Autumn Budget 2026: In defence of cheaper gherkins, nature’s Ozempic

Ahead of the Autumn Budget 2026, and the threat of cheaper gherkins for all, Adam Bloodworth on his love for the humble pickled vegetable, which is both delightfully crunchy and a hack to health

My housemate Will has always been the sort of man with impossible levels of fitness. So when I started a new eat-healthier regime, I went to Will with some questions. I didn’t ask how he got muscular (I assumed that would be from lifting weights) – what felt more relatable was to ask him what he was eating. One of the hacks, he said, is gherkins. They have three calories a piece, he told me, beaming, in our kitchen. 

So it was music to my ears when Burnham’s first budget unveiled an unprecedented price-drop for gherkins in the form of a 12 per cent tariff cut for importing them. 

They also have tartness, a light sweetness, and that famously generous crunch. Once the whole gherkin is inserted into your mouth, they require you to eat a bit like a dog, jaw swinging, eyes fixed, to ensure that everything – juice, flesh – is contained. You could cut them in half but where’s the fun in that? These great, cumbersome things are a workout in themselves.

Autumn Budget 2026 and the return of the gherkin

Anyway, try eating a whole jar at once. That’s what I do, on the regular. It’s now it’s become a part of my personality.

There’s no denying that after demolishing a whole jar, I’m tired. Chewing a family’s week-long supply of the vinegary veg is exhausting, as well as embarrassing, but I’d argue it’s worth it in the end.

By the end of demolishing a jar of gherkins, my jaw hurts. It also does something to your brain: all that chewing makes you feel like you’ve eaten lots. It’s nature’s Ozempic.

At this point I should make clear that it is important not to rely fully on gherkins (always consult your doctor etcetera, etcetera) but you can rely a little bit on them. The fact is I was over-eating and gherkins helped me face the mental block of that head-on, and half an hour after blasting through a jar I could more healthily assess the rest of the food I was going to have for dinner, and it would be far less than I would have had if I hadn’t already gobbed the gherkins.

Leathery bad boys

I’ve taken to buying tins of them to eat at my desk. Sometimes the CEO walks past midway through me crunching down on one of the leathery bad boys, the gherkin half sticking out of my mouth. What can you do? I guess this is just my life, now.

Anyway, I’ve managed to lose five or six kilograms and get within a good weight. It’s about to be party season and I’m sure I’ll crumble a bit at those events, where there will presumably not be a ready supply of pickled veg – but I’m sure I won’t crumble as much as I would have done in my pre-gherkin days.

But I don’t want this to just be about a hedonistic man trying to stay on the right side of the tracks. Nor do I want this to be about the Autumn Budget 2026, that great signifier of autumn and the cold. I want this to be about gherkins. Intensely flavourful, humorously shaped, cartoon like in their curvature, they are joyful little misfits, refreshing for the palette and for the soul. We haven’t even talked about cutting them up and putting them in sandwiches, which is such a popular way of eating them that Pret recently experienced a temporary, stressful shortage. 

Indeed my biggest fear is that the new, lower-priced gherkins following the budget might lead to even more shortages. I’ll have to stock up.

Anyway, it’s time to stop writing about gherkins. I have a jar of them to eat before I decide what to have for lunch.