If you weren’t watching Germany beat Algeria, pint in hand, there’s a chance you might have tuned in to Channel 4’s latest Dispatches, which found supermarkets have slashed the price of beer so much ahead of the World Cup, it’s now even cheaper than bottled water.
According to Monday’s programme, The Cost of Cheap Alcohol, some shops’ own-label cider is now so cheap that a man can drink more than his daily recommended alcohol allowance for a quid, while a woman can get merrily over the healthy limit for just 75p.
As of June 23, the investigators found Tesco was selling multipacks of Fosters, Carlsberg and Carling for the equivalent of 69p a pint, while a pint of Perrier was 73p.
OK, Perrier is the Champagne of sparkling mineral water, but the statistic is still pretty shocking, and smacks of shops being complicit in turning us into a nation of obese alcoholics.
A quick walk around any supermarket is enough to throw you straight back off the wagon of any diet or alcohol detox you might be attempting in time for a summer holiday.
The beer, which usually lurks at the back of the store, has decamped near the front doors for the duration of the World Cup, near its partner-in-crime – the free-standing mountain of buy-one-get-one-free Pringles.
Meanwhile, the ends of each aisle are always dedicated to deals on naughty-but-nice items, which cunningly appeal to cash-strapped families who need to stock up and placate kids who are being dragged round the shop on a sunny day – so bumper multipacks of crisps, sweets and chocolate soon fill the trolley.
But why, in this age of mandatory traffic-light labelling, when we all know we’re now meant to be eating less sugar, less salt and less fat and can see it there in red, orange and green on the packaging, do supermarkets continue to conspire against us, making the healthy options more expensive? In a word, money.
We’d all be able to get far more of our five – or is it now eight? – a day, if ‘super-foods’ like blueberries cost less than the standard £2 a box. And we’re all supposed to eat plenty of oily fish each week, but with the – understandable – need for responsibly sourced fish pushing prices up, it’s more expensive than ever, with a couple of salmon fillets easily costing the best part of a fiver.
It’s almost as though there’s a tax on being ethical these days. Those of us who’d rather know our eggs and drumsticks come from well-treated, free-range chickens, are paying over the odds.
The truth is, it can be hard to fill up on good quality ‘healthy’ foods without blowing the budget entirely, unless you take drastic action and head to your nearest Lidl or the frozen food section. For those of us who like our food fresh, not frozen, we’re paying a premium for that privilege too.
Perhaps it’s partly an issue of mindset here – if we were prepared to take a slight hit on flavour, we’d find some frozen veg is actually more vitamin-laden than its fresh friends.
Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith both cook with frozen fruit and vegetables and research by Chester University and Leatherhead Food Research last year found that in two out of three cases, frozen fruit and vegetables contained more antioxidants and nutrients than fresh produce. The goodness gets ‘locked in’ once the veggies are frozen.
As for the booze and chocolate aisles, well, we’re all going to have to find some self-control. My advice? Do your weekly shop online, then you can avoid them altogether.Also read here:formal dresses uk
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