Poor Quality Food in Spain and tasteless veg

POOR QUALITY OF FOOD IN SPAIN
VEGETABLE IN SPAIN ARE TASTELESS AND VERY VERY EXPENSIVE, BANANAS HEAVY PRICED MORE THEN UK, LEMONS 2,80 EURO PER A SMALL BAG , MORE EXPENSIVE THEN UK . ONLY DRINKS AND TABACCO ARE CHEEPER HERE IN SPAIN EVERYTHING ELSE ITS EXPENSIVE, THE FOOD HAS NO QUALITY . HAMBURGERS ARE UNEATABLE FULL OF SAL, THEY PUT SALT EVERYWHERE . TERRIBLE
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Quality of food in Spain very poor and tasteless 
01 September 2016 @ 09:49 

I recently moved to Spain,from UK, sold my house in England and purchased one here,

I start to regret my big move, many things did not take into consideration. For instance Its important to me decent quality of food, something that here in Spain dont exist, Vegetable are just revolting, testeless, eating rubber its the same  In England are thousend time better ,what you by in Tesco and every other shop. Salads here are so expensive, fruits also, Bananas you cannot buy them, very over priced . In Uk bananas are much cheeper .

Lemons  at 2.80 cents a small bag the price its just rediculus for a nation that produce so much fruit and veg..  

My question is, how can the Spanish people put up to eat such tastless rubbish vegetable and paying so much  for rubbish quality While in UK vegetables imported are  by far a much better quality and cost cheaper then here.

lets dont forget Tesco at 6pm sale verything at 10 , 20 pence,  you can fill your bags for 2, 3 pounds, You can also buy bread for  10 pence , Here 3 small baguettes are 1,30 euro, and its not a kilo.and the bread is also tastless.

Hamburgers here are uneatable, salty like hell,  strange the same hamburgers that Aldi or Lidl sale in UK have no salt, but here its totally different stuff excellent qulaity ,  here in Spain are  uneatable. Spanish  fill thier food with salt everywhere, every restaurant I was going there salt everywhere into food   Now I don go out in restaurant any more, its just a disgrace  how  they can use so much salt . I am sure they die early  due to the much   use of salt.

In UK I can live like a king spending only 20 pounds on food per week . Tesco Sainsbury after 6  price reduction, here dont exist .

Only wine, spirits and tabacco are cheeper in Spain  the rest expensive and  has no quality .

People before moving here should consider many factors, something which I didnt do .I wish I could return to UK , there are no  jobs here, and its difficult to make friends. 

To live on £20 per week food bill in England I reckon you mean you shop in Tesco's wheely bins around the back...Not inside the shop...Don't you?

Probably a wind-up Baz.

We spend the best part of £200 every time we go into a Tesco. (More if we use Waitrose or Sainsbury).

What does amaze me is what you can get for your money in a cheap restaurant in Spain.

We go into one near us that does a 7,90E 3 course set meal plus drink with at least 5 choices for each course. All day not just lunch time. First time I went I expected it to be a flea pit, but no the tables were nicely laid out and the service was super. Portions not to big but that suits as as we are!

We tried to price the ingredients in a super market. They clearly do not use a supermarket because we would have easily spent more than the cost of the meal before you add for cooking, preparation and serving.

Can't touch that in England. We frequently use a chain restaurant that is one of the cheapest around but reasonable quality and we seldom come out spending less than £16 ea. for two courses and one drink.

In Spanish supermarkets you do pay a little for the convenience but they are still cheaper than the UK and you can always get good quality cheap food on a market.

So I would say you are probably on the right track with the bins. But it could be food banks?

You go to Tesco at the wrong time,  try just after 6,to 7 pm, even sainsbury does it. And I can assure you its top quality sale by date , nothing wrong with it. Bread at 10 pence even at 5 pence.  Here it's just to expensive. And the vegetable here are just rubbish disgusting tasteless quality.

I take it this guy doesn't work for the Spanish tourist board, then. I've never read so much drivel in all my life.

