I am so fed up of a lack of food in shops.

[OutofEverything]

This has been going on for a few years but is only getting worse. I had to go to 3 supermarkets before I found some eggs. No lettuce at all, a few packs of salad tomatoes available in one supermarket, loads of empty spaces in the fruit and veg section, and in ASDA even the freezers had loads of empty spaces.

Before anyone says yes I know we will not starve, there is enough actual food. But a visit to a supermarket now is a lottery about what will be available and what is missing. And more and more I am having to visit multiple shops to get absolute basics.

Tomatoes and peppers aren’t in season, it’s February!? Look up “the hungry gap”, there’s no produce at this time of year.

Eggs have been hit by avian flu.

We are only just coming out of a global pandemic. Europe is currently hosting a megalomaniac war and the UK has been hobbled by Brexit. Duh?

If people were more sensitive to what’s going on in the world maybe they wouldn’t be so confused as to why things in the shops are looking patchy.

Saying that, I do think these problems are worse outside London/the south east. My parents live in a very unsexy part of the east midlands and it’s just shitsville there. Just depressing, nothing in the shops. Down south things are much nicer!

Hyperbole.

It's a combination of the weather overseas, and now people are panic buying.

Salad veg aren't a necessity and there are plenty of other veg around, including the usual winter roots and greens. In principal, I try to avoid air mile fruit and veg when I can and buy British. Obviously this doesn't work for everything.

Eggs- bird flu.

There are always eggs in my shop- Waitrose- although the very cheapest fly off the shelves.

In which case we might as well give up then

Why is anybody bothering if it isn’t going to get any better.

Yes there are shortages.

But equally there are people with a panic-buying mentality.

Look at what happened in lockdown and people buying a trolley full of loo rolls.

I bet a lot of people have bought lettuce, toms, peppers this week as they think they might not get them next week.

There only has to be a whiff of 'shortage' and if enough people suddenly buy one more of something than usual, there is a shortage.

Supermarkets work on a very tight supply chain for fresh food to avoid waste.

It doesn't take much to create an empty shelf.

What an unbelievably ignorant comment.

I have seen the empty shelves but just bought other stuff.

Hasn’t really affected us in what we eat
Although I do use the wholesalers and I have household stuff delivered by the pallet on a lorry.

There seem to be lot of diamond shoes pinching through inability to buy out of season salad ingredients. What happened to eating seasonally?

Brexit is a big reason.I've been in France recently and there's no shortages there and a lot of their fruit and veg comes from Spain. Yes it's been very cold but that was a couple of weeks ago and a lot of this stuff is grown in plastic greenhouses anyway.

In my area of Wiltshire I haven't seen any shortages, so I'm wondering if it's an issue with transportation, it seems to be area based .

Okay so I wasn't around in the 70s nor have I been to Russia, but do you not think that's a tad extreme?
I run a food waste project. Supermarkets supply us directly with their surplus. Yesterday they gave us an abundance of potatoes, carrots and oranges. We give it away for free/a donation to charity if people prefer. We still can't redistribute it all.
I appreciate this is just anecdata, but here at least we're not scrambling around for basics, sometimes we just make recipe adaptations.

Today's delivery will be missing a bag of potatoes, thank God we've got pasta and rice

@ItsCalledAConversation There are shortages of traditional winter veg as well.

There are always potatoes, carrots, apples and oranges. So no one will starve. But honestly I expect more. Its not even as if the fruit and veg available is cheap or good quality, it is expensive and poor quality.

Corner shops here have very little fruit and veg for sale.

Fucking Brexit. Why can't we fix this?

Alright David Davis, calm the fuck down.

Willy of the people, or summat.

So no one will starve. But honestly I expect more.

Thanks for proving my point so rapidly. Why should you expect more?

@Blossomtoes We are a G7 country and yet can't provide reliable access to basic foods.

There are lots of food shortages in supermarkets, but it's not just eggs and salad ingredients. I've also found it seemingly random, as one supermarket can be completely devoid of something whilst another has plenty.

As an example, my usual Aldi hasn't had basmati rice for a few weeks, whilst the local Lidl has loads. My usual Aldi has mostly had plenty of eggs, whilst that Lidl had not a single box on the shelf.

Yes, we can switch what we eat, but I think most people are becoming used to seeing empty shelves in supermarkets, arriving home without quite a few items from their shopping lists and having to go to different shops to try and get what they need.

Supermarkets in Europe seem to have no problems with shortages in the same way, so it is either Brexit or UK supermarkets are less preferred by growers as they pay less for produce. Or it's a bit of a combination of the two.

We can’t even feed 800,000 kids properly at all apparently. Salad ingredients in February aren’t basic foods, it’s a real indication of how spoilt and out of touch we are as a society that it’s something people whine about.

Well you would say that, wouldn't you😂

I am reading about this in the newspapers, but haven’t seen anything at all where we are. Availability is no different to normal

Is that you Nadine ?

@Blossomtoes Eggs, milk and winter veg are basic foods.
Although people would have laughed 5 years ago if they had been told that expecting fresh tomatoes in supermarkets in February was spoilt and entitled behaviour.

The suggestion that people should eat seasonal misses the point somewhat. If it was a deliberate and controlled choice to tilt the market in that direction and people and businesses had time to prepare then it's fine, and difficult to disagree with primarily on environmental ground. But it's like during covid the pubs were shut. I did not care in terms of my own experience. Haven't been to one in over 10 years at least. However, I could see the at the distortion of the market and people's experience in such an abrupt way was damaging to others. It's not surely that difficult to understand this in the same terms. A dramatic shift, without it being planned or controlled is quite frightening. Also the shift is dramatic, I think there is a boiled frog element to this. Maybe if you haven't spent much time abroad in the last 5 years (understandable for many reasons) you may not have realised the level of change that has happened. I can see it very dramatically. The uk used to be seen as a shopping haven for me and lots of people abroad. It. Has. Changed. Supermarkets are noticeably sparse compared to those abroad. Really, they are.