Food is getting more expensive again, and this time it is not because of a bad harvest or a lorry driver shortage, but because war thousands of miles away is quietly making the whole system more expensive to run. This week, I revisited what the escalating conflict in the Middle East could mean for the British weekly shop and the answer, unfortunately, is quite a lot. Oil is the obvious bit, but it is not just an oil story. Fuel, fertiliser and freight are all under pressure, which means the cost of growing, making and moving food is rising at once. Bread, pasta, cereals, meat, dairy, imported produce, packaged foods: none of it is immune. There is no sign of empty shelves, and no, this is not a call to start panic-buying spaghetti like it is 2020 again, but if you have been wondering whether your shop is about to get pricier, the answer is yes, very possibly.
Elsewhere, London's great class divide is currently being acted out in pastry form on TikTok. A viral "north London girlies" video mapping out a weekend of Jolene pastries, Gail's coffees and deli stops has been doing the rounds, prompting a wave of responses from creators who do not recognise that version of the same streets at all. What follows is less a food review than a kind of cultural mapping exercise: Morley's versus sourdough, KA versus flat whites, and the uncomfortable feeling of walking into a version of your own neighbourhood that suddenly does not seem to have been built for you. Same postcode, wildly different experience.
Then there is the matter of Easter, which appears to have finally lost its mind. This year's supermarket shelves have given us chocolate ravioli, cavapoo eggs, tiramisu hot cross buns, chocolate fried chicken and Mini Egg liqueur, which is either festive innovation or a cry for help depending on your mood. At some point, the Easter egg stopped being an egg and became… whatever this is. These are not seasonal treats so much as social media bait with foil wrapping – and we are buying into it.
If you are planning to do exactly that, it is worth knowing what actually offers value. We compared 260 Easter eggs across the major supermarkets and the results are, at times, bleak. The same £4.50 can buy you wildly different amounts of chocolate depending on where you shop, while some of the most expensive options are less about what you eat and more about what they look like on a shelf. The rule is simple: ignore the size of the box, check the weight, and always look at the price per 100g.
Elsewhere this week, there is a timely reset on what healthy eating actually looks like. Nutritionist Rhi Lambert argues that Britain's real problem is not protein – despite what every yoghurt, snack bar and influencer might suggest – but fibre, with only a tiny fraction of the population getting enough. It is less glamorous, less marketable and far easier to ignore, but arguably far more important.
There is also a genuinely clever dumpling lasagne recipe doing the rounds – all the flavour of soup dumplings without the faff – plus a set of spring vegetable recipes that lean into the season properly, easy, low-effort meals from Shelina Permalloo designed for busy households, and a guide to London tasting menus under £100 that still manage to feel like a treat rather than a compromise.
Not a bad week's reading, all told – even if it may leave you stockpiling pasta, side-eyeing a pistachio egg and rethinking your relationship with hot cross buns.
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Should you stock up? The hidden soaring cost that is about to affect your supermarket shop |
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| War in Iran is pushing up the cost of fuel, fertiliser and freight and it could affect everything from bread, pasta and cereals. Hannah Twiggs explains what that means for weekly shop and whether stocking up now makes sense |
Afew weeks ago, the question was whether war in the Gulf might affect the British weekly shop. Now, that question is no longer theoretical. The effects are already beginning to feed into the system.
Central banks, supermarkets and manufacturers are all describing the same thing: higher costs are already working their way through the system. The Bank of England said that the escalation in the Middle East had led to a "significant increase" in global energy and commodity prices, warning that inflation is likely to rise in the near term as a result. That matters not just for fuel bills, but for food.
When oil goes up, so does the cost of running tractors, heating greenhouses, powering factories and moving goods across the country. But the pressure is no longer confined to fuel. It is now hitting three parts of the food system at once: fuel, fertiliser and freight.
Fuel is the most visible. The conflict has driven sharp swings in oil prices, at one point pushing Brent crude to around (and at times above) $100 a barrel as fears grew over disruption to flows through the Strait of Hormuz, south of Iran – one of the world's most important energy chokepoints. Even where prices have eased, they remain elevated and volatile, which is often enough to push up costs for businesses that rely on transport and energy.
Fertiliser is the newer, more consequential pressure. According to Reuters, roughly a third of global urea shipments – a key nitrogen fertiliser – pass through the Strait. Prices have already risen markedly since the conflict began, raising the cost of growing staple crops long before they reach supermarket shelves. That is not an immediate shock, but one that typically shows up in bread, pasta and vegetables months down the line.
Read the full article here
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| M&S's Easter roast dine-in deal is back – and it's just £5 per head |
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