Consumers are adapting their habits to meet the challenge of rising prices, including by switching supermarkets, buying cheaper items and looking for special offers. But for those already struggling to make ends meet, there has been little respite from rising prices. In February 2023, one in six (15%) people reported skipping meals. Supermarkets have a crucial role supporting people during the current cost of food crisis - and particularly helping people in the places around the country where they are most likely to be struggling. This is most likely to be causing consumers problems in high priority places, where access to transport may be more limited. Being within walking distance was a common response in our survey for why people on low incomes depend on convenience stores - “ They’re close to my home. The big supermarket requires a car or bus journey to get to” with another consumer admitting they “ don’t have a car” and so can’t access larger stores [ 20].

We next examined what items shoppers were most likely to struggle to find in mid-large and very large stores. Our research shows that many people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford food and having to make some very difficult choices. The government has a crucial role providing a nutritional safety net and ensuring that people are adequately protected. However, I’ve discovered through online comments that, unbeknownst to us professionals, there are people up and down the country who like their mash lumpy. This under-represented section of the population actively chooses to resist fully mashing their spuds, preferring to give them more of a casual crush instead. For my money, you want a starchy potato. These require a lot less encouragement to break down, meaning less starch is released. The result? A fluffier mash. The varieties you should be looking for are Maris Pipers, King Edwards or Vivaldi. Most of these meals could also be bulked out with extra vegetables from my 1kg bag of carrots, tin of garden peas, or bag of salad.The very poor availability of budget items from our list in small stores would have distorted all our further analysis of this data, consistently dragging median availability values across stores down in a way that would not have been representative of true budget line availability in mid-large and very large stores. For this reason, we chose to exclude small stores data from the rest of our analysis, allowing us to give an accurate description of budget line availability in mid-large and very large stores. Availability of budget lines is good in high priority places, in large stores This report presents a rigorous audit of the extent to which Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Tesco are offering basic budget line essentials across their stores, including in high priority places - places we have identified as where people are most likely to struggle to access affordable food. Using mystery shoppers, we explored the availability of a basket of around 29 essential budget range items in 123 stores across the UK.

More generally, supermarkets need to ensure that their pricing is clear and transparent, including for promotions and loyalty card offers, so that people are able to easily compare products and decide which is the best value for their needs. Source: Which? analysed data provided by Mystery Shoppers. Data was collected 21 February - 24 March 2023. Sample size = 260 visits to 88 stores around the UK (excluding small stores) [ 29].Minimum life based on 'use-by' date of product. Average life based on last week's deliveries. Life guarantee shown based on delivery tomorrow with the Life guarantee starting the following day. Before heading into store, I tried to think of substantial and - reasonably - healthy meals that I could make with as few ingredients as possible.