THE sound bites alone are enough to cause panic. Scottish food prices are rising a third faster than elsewhere in the UK. Groceries now cost £80 a month more than this time last year, according to the Scottish Shop Price Index. Families are reeling under the soaring financial burdens of fuel and food. We are all doomed.
But hold on a minute . . . what about all these people queuing in the aisles of Waitrose and M&S? Nothing against the food but the prices are truly alarming. If we really were all struggling to keep up with grocery bills, such high-cost emporiums wou
ld surely be deserted and Lidl, at half the price, would have cornered the market.
And what about last week's news that Britons throw away one third of the food they buy, £10 billion worth a year and enough to fill Wembley stadium eight times over. That's food that could have been eaten . . . not scraps, bones and peelings. In fact £6bn of it had never even been opened. Does that sound like hungry folk counting the pennies?
The truth is that, excepting the truly poor in Britain, most people have become used to eating exceptionally well – or badly if the obesity figures are to be believed. Not a little of what they fancy, but unlimited supplies of what they fancy.
This has led to what the supermarkets call "brand loyalty", a phrase that makes one feel special for always eating Heinz beans or Kellogg's cornflakes. Another interpretation of it would be "customer stupidity", considering these products are usually no more superior but cost sometimes twice as much.
Feeding our children is no longer about giving them sustenance and filling their tummies with healthy grub. It's about tantalising their highly-tuned and increasingly fussy taste buds, not to mention satisfying their irrational brand preferences.
Reduced to family level, the amount of food thrown away each year is between £420 and £610. And strangely, the higher waste figure applies to families with children, a complete turnaround from generations ago when feeding youngsters meant utilising every scrap of nourishment available.
Our children are spoiled, often turning their noses up at what's on offer and demanding an alternative. Where once they would have been told: "Eat it or go to bed hungry", parents rush to provide some tasty morsel to tempt them. No wonder we can't manage food properly any more by using whatever is in the fridge and has to be eaten first.
Over 5500 whole chickens and 440,000 unopened ready-meals go in our bins every year. How can this be when people have freezers?
No, the way I see it, a hefty rise in food prices is all to the good . . . if it eventually results in us stopping such waste and learning once more to value what goes on our plates rather than treating it as potential landfill.
Perhaps people will even learn about food labels, learning to ignore "sell by" and "best before" as the truly meaningless pieces of information they are. "Use by" is the only one that matters.
Perhaps people will start using soft tomatoes for soup or sauce rather than binning them and even reclaim the art of the rissole to use up left over meat and poultry.
If things get really expensive, maybe we will start using our penny power, go into the butcher half an hour before he closes on a Saturday and say: "What have you got that you're trying to shift and what's your best price?". And perhaps we'll learn not to blanche when he offers a beef heart or a pound of liver.
We all need treats now and then. None of us wants rationing or severe limitations on the range of foods we can buy. But we have to accept that "cheap" food is an aberration of the last few decades, not the norm.
We've had it too good for too long in the UK while other people are starving. If the gravy train really is slowing down, it's a blessing in disguise.
Give junk the bootONE year ago I opted out of junk mail by writing to the Royal Mail. After a brief respite, the unaddressed junk once again poured through my letter box. I phoned to complain and was assured it would be stopped. It kept on coming.
I rang back to complain again and this time got an odious little man on customer services who snootily explained to me that if everyone opted out, his firm would lose millions. "Not my problem," I replied.
"Look," he said impatiently. "We're doing you a favour here. You have to renew every year because if you move, the next person might want junk mail."
A favour? The next person might "want" junk mail? Are they mad?
No, just greedy and prepared to exploit every household in Britain by deluging them with unwanted fliers because it makes them a fortune. Make my day. Join me by opting out.
The full article contains 836 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
