For a slightly different - and easier- teatime option, I chose to buy a frozen cheese and tomato pizza for 66p, which would go well with chips made from our wonky potatoes in the oven or air fryer. The supermarket giant launched its first UK store in Birmingham in 1990. By 2025, Aldi plans to have 1,200 UK stores.

To conduct this study, Which? worked with the specialist agency Mystery Shoppers to audit the availability of a range of budget items designed to support a healthy diet across the four largest supermarkets using a traditional business model in the UK: Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Tesco. To assess the local competitive environment the Proximity to Supermarket Retail Facilities domain from the Priority Places for Food Index is used as a proxy. This domain includes data on average distance to nearest large grocery store (Geolytix Retail Points v15) and the average count of stores within 1km (Geolytix Retail Points v15). A lower decile means there are relatively fewer retail facilities in the local area and thus lower local competition. We define higher competition as areas in deciles 7 to 10; and lower competition as areas in deciles 1 to 6. Source: Which? analysis of the Priority Places for Food Index. Proportion of local areas within a constituency in the bottom quintile of the index [ 9].People struggling to afford food are seeking support from a range of sources. The government undoubtedly has an important role at the central, national and local level supporting people through this crisis. People will also be turning to local charities and community groups. However, the fundamental role of supermarkets in the UK’s grocery market means that these businesses have a key role to play in supporting consumers. Where we identified systemic issues with data accuracy, we removed these instances. In the data set we excluded: Having been a chef for a decade, it’s been drilled into me to remove any and every suggestion of a lump from mashed potato (or pommes purée , as it’s called in the swankier places I’ve worked, where it’s swiped across your plate and sold at quadruple the price). Lumps have no place in professional mash and anything less than a velvety-smooth texture is a sin.

This week, StokeonTrentLive decided to put Aldi to the ultimate test to see just how much you can get for your money. Food inflation is at the highest rate in over 45 years, with prices rising by 19.2% in the year to March 2023.

Lunch ideas:

To identify store size we used the roof size as a proxy, the data for which was provided by Geolytix. Small stores have a roof size less than 280m2, mid sized stores between 280m2 and 1,400m2, large stores between 1,400m2 and 2,800m2 and very large stores over 2,800m2. For ease of analysis we then combined mid and large stores to create the mid-large category used throughout the analysis. The values reported here are medians and the boundaries are the same as used in the Priority Places for Food Index. Asda has very few small stores in the UK and so we did not include any small Asda stores in our study. The small stores referred to are made up of a balanced number of Morrisons Daily, Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local stores (see figure 7 below). When it comes to achieving that perfect mash though, people rely on loads of different methods – each household has their own way of doing it. The very poor availability of budget items from our list in small stores would have distorted all our further analysis of this data, consistently dragging median availability values across stores down in a way that would not have been representative of true budget line availability in mid-large and very large stores. For this reason, we chose to exclude small stores data from the rest of our analysis, allowing us to give an accurate description of budget line availability in mid-large and very large stores. Availability of budget lines is good in high priority places, in large stores

I’m definitely eating out less, and probably batch cooking a bit more, getting more frozen stuff. I'm not getting fresh fruit and veg [anymore], I'm getting vegetables that I can put in the freezer.” Which? Consumer Insight panel member

Consumers are adapting their habits to meet the challenge of rising prices, including by switching supermarkets, buying cheaper items and looking for special offers. But for those already struggling to make ends meet, there has been little respite from rising prices. In February 2023, one in six (15%) people reported skipping meals. These rising prices will affect all UK households, but will be disproportionately challenging for those on lower incomes, who spend more of their budgets on food and drink. Our recent analysis has suggested that retired and single parent households are the hardest hit [ 6]. You might just be surprised by my fool-proof method too, which involves using an everyday household item to get the best texture. (Hint: it’s not a potato masher.) Before heading into store, I tried to think of substantial and - reasonably - healthy meals that I could make with as few ingredients as possible. Consumers are doing their best to manage the challenges posed by rising prices. Members of our Consumer Insight panel tell us that they have been switching supermarkets, batch cooking, choosing own-brand products, and purchasing fewer fresh items to try to make their cash go further [ 2].

With this title, however, comes great responsibility. So, it’s not without a significant amount of research and experimentation – not to mention months of strenuous, in-depth potato eating – that I’m about to tell you the best way to make mashed potato, to get it perfectly silky and smooth and raise the bar for this most worthy side dish. Source: Which? analysed data provided by Mystery Shoppers. Data was collected 21 February - 24 March 2023. Sample size = 260 visits to 88 stores around the UK (excluding small stores) [ 29]. As part of its Affordable Food For All Campaign, Which? is holding a Parliamentary event alongside the Food Foundation on Tuesday 25th April encouraging MPs to put pressure on supermarkets to better support their customers during the cost of living crisis.We next examined what items shoppers were most likely to struggle to find in mid-large and very large stores. Section 3 presents our recommendations to supermarkets for how they can better support their customers through the worst food inflation in 45 years.