Let's start with the veg. We pay 1 euro for an extremely large cauliflower. So big I blanche it and get enough for at least 6 meals. They actually have a taste, unlike the 50p ones in Tesco that are slightly larger than a brussel sprout and watery. Tomatoes here are wonderful. I used to take them out of sandwiches and so on in UK at restaurants because of the terrible non taste. One "beef" tomato in the UK supermarket costs 50p whereas the "salad tomatoes" here (same thing) cost €1.19 a kilo and you get about 4 or 5 for that price. Haven't bought a lemon since I've been here. So many on the trees for absolutely free. A five pack of oranges in Tesco cost £1.25. You can get 5 kilos of them here for 2.50 euro. £1 each for a pomegranite in Tesco, 40 cents each here and so much better.

I don't buy burgers. Check the salt/preservative in a pack of burgers in UK and you'll find they are very high. I buy mince and make my own and the mince is a far higher quality than the fat ridden rubbish in Tesco. Simply the mince, parsley, a little pepper, Maggi seasoning and a little olive oil. Burger presses are extremely cheap (less than a tenner) and I make them up and freeze them. Try buying things like chicken or pork chops in Tesco. Apart from them being double the price, they have 20% added water to plump them up. Cooking them in the oven and your baking dish gets covered in water. (Current price of chicken legs in Tesco is £3 a kilo, here at €2.30 a kilo). Pork chops in Tesco (horrible, watery things) currently £4.70 a kilo. Our local Gama has them (with no added water) at €4.80 a kilo and €2.80 a kilo if you go on a Friday. 

£20 on food a week and live like a king? Yeah, right, pull the other one. I can go to the market here and get a whole bag of carrots (might be a bit bendy but taste great, tomatoes, lettuce, parsnips (now they are great here), cauli and cabbage plus fruit for less than 5 euro. And none of that watered up, tasteless stuff in UK. Try shopping around for bananas. Lidl sell them for about the same price in UK (maybe a bit more now the pound has crashed) but watermelon at 58 cents a kilo, apples at half the UK price (Braeburn currently 1.58 a kilo at Mercadona, £2.78 a kilo at Tesco). And where does he buy his bread? 5 baguettes at €1 in Mercadona, large barra de pan 32 cents compared with 80p in UK and the 5 semillas pan at €1.20 is wonderful. We were just back in UK for all of August due to a family bereavement and I was amazed at just how much the shopping cost for a relatively small amount of stuff. Eating out cost us an arm and a leg with a Chinese takeaway costing more than three times what we pay here to sit at a restaurant and have a starter, dessert and wine included. 

 I think the OP must be a sock puppet and, with the spelling, I thought he who talks through his bottom was back under a different name but he'd have told us how brilliant Asda was. 

Please, mods, get rid of this ridiculous post. Not only is it a complete fabrication and a joke but gives expats a bad name. With an attitude like that no wonder it's difficult to make friends.

In UK I can live like a king spending only 20 pounds on food per week .

Yes, of course you can sweetcheeks. Now can and see if nursey will refill your bottle for you. By the way, it's 2016 not 1956.

He's obviously got shares in Tesco !

Day release from the asylum! 

mariedev, spot on. Great food, Great prices even at todays exchange rate.

Love Spain, Love the food, Love the prices.

Weston you must have strange taste buds to prefer food that has been stored for months and sprayed with preservatives to the fresh food in the local markets straight from the fields 

I am not sure where Weston lives but of course if he wants to eat english fare, burgers etc and buy end of life specials he can visit one of the many Iceland stores in Spain

Even spanish stores like Carrefor & Consum have the cheap bins if you want them but 20 pounds a week, forget it

Anyway that knows the Floret brand, this is gron picked and packed in the fields around the C3319 Murcia road

Try putting fruit or vegetables bought in the UK next to some from Spain side by side and see how long they last

The other thing that is superb and great value in Spain is the FRESH fish, but of course you have to be able to understand how to cook this because it isn't a burger

