Supermarkets are taking the pi$$

[ButterflyTable]

I can’t believe how expensive food is now especially in the likes of Sainsbury’s for the same product. Total P-take, e.g. Organic Milk Sainsbury’s £2 Aldi £1.79.

Why give us ‘nectar’ prices when they are inflated prices in the first place? £5.50 for a Pizza Express Margherita and £2.75 on Nectar. I think actually it’s the fakery with making us think we are getting a good deal that’s pissing me off.

I went to Aldi today (we don’t have one near us) as I was doing a drop off nearby and the price difference is huge!!

Yes in the U.K all year round.

@CheckeredAliceBand , not all cows have access to grazing. About a fifth don't and are kept indoors all year round.

@Mrsttcno1 , M&S have overhauled their prices recently and are now more competitively priced.

Oh, well I did not know that and I am shocked.

I find it incredibly sad for a grazing animal. The majority is free ranged, but not all.

so mine is always free range.

my pork, outdoor bred (as I cannot get the image of nursing mothers penned in on slats out my head)
and chicken free range.

im very much of the view to buy less but better welfare.

I wonder how to find out which (if any) supermarkets sell free range milk?

I agree - quality over quantity. It is very sad and dreadful that the public are mostly not aware.

I spent zero on Christmas food last year. I saved my Tesco club card and Coop card points up. It’s just a way of saving which I wouldn’t have saved without the cards. Club cards are worth it just for that 👍

@CheckeredAliceBand , I did know, and had I not, I would have checked.
Ethical shopping guide to Milk | Ethical Consumer

It's great isn't it. I save them up and then use the conversion link and double them for hotels.com vouchers so often get a night away for free. People don't realise they can link your info other ways anyways. I'll also happily have a card so I can use the gun and scan as I go and not spend any longer than I need to in there. What I'm having for dinner isn't something I'm precious about hiding from the government

I try to buy organic milk and meat from local farm shop. I now bulk buy since COVID flour etc. I also buy coffee from local supplier, who roast and grind. Also weight your own store.
I’m trying to avoid UPF .
Anyone listen to the Food program on BBC sounds about herbs and spice, really shocking findings.
But do have every loyalty card and app going so not very loyal.
My local Sainsburys never have any manned tills on. Tesco is better.

In the area where I live Sainsbury's is a calmer shopping experience. Fewer families with small children. I would have said it was my favourite supermarket. However, last Saturday morning I went in around 9.30am. The IT was down so I couldn't use scan-as-you-go, as I normally do. By the time I got to the checkout there was a long queue of people, all with large trolleys of goods. None of the self-scanning checkouts were working and they had only one traditional checkout open while staff stood around talking.

The elderly couple at the front of the queue were faffing: they'd realised they were £4.99 short of spending enough to get triple points, so they walked off looking for something costing £4.99 and left everyone waiting! Someone asked the checkout assistant if she could park their bill and process the next person and she responded sarcastically and told us we'd have to wait. I stepped out of the queue for a moment to ask staff standing nearby if they could open another checkout and one said she'd try. Eventually, about 20 minutes later, as I was loading my goods onto the conveyor belt, they opened a second checkout.

On my way out I saw the woman I'd spoken to earlier and said thanks for getting a second checkout opened and could they open them all because the queues were getting insane. A man with a Sainsbury's lanyard intervened and told me it was none of my business!

I said that I understood that everyone was under stress but from a customer viewpoint it looked unprofessional to have staff standing around while customers had to join long queues to check out. He was very defensive and told me I didn't know what I was talking about. I'm always really polite and appreciative of service staff and I found it shocking that they were so openly rude. If they were my staff I'd have been horrified at the way they responded. It's certainly made me reevaluate my loyalty to Sainsburys. Why don't they train their staff better? All it needed was a 'We appreciate how frustrating this is for you. We're doing what we can, but we have a major IT problem. We're opening checkouts as fast as we can.' I'd have been sympathetic if they'd said that. Instead I'm wondering whether I'll defect to Tesco.

It’s definitely worth trying! In my experience the only thing that is more expensive at m&s is things like ready meals, which can be £5-7 each, but if your weekly shop is anything like ours (mainly meat, fresh fruit and veg, pasta/rice etc) then you’ll probably be shocked at the price and the difference in quality is insane!

Sahara123

Also does anyone else have the problem that Aldi milk bottles seem to leak every single time, I’ve given up buying it. In fact I only shop in Aldi for a few very specific things that we like now
we go half’s too, juices, yoghurts (they save us for yoghurts, we actually couldn’t afford them anywhere else as there’s six of us) some cereals, fruit , veg, biscuits and crisps in Aldi, but their milk is awful compared to other brands and for some reason their meat always goes off ahead of its due date for us and their pizzas are terrible!!

