Having been to our local Waitrose this afternoon I thought it rather important to quickly update you on how the supermarkets are fairing as we go through our year eating, buying and living British.
When we did our first shop in the same supermarket way back in January we found one everyday essential completely missing, oil. There was not a single bottle that we could legitimately buy and stay British. However since then we have found countless producers of rapeseed oil who grow and extract in the UK. You can imagine my hesitance in going back today in desperate need of oil for the next week.
This is what faced me (picture left) and I was so excited that I had to take a picture. Faced with a choice of 5 different oils was a real treat and allowed me to, for once, have a choice. This is not however where the new British additions finished. I found British produced pasta flour (which will be used up pretty soon) and even British sugar both Waitrose branded, and going round I am sure that I noticed a wider range of British products with good labels.
Is this a sign of the times or am I just over optimistic? Has anyone else noticed more British grown or produced items in their local supermarket? If they’re not there ask for them the more that people do the more pressure they will be under to stock them.
Feedback as always very gratefully received.
– Emily
Sugars no problem here as its produced locally and the factory is just down the road. I think it’s great that food producers are listening. It’s about time Britain becomes more self sufficient and steps away from the relative ease of importing what can be produced here.
I wish I could find British sunflower oil in my Worcester Co-op, I bought Crisp n Dry but it didn’t say where it was made.
Hi Gordon, don’t know if this is off help. I brought Tesco’s own brand Pure Sunflower oil the other day it clearly states Produced in the UK on the label 🙂
Your Waitrose must have been out of Good Oil etc when you went before, I’ve been getting it from them for absolutely ages.
Inevitably seasonal variations in many things will affect what’s available even in Waitrose, who probably try harder than any other supermarket. Hopefully the salads will be coming back on stream shortly.
I own an aga and rapeseed oil was recommended on a television programme to use on it. How brilliant it is to be able to ditch olive oil and use home grown.. Even our local Post Office shop sells it now.- you can use it for everything. I believe one of the Masterchef presenters uses it now all the time too. I am sure it will eventually help our economy.
I wrote to Ocado to suggest they add a “British” selection criteria to their site, highlighting this would be relatively easy to do with fresh vegetables and butchery meats, but I never heard back from them. We soldier on…
A lot of food brands now carry the Union Jack tractor logo or have a country of origin on the packaging however some companies make it much harder to figure it out.
When buying products for our charity scrapstoresUK we have been deliberately misled by a company that stated they’re ‘British manufacturers’ and then we were told (after we’d paid) that the particular product we’d ordered wasn’t actually made in the UK.
PS: One of our member scrapstores is looking for a UK recycled plastic container manufacturer – any recommendations?
Blacks or Straights PLC, they make a range of plastic items… Then there is RPC containers… not sure if their range include retail items.