The Market - Where good food costs less

Above: Scenes from Shrewsbury's
wonderful fresh produce market - today.

Ida Reds, Jupiters, Ashmead's Kernels, Kidd's Orange Pippins, James Lambournes. What two things do all these apples have in common?

1) They all taste fantastic.
2) No self respecting supermarket would ever be seen dead selling such good quality produce.

Yes, supermarket bashing is in season, and why not? These behemoths of the retailing world tell us that they are doing us all a favour, by providing fab produce at rock bottom prices. Today, I put this claim to the test by visiting Shrewsbury's indoor market, to see what the competition could offer. What did I find? A fantastic range of fruit and veg at startlingly low prices. One stall had six varieties of apple, all from their own orchard. These apples are gorgeous to look at, superb to taste and cheap to buy. Most of them you would never find in a supermarket, because they are not produced in massive quantities, picked by virtual slave labour and flown half way around the world in a refrigerated plane. Most incredibly, the main reason you will not get these princes of the fruit world at your local mega-crummy-food store, is that they are grown locally and sold locally. "Local fruit for local people" The likes of Tesco, Sainsbury's and Morrison do not source food locally in small quantities. Instead, they insist on buying produce by the tonne, transporting it hundreds, or more often, thousands of miles to a central depot, then they send it out again, sometimes back to a store only a few miles from where the produce was originally grown. Utter insanity!

At the local market, carrots are home grown and actually taste of something, unlike the watery excuses sold in supermarkets. In fact, the market's carrots are a revelation. Nutty tasting, sweet and crunchy. The purple sprouting brocolli could win a beauty contest! It is fresh and firm. Compare this to the equilavent, prewrapped, limp and stale stuff sold in most supermarkets and you have to question how did we let this happen? I could go on for days. The seafood, the fruit (you should taste the exquisite tiny clementines I got this morning) , the veg, the cheese, the meat from a butcher, who only sells meat selected by himself, from local farms; the coffees from around the world, the fabulous delicatessan, the friendly service. These people are absolute food heroes and they deserve our suppport and custom, unlike the money grabbing, rip-off merchants of the retail empires.

Message to Jamie Oliver. We know you don't shop in Sainsbury's. Why don't you tell the truth and extoll the virues of small producers and retailers? At the same time, can I suggest a new slogan for Sainsbury's, or any other of the not so super, super markets?

Sainsbury's, where dreadful food costs far too much

More on this subject here: Food Miles