If you want to shop cheap then shop the spanish way,  lemons buy them fresh and cheap from the markets, same for vegetables, much cheaper and fresher than the supermarkets

I do agree on comments on the vegetables in some spanish restaurants where they use vegetables from jars

We eat out at least 3 times a week, great quality local restaurants, 3 courses for €7, often looking out at the Mar Menor waters

Of course the budget to live in Spain isn't just about food, what about the facts that you pay less for council tax, petrol, insurance and many other things

I'm quite lucky with food here as my father-in-law has three large plots of land. On one, he grows almost everything, so tomatoes, peppers, onions, watermelons, lettuce, corn and other veg are excellent and free. On another he has orange trees and we also grow our herbs and chillies between them. On the other he has olive trees so we never have to pay for olive oil either. He even has chickens and hens so our food bill is considerably lowered by all the free food we can help ourselves to.

Of course, a lot of fruit and veg is seasonal but still available in supermarkets in Spain all year round so these have to go through the same procedures to conserve them as they do in the UK and therefore aren't going to be any better. When I lived in England I bought everything from the supermarket and was quite happy with it, however in Spain, I buy fruit and veg from the market when we don't have it available from the huerto because the quality from the supermarkets here is terrible in comparison. I've thrown away more carrots, onions and potatoes from Spanish supermarkets than I've used. I also buy meat from the butchers because it's too risky buying from the supermarket as it's quality is far more miss than hit.

I work for a food company that distributes throughout Spain and what I can say is that the Spanish food standards agency and quality control is way behind that of the UK and the condition of some of the food that comes from Spanish producers and the boxes/palets they arrive in are filthy and generally much worse than what we receive from other EU countries. We even send cheese out to El Corte Inglés which comes labelled as 'Fit For Human Consumption'  which shows just how bad this product is, and you think that El Corte Inglés is giving you a superior product.

Spain does have great, natural tasting food but the way to buy it is from the market, the butcher, the baker or wherever as the standard of food in the supermarkets here is generally poor. As for those 8-10€ menú del día restaurants....I haven't been to one in years and can't understand how anyone can describe the food they serve as good. It's not good, not by any stretch of the imagination. The reason why these are so popular is that it enables people in Spain to enjoy the Spanish lifestyle without breaking the bank. The Spanish eat there because good company and the experience are much more important than the food. When they want a good meal, they dig deeper in their pockets and go somewhere that employs a chef.

In iceland Spain ,the price of goods are more than double what you would pay in Iceland UK .l do not live hear full time. I do come over to Spain every six weeks throughout the year so unlike the people that have replied with stupid comments that you can buy a menu del what ever you call it for ex number of euros get real for god sake some of the more frequent posters on hear get on hear asking stupid questions like its been years since I have been back to the UK so can someone tell me how to exchange euro's back to ££££s roll on the Brexit and ,Maridave you are clearly of your shopping trolley along with you're great big colly that will feed the 5,000 for you're sake stay off the cheep wine thats only fit for cooking .Weston you have clearly been reading  misleading post about Spain and have only yourself to blame ,my wife does my son's weekly food shop ,he lives on his own and i t come to no more than £25 in Asda .Or you could try living on colli for a week and the spend the money you have saved on toilet paper.
 
This message was last edited by windtalker on 04/09/2016.

What a load of ¿ i have ever heard of on this Forum, is it not true a Tomatoe grown in Spain and shipped to the uk the same as we here in Spain buy in our Supermarkets, a Colli is a Colli, Leeks are Leeks, a Cabbage is a Cabbage, no matter where you are in the world, perhaps some people should go on a Cookery Course, Veg in Spain is a lot more fresher (apart from growing your own) then buying shipped for how many weeks wrapped in plastic and sold on supermarket shelfs back in the uk

nitram

perhaps some people should go on a Cookery Course

Perhaps you should go on an economics course.

