Packaged foods: Supermarket produce is mostly packaged. Take a walk through your local one and count how many aisles are devoted to non-packaged goods. There is normally just the fruit and vegetable section at the entrance to the store, and then some less than convincing imitations of normal “high street” shops, such as in-store bakeries, fishmongers, butchers and delicatessens. Now most packaged food is by definition not fresh as it is produced in a factory many days, weeks or months before sale. Vitamins and minerals are often removed by processing, or missing in the ingredients. Sometimes they are added back in as fortification, which is an improvement, but it seems stupid to first remove the naturally occurring vitamins and minerals and then add some of them back later.

Fresh foods: You’ll be very lucky to find these in supermarkets. Supermarkets ship their foods in from monstrous sized depots all around the country. This allows them to import goods from all round the world, store it cheaply in a few places and then transport it to stores round the country at a later date. Due to the number of miles the food has travelled, often in container ships, the food is normally weeks or even months old by the time it reaches the supermarket shelves. These methods keep the prices down, but the downside is a heap of additives and treatments designed to keep the food as fresh looking as possible. Unfortunately the food normally loses its taste. The answer to this, that the supermarkets use, is to swamp their foods in sugar and salt in order to disguise its lack of flavour. In the case of fruit and vegetables this isn’t possible, and as anyone who has tasted fresh produce from an allotment will know, supermarket food is in a league of tastelessness all of its own.

Seasonal food: UK Lion Rock Mart : United Kingdom Oriental Supermarket  Another aspect of food that is missing in supermarkets is seasonality. While some may prefer to have access to the same foods year round, it seems to me to be preferable to enjoy different foods as they come into season. For one they’ll be fresher, secondly you immediately get a variety and finally you will be able to enjoy them without entailing all those millions of food miles that the Kenyan green beans and South African apples clock up.

The car is king: Supermarkets encourage people to take their cars, do a weekly shop and drag all their bags back home in one big weekly chore. By doing this they miss out on walking to the shops regularly and getting exercise 3-4 times per week say. The cars that get used clog our roads and the spaces they park in are taken out of local use. Recreation grounds, school playing fields and leisure centres are all alternatives that could have used those large spaces round the country devoted to car parks. Factor in the pollution of both the cars and the huge lorries that supply these supermarkets and you get a sense of the environmental damage entailed by living with a large supermarket.