Brits have literally gone bananas for fruit as they look to keep hydrated during the scorching weather.

In the last month Tesco has seen all-time record demand for fruit with millions of extra packs including berries, cherries, watermelons, pineapples, grapes, bananas among the top sellers.

NHS guidelines suggest incorporating fruit and vegetables with high water content into your diet in order to improve hydration of course they make up part of your much needed five-a-day.

It says particularly good choices include melon and watermelon because of their high water content, strawberries which are also packed with antioxidants, as well as pineapple, peaches, oranges and cucumber.

Tesco nutritionist Natasha Maynard said: “As well as drinks, we also get some fluids from the foods we eat. Fruits such as watermelon, grapes, pineapples and berries have a high water content and also count towards your five-a-day.” 

And now, with a further five days of 30C plus temperatures predicted for parts of Britain, the supermarket has ordered extra supplies so it can cope with the expected added demand.

In the last three weeks the supermarket has seen overall demand for fruit soar by an unprecedented near 10 per cent with berries, stone fruit, kiwis, melons, watermelons, pineapples, grapes and bananas all in record volume growth.

Tesco Fruit Category Buying Manager Simon Reeves said: “The extra demand for fruit that we’ve seen during the recent heatwaves in the last month has been unprecedented and is the highest we’ve ever seen within a three week period.”

“The quality of the fruit from our growers including our berry and cherry growers here in the UK has been especially good this year on account of the extra sunshine and daylight hours which has also helped create such strong demand.”

“We have been working with our fruit suppliers to make sure that our stores are well stocked as we expect demand to once again be very strong over the coming days." 

As the UK enters the third heatwave in four weeks, Tesco is also expecting to sell the following summery favourites over the next five days:

• 2 million packs of sausages

• 750,000 packs of burgers

• 950,000 packs of BBQ meat

• More than 2.5 million packs of BBQ rolls

• Nearly 8 million packs of ice cream & lollies

• 7.5 million bottles/cans of beer and cider

• 5.5 million bottles of wine

• More than 100,000 bottles of Pimms

• Nearly 4 million punnets of strawberries

• Nearly 850,000 melons

• Nearly 200,000 pineapples

• More than 2.2 million packs of grapes

• More than 850,000 pots of fresh cream

• Nearly 350,000 suncare products

• Nearly 1.5 million packs of ice-cubes