Who is cheapest?

It is rather interesting that since I discovered the other Supermarket in Consett and stopped going as frequently to Tesco to do my main shopping, they have started sending me incentives and discount vouchers. As well as the simple fact that I dislike the fact that Tesco is the largest retailer in Britain and I dislike supporting any business that is that dominant in the market, when I discovered Morissons I also discovered that I was saving money too.

While each of the supermarkets like to claim they are the cheapest, often the reality is far more complex as the quality of the items used to make the comparison can be very varied. Therefore, if you compare on a like for like basis, Tesco were and are far from the cheapest. Often the items that Tesco use to compare to prices with will be lower quality. This is one of the reasons why Tesco and Asda had competing television advertising campaigns each claiming they were the cheapest. Well it helped boost the coffers of the television media companies, even if it just confused the consumers.

While I have no love for the cheapest junk that the supermarkets try and foist upon us, for many people cheap food really matters for them. Not least because the poor, that are the majority in this country, struggle to afford to feed themselves.

While I may, and often do, rail about the really poor quality of some of the foods sold by the retailers, majority that are poor are dependent upon the “so called” food the processors and retailers supply. It is not that the poor do not appreciate good food, it is just that they have to buy what they can afford.

It is clear that there is an epidemic of obesity and other health problems as a result of this junk food, but often the debate has been strongly slanted toward blaming the poor for this. When the reality is that it is the salt, sugar and fat content of the cheap foods, often concealed, that is really to blame. After all no one would choose to eat bad or poor quality food.

Further while I am a great advocate for people learning to cook and home cooking, if someone lacks the basic skills and knowledge and are poor, they can not afford to experiment and risk having other family members refusing to eat the food. Therefore the media coverage has been rather bias, blaming the poor for problems that are imposed upon them.

While I will defend the underdog in the food debate, there is a minority among the poor that are culpable in their own poor diets. I have known several people, both male and female, who lived off of takeaway food for their main meal. While relying upon chocolate, crisps and biscuits (cookies) and other snack foods for other meals. They then would claim that they were overweight because of glands or hormone problems. All utter nonsense, as the science just does not back up such claims. Becoming overweight is just a simple equation of energy in and energy out in all but exceptional cases.

However, even people who are attempting to eat carefully and trying to avoid foods that are high in sugar and fat can have problems as the manufacturers far to often saturate supposedly healthy food with sugar, salt or fat. As they are cheap and can help to hide the cheaper low flavour ingredients. Therefore avoiding foods that are laced with the unholy trinity is near impossible sometimes. Even as a regular label reader, I can and do get caught out sometimes too.

The supermarkets are in a price war, or more accurately, in a war of price claims. Unfortunately the lower prices are only achieved trough reducing quality. Additionally the offers are often on the types of processed foods that should be either avoided or eaten rarely therefore, none of the major retailers are that cheap or good value for money.