David Cameron this week ticked off his environment minister Richard Benyon for daring to offer the public advice on how they could reduce the colossal amount of food they waste each year. The Labour Party countered by claiming that struggling families did not need to be lectured on how to wrap up cheese by the richest Tory MP in the country. Ouch!
While scoring an easy political point, readers with slightly longer memories will recall Labour ministers like Hilary Benn offering almost identical advice before the last election. The government may have changed, but the issue remains.
Entrepreneurs have sensed an opportunity in this crisis. Mobile applications like Tastebud and Epicurious have been specifically designed to help reduce the 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink we throw away each year in the UK. Simply enter the food you have left in your fridge and the apps suggest a range of recipes that use those ingredients.
While politicians need to avoid being patronising, we equally need to dodge naïvete. It’s not as though our schools have been churning out students with the domestic skills of Delia Smith for the past 20 years!
”Supermarkets should be competing to create useful apps”
Whether it’s a basic understanding of food preparation and storage, budgeting and planning or understanding labelling, we have a knowledge gap. The opportunity and threat for the food industry centres on who is going to help to fill it.
Political commentators are already dubbing the battle of 2015 as the ‘Cost of Living Election’. While it’s currently the energy companies under government fire, the grocery sector will inevitably become a target.
It may seem commercially perverse for supermarkets to be proactively encouraging customers to only buy the food they need, but public and political pressure for them to behave more responsibly will be difficult to resist.
Technology will have an important part to play in this process. Whole Foods Market, for example, has already taken a lead and added functionality similar to Tastebud into its official app. There is no reason why the Tescos and Sainsbury’s of the world shouldn’t follow suit.
Supermarkets should be competing to create the most useful apps to help mums make the most of their tight food budgets. Recipes are just the start.
Looking at the bigger picture, isn’t it better that supermarkets use their branded tools to build powerful educational relationships with their customers and help them practically fill food knowledge and skills gaps?
If they do not, the risk is that third parties will fill the vacuum, or - heaven forbid - Defra!
Daljit Bhurji is MD of integrated communications consultancy Diffusion
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