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.

I’m on the other side of the world but we keep having random shortages. Current one is potatoes which is affecting oven chips!

I tend to assume that here it’s harvest reasons/weather events.

I live just across the Channel and in my local Lidl yesterday we had everything, I think this is a Brexit problem for the UK.

Things are more expensive, but they are there, I have the choice of whether or not I buy them

I think its a combination of Brexit, weather, bird flu, habit of buying stuff out of season and relying on imports and Supermarkets manipulating/ conditioning us into paying more for basic items.

I think we have become blind to how rubbish our supermarkets have become over the last few years. If you visit a supermarket in the EU the difference is quite noticeable with full shelves and lots of variety. I recently visited Ireland and the supermarket there made my local one in the UK look like something from the former communist era eastern block. I know it's a first world problem but we should be very concerned for our food security and wider industries impacted by supply issues. Lack of supply also affects prices which in turn drives up inflation. Oh and before anyone else says think about how it is compared to Ukraine, I heard a reporter state yesterday that the shelves were better stocked in Ukraine than the UK. That should tell us that we have a problem. That problem is Brexit.

The problem is absolutely Brexit. Quite a while ago the workforce had lost 330K workers because of it, the number will be much higher now. EU lorry drivers don’t want to deliver to the UK because of the red tape and because they will only be driving goods into the UK but will have nothing to take back so it’s not worth doing.

The UK is a country with a huge proportion of people who don’t work, and the low skilled work is no longer being picked up because the people who were doing it were effectively told we don’t want you here.

I'm not seeing these empty shelves. Sometimes there is less choice of egg types, and I have to pay a higher price for fancy eggs, but I'm not seeing anything like what I'm reading on MN.

We're in an EU country and there doesn't seem to be an issue in the supermarkets. It's more common here to mostly have seasonal fruit and vegetables on the shelves, though. I tried to find a pumpkin the other day to make lasagne. Couldn't find any butternut squash or anything else at Aldi. Had to go to our slightly more expensive supermarket round the corner and got an organic hokkaido pumpkin. Quite expensive at about £4/kg. They aren't really in season, so I get it. Could have made something else but really fancied lasagne. :)
Our supermarkets are generally much smaller than the ones in the UK. We lost DS for about 15 minutes at ASDA last time we went. He's used to just roaming around our local Aldi. It's tiny.

No problems in the supermarkets or restaurants in the western ukraine,life is as usual. Funny how the ukranian war ses to affect more UK than ukraine lol. No problems with food in Europe either (got family in Euripean countries inc Ukraine)

UK is ridicilously badly stocked, local village shop middle of nowhere in the Baltics has better choice of international and local produce than a shop middle of a large city in the UK. Neither have had any fuel shortages,rationing etc. UK is the butt of the jokes in Twitter, russia has just increased minimum salary by 9 pcnt ,shelves are full etc asking how are the sanctions working out for the UK- rationed food, frozen salaries no payrises,expensive fuel increasing taxes etc. My family members who work in Ukraine send photos of fine dining, supermarkets stocked up etc- yet in the UK people the failures of politicians are blamed on anything but themselves be it Putin,war in Ukraine,bad weather…

I understand the reason for shortages of items, I read the news and I'm a good cook who can tweak recipes etc according to what's in the shop.

However, I still find the shortages annoying and also at times weirdly upsetting as it puts me straight back to peak covid March 2020 and the absolute shock of supermarkets being wiped out. I'm 36 and I'd never previously known food shortages, that to me is a WW2 type issue, and it's very unsettling.

My DH never does the shopping and 3 years in to these shortages he still can't understand that some weeks there simply isn't any of a certain item to be had in the shops around us, or that certain products have increased so much they're now out of our budget.

It's been a very dramatic change to the way some of us shop in a relatively short period of time. It makes me feel very uneasy!

I know I'm gonna sound like a smug nob but this is why I've been trying to eat seasonally for the past few years, and I did see this coming.

Tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber will be abundant in the late spring/summer months through to early autumn because that's when we grow them here.

As someone else said upthread, you ain't seen nothing yet. It's going to get a lot worse.

If you're able-bodied have a look at your local council website for an allotment waiting list. LOTS of councils don't even have a list and you can walk straight onto one and start growing your own food immediately.

Sooner or later we are going to have to accept the fact we need to go back to eating predominantly seasonal food.

Yes, there are shortages but due to a variety of reasons. I can't get worked up about it myself. I mean, limited to 3 cucumbers?? Who the hell eats three bloody cucumbers at once anyway?? I don't think I've bought a cucumber since last summer, when I was having salads.....

Our Tesco has had a problem with eggs for months. No problem with salad though. South coast.

Half term last week so many of my colleagues and friends were in France, Switzerland etc. We all agree that the supermarkets were piled high with fresh fruit and veg of all kinds.
This is Brexit pure and simple.

No one in my house eats lettuce. We dont do salads. The odd tomato in a sandwich and that is it. Ive seen empty shelves but im not too bothered. Frozen sliced peppers are great for cooking.

eggs - never buy in shops. Always plenty to be had where i live where hens roam. £1 for 6 is a great bargain!

Word! 👆

Use specialist shops. I use a greengrocers and they had tons of lettuce tomatoes peppers and cucumbers yesterday. Confused how they are ok but maybe they aren’t competing for the same suppliers as nothing is wrapped (and it’s much nicer and cheaper). They’ve always had eggs too.

@MintyFreshOne I don’t detect glee in the dire warnings about the future. Google “unlivable planet”. We are walking with our eyes wide open into global catastrophe in our kids’ lifetime. There will be so much suffering. The absence of eggs and veg is just a wrinkle. People need to stop using more carbon to drive to three supermarkets rather than just say “oh I’ll adjust my meal plan and have pancakes next week”.

Absolutely agree - down to Brexit.

I'm always amazed at how much fruit and veg there is in a big shop. It's always on offer or going off, as no one buys it. I don't know why we are all stressing over a shortage when it is a well-known fact that our society has to be constantly reminded into eating a meagre 5 a day and we have to use adverts to get kids to eat it.

I agree OP. I have family and friends in Canada, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden who aren’t experiencing this to the extent we are. I’m not pointing fingers but I do find it a bit strange that we are hit harder than all of these countries.

London dd a pretty big place! Can't get lettuce or tomatoes in north east London

This could be the top of the iceberg (lettuce).

That news about Chinese representatives considering supplying arms to Russia in Ukraine - if China gets involved we'll have to go for sanctions against them and a trade war, current problems will look like a tiny pinprick in comparison. China makes everything. Maybe not food, but everything else.

Current problems have multiple causes but brexit is a large factor.

Brexit is part of it, but so are climate change and weather events. In the US we had a lettuce shortage in November/December because of that. Mustard in Canada was a bust a year ago and that affected supply not just here but in France. The Huy Fong sriracha factory had to stop production all summer because it was too hot to grow chiles.

I understand that the UK shortage of salad veg is also due in part to weather issues in Murcia where much of it is grown this time of year.

Yes, it was on the BBC news yesterday morning that wholesalers were supplying more independent shops as they pay more for the goods than the supermarket contracts do, I was in a independent garden centre and their food hall had lots of vegetables and salad stuff including lots of tomatoes.