@MerryChristmasToYou I'd have to pay £30 per year to find out via that link. It's great that you would have checked if you hadn't already known - but most consumers wouldn't and it would take a huge publicity campaign to break through the general perception (deliberately bolstered by the industry no doubt) that all Uk coed are allowed out to graze at least some of the year. Sad. I shall now have to spend my evening trying to find out, and have yet another thing to feel guilty about buying and not being able to afford the better but more expensive option.

I hate to break it to you but the UK has a many superdairies, most in the west and Wales, where hundreds — even thousands — of cows are kept in sheds for their entire life, with no access to grass or the opportunity to warm their backs in the sun or behave like cows should. They're fed a diet of silage, pellets and food waste. There was a superdairy in the area of west Wales where I used to live where hundreds of cows died after bread products from a bakery were fed to them and poisoned them. The bread/ wheat had gone off and produced toxins that killed them.

When you buy cheap non-organic milk you can be buying milk from cows that have never seen grass or the sky, have been fed shite and rarely make it to more than four years old. They are routinely fed antibiotics in order to prevent then from having infections.

My friends who are traditional dairy farmers (their cows live in fields and have as good a life as dairy cows can) are regarded as sad failures in the farming/ veterinary communities.

Abeona
to be fair they could have been standing around discussing how to fix the broken tolls, or what they were going to have to change that day. We used to regularly have customers tell us we had to open another till when two of the tills were actually down!!!

I bloody love Sainsbury's. That self scan thing on your phone is fantastic for stopping me overspending.

I like Aldi for some things, pasta, the green yogurt, olive oil, butter, frozen items, things like that. They are generally cheaper than other supermarkets but I do agree about the fruit - it always goes off quickly.

I ding shop at Sainsbury’s much, it’s ok but I prefer Morrisons. The near me is great, I love how they still have deli counters, fish mongers and a bakery on site, with actual designated staff. It may not be the cheapest supermarket overall but sometimes they have really good deals. I much prefer their fruit and veg compared to Aldi, Tesco & Asda. I just like the whole ‘shopping experience’ to be honest, it’s quieter than other places and less stressful compared to my local Asda and Tescos, which seem to attract frantic trolley dashers.

@CheckeredAliceBand , the info is further down the page - you needed to scroll down.

Zero Grazing
If a company sells any uncertified animal products or its animal welfare policy suggests it uses restricted or zero grazing practices, it loses a mark under the Factory Farming category.
The following companies provided no detail regarding a minimum number of days their dairy cows are required to have access to outdoor pasture:

• Iceland
• Medina
• Arla
• Müller group
• Freshways
• Dale Farm
• Connect Plus
• Crediton Dairies
• Delamere
• St Helen’s Farm
• Tesco
• Asda
• Sainsbury’s
• Ocado
• Aldi
• Lidl

Vague commitments to pasture feeding (depending on weather, etc) were provided by

• Graham’s dairy
• Booths
• the Co-op

Marks and Spencer prohibited zero grazing systems and required a minimum of 100 days grazing for at least four hours per day. Morrisons required its organic milk cows to spend an average of 200 days per year grazing but provided no information for its non-organic milk. Waitrose required its dairy cows to graze for at least 120 days per year.

Organic Milk
Company groups that offer only organic or free-range milk are not marked down under the Factory Farming category and gain a positive Company Ethos mark. This includes:

• Acorn Dairy
• Calon Wen
• Daylesford
• Riverford

All of Abel & Cole’s and Yeo Valley’s dairy is also certified organic but as they are both owned by companies that also sell uncertified products they do not receive a positive Company Ethos mark. All organic products gain a positive Product Sustainability mark.

@Abeona I'm learning this and it's very distressing. Will be re-examining my shopping trolley.

@MerryChristmasToYou I'm sorry - thank you very much

Though that info is out of date in some respects - Waitrose now requires 180days outside www.waitrose.com/ecom/content/sustainability/animal-welfare/dairy-cattle#:~:text=Because%20all%20our%20dairy%20cows,an%20increase%20from%20120%20days.

I'm gonna have to switch back to organic for the kids (I don't do dairy)

Thanks. The info is not that useful but it's a start.
180 days out of 365 or 366 isn't great is it.

All they would have had to do was say 'I know it's frustrating. Unfortunately the other three tills are broken and we can't open them. But we can help pack bags so that people speed through the checkout as quickly as possible'. The idea that a large branch of Sainsbury's can be expected to run on a single old-fashioned conveyor-belt checkout on a Saturday is ridiculous.

It's not, no.

(I mean number of days)

Yes, bucket stores have their downside. Depends on the quality of food you want I guess. Nothing wrong with either.🙂