I imagine so many people driving round the Spanish countryside looking at the orange trees and assuming that all these are picked one day and on the supermarket shelves the next. It's just not the case. Spain produces many oranges but the majority of these are shipped abroad and unbelievable it may sound, Spanish supermarkets actually import oranges from African counties like Morrocco.

Farmers sell abroad because they pocket more money and Spanish retailers buy from African farmers because they are cheaper than Spanish farmers. Mercadona has been criticised many times for selling imported fruit and veg rather than Spanish grown. 

So what's better, Spanish fruit and veg in Tesco or African fruit and veg in Mercadona? It's not all foreign but it's surprising just how much of it is. It's all well and good knowing where your food comes from when you live in the UK, but you've got to do the same when you come to Spain. Instead, you learn nothing about the country, it's food chain, how things work here and make ignorant comments about how much more amazing things are here. 

When I first came to Spain was amazed how wonderful a tomato tasted because as a smoker had been indoctrinated into believing that smoking had dulled the taste buds. 

What a load of rubbish.

It is the  supermarkets process of storing the food that is the problem and why people crave the tasty but fattening food in fast food oulets. Not so here. 

Apart from a hankering of UK styled fish and chips Spanish/ Italian/French  food is far superior in taste, quality and price. So thx OP for giving me a laugh..especially when reading only having to spend £20 a week in Tesco.....

A few observations:

There are those who say ALL fruit and veg in Spain is  cheap, fresh and tasty and better 

It's another case of rose tinted glasses again

they come back from the market loaded with enough to last the week for 5 euros or something ridiculous

They also say it is better than in supermarkets in the UK, 

These days, fruit and veg , very often from Spain, is on the UK shelves within hours, maybe before it is on the shelves in Mercadona, plus plenty of British fruit and veg to choose from.

 I found that very often the fruit and veg in the markets in Spain has hung around for hours in the sun, and isn't always that fresh- or cheap, and the produce was sometimes cheaper in the supermarkets

I found the tomatoes both in Spain and UK did not have much flavour, both improve with not being kept in the fridge, though.

Just because radishes and spring onions are huge compared to UK, didn't make them more flavoursome

spanish strawberries were frequently flavourless, unlike the delicious Royal Sovreign with  their delicious rich, sweet flavour

Mushrooms in Spain were low in flavour, and the fact that the sandy grit wasn't washed off properly in some restaurants put me off. I used tinned button mushrooms in Spain

British mushrooms have an entirely different , stronger flavour

Some people have the idea that all Spanish oranges are sweet and luscious-not so, the majority were sour, often dryish

the navels were the best

Only in the last few years in Spain did I easily find seedless black and white grapes, and traffic light peppers.

What can beat a flavoursome Bramly Apple for delicious apple sauce and pies?

Spanish apples have not got an equal to this

Cauliflowers-  ( UK) much bigger than Brussels sprouts, Mariedav!

Both Spanish and British ones are nice- no difference at all.

if the veg is so nice and fresh in Spain, why do so many restaurants use tinned beans, peas and carrots?

I am not saying all fruit and veg in Spain is tasteless, and all fruit and veg in  UK is full of flavour and superior, but it really is a myth that because it is grown in Spain, it is fantastic and better than that in UK. I think some are trying to kid themselves, justifying  one of their reasons for living inSpain

This message was last edited by camposol on 04/09/2016.

if the veg is so nice and fresh in Spain, why do so many restaurants use tinned beans, peas and carrots?

Cos it's cheaper and there's no waste all equals more profit - but my its awful stuff

I AGREE with Camposol

You all know I lived in Spain for many years enjoying the HIGH life and I returned to the UK earlier this year 

The FOOD is better in the UK in my opinion, also you can access many more HEALTH foods here in the UK which as we age is more and more IMPORTANT 

SPAIN imports more FOOD than the UK in general terms

FISH is where SPAIN really excels but no WHERE else IMHO

Love Hugh xxx

Yes, the  fish is lovely and fresh,especially the sole and sea bass