When food shortages bite: what to eat and drink in the age of empty shelves

I have long known about the fragility of UK supply chains - I first wrote about the problem over a decade ago, and I have also survived the great toilet roll shortage of 2020. But this spring, I couldn't get hold of lettuce — hardly a crisis, except I was writing a book about salad. It wasn't just one store - due to strikes in Spain, fuel prices and the weather, none of the supermarkets had them.

It's not just food. Lettuce: Thanks to a combination of war, weather and rising energy and feed prices, the UK could see less of everything from mustard to coffee, wine to risotto rice. When you're used to being able to buy anything you want, it's a shock to remember just how global this island's food supply is.

We produce a lot of food here: the UK is close to self-sufficient in grains like barley and oats - although 2020 was a bad year for wheat - but the global grain shortage caused by the war in Ukraine is still impacting us, driving up feed and fuel prices, and making it harder to produce dairy, eggs and meat.

This is not not just shortages either: food inflation is expected to reach between 15 and 20 percent this year. When supply chains are saturated or farmers can't make ends meet, food becomes expensive and fast. The UK has to import around half of its food supply, and here, unlike poorer countries, people go hungry not because of a lack of food on the supermarket shelves, but because they don't. can't afford to buy any.

< p class="dcr-3jlghf">There's still enough food for everyone, so rather than panicking, it's time to think laterally. Whether they're unaffordable or unavailable, here are the items you might be missing and what you can use to fill the gaps.

Eggs

Chicken feed prices have increased by almost 50%, and egg producers say their margins are almost non-existent, so a shortage is expected by the end of the year. Given that we each eat over 200 eggs a year in the UK, this could be a problem.

What to buy insteadThere's no easy substitute soft-boiled eggs and soldiers, so we all have to buy a chicken, but vegans swear by the aquafaba alternative to eggs, the cooking liquid left over in cans or jars of legumes, which can be used for make surprisingly good mayonnaise or whipped into meringues. Then there's the silken tofu which, with a pinch of black salt, makes a passable scramble or frittata; and in baking, bananas, applesauce, and ground flax seeds all act as neutral-tasting binders.

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