Square watermelons (and even pyramidal ones) have been around in Japan for several years, and now grocery stores in the UK will sell them, according to the Daily Mail. Tesco will start selling the melons in October for less than £5 (approximately $9), far cheaper than the cube-shaped melons usually retail for in Japan. The melons, which are shaped by the clear plastic boxes they're raised in, will be imported from Brazil.

A Suffolk town refused to give permission to build a Tesco superstore in their neighborhood in 