posh fecker :>

The staff do try to buy local ;-)

 

[Alex N]

Online from Waitrose and Ocado usually all ok here, always buying what’s in season as well as the regular stuff…


There is, you’ll agree, a certain je ne sais quoi - oh so very special - about a firm young carrot.

 

[Tigerjones]

The staff do try to buy local ;-)

Great supermarkets are Booths, makes Waitrose look like Asda.