Food and Cooking

Fresh produce in the grocery store is a marketing gimmick. The reason it's there in the front of the store is to look nice and give you the psychological cue that you have fufilled your obligation to buy healthy things and may now buy what's in the aisles with less guilt. Similar to how grocery stores don't profit on rotisserie chickens which you have to walk through the aisles to get to so you will usually end up buying more than the chicken. They may control costs by displaying what loses them the least money, but direct profit from the fresh produce isn't why it's there.

Frozen is cheaper and healthier if we're talking what to buy for nutrition. Fresh is really only fresh locally. Yes, it's sad that fresh vegetables from your own locality can be unaffordable. The reason for that goes far deeper than the supply chain disruptions from the past few years.