Riches In The Food You Don't Eat

Two stories from BBC News:

Tesco Profits Break Through £2bn

The UK's biggest supermarket chain posted underlying pre-tax profits of £2.03bn ($3.83bn), up 20.5% on 2004.

Source: BBC NEWS | Tesco profits break through £2bn

and

Britons Throw Away Third of Food

Around one third of food grown for human consumption in the UK ends up in the rubbish bin, new figures reveal. Statistics from the government and food industry show each adult wastes food to the value of £420 each year.

Changes in people's habits and scares over food safety are helping wastage to increase by 15% every decade, the BBC's Costing the Earth found.

Source: BBC NEWS | Britons throw away third of food

Through the clever use of well-documented predatory pricing, supplier manipulation, and other strong-armed business tactics to close off any viable, local competition, the supermarket cartels are openly generating obscene profits from the bulk manufacture and sale of food that it seems consumers just throw away.

Endless streams of in-store offers of '3 for the price of 2' or '2 for 1' and the occasional mass-produced food safety alert make overconsumption the default activity in supermarkets. This enforced overconsumption tactic of standard supermarket practices is now producing huge profits for the supermarket chains, huge amounts of waste, and huge costs to the safety, vitality, and the diversity of the food we eat and the local communities in which we live.

To date the onus has been on local communities to justify why they have no desire for a supermarket to be installed somewhere in the vicinity of a thriving community.

Until this process is reversed, and the onus is placed on the supermarket chains to plead their case to local communities, consumers are left with little other option than to vote with their feet and stay out of the supermarkets that actively encourage this hideous waste to occur.