Walking into a supermarket is an everyday amenity that most of us take for granted. Most of us don’t realise the amount of range that is available to us. The supermarkets seem like a Godsend to the everyday busy person, but there is a dark side to this most innocent seeming business.
Food comes into supermarkets by the ton, but the level of perfection that is required to for fill the ‘standards’ of the supermarket. Food wastage is a problem that is hidden from the public eye, and rightly so for the amount of food that is wasted can be mind boggling! Around two thirds of food wasted comes from along the supermarket selling process. It is also estimated that £23 billion a year is lost due to food waste. The reason for this is not one that you might think, but rather for the reason that the supermarkets just don’t feel that a certain ‘type’, or shape of food is desirable. The sad fact is that just because an apple might not look like your perfect apple there is nothing wrong with it and this will end up being put in the supermarket bins out the back. Thousands of tons each year of food never makes its way to the supermarket shelves, because it is not deemed ‘fit’ for sale. Supermarkets argue that this is just one of the ways that they keep up their high standard of products, but what do the customers think? One customer said that: ‘I just would worry about what it looks like I’d just like to know that it was going to taste the same’. With this attitude surely this is a way that supermarkets can make more money by wasting less food.
Surely nothing else major can be going on behind the scenes of the countries largest supermarkets, but you would be wrong. If the humble apple manages to make it past the vigorous selection process it will be put on the shelves with the rest of the perfect fruit. The problem lies in the sell by date of the product, as a study has shown that a large quantity of our everyday food products are being taken of the shelves and disposed of well before they are unfit for human consumption.
Surely this kind waste should not be happening so with it is up to us to make sure we make the most of our food, because our supermarkets certainly aren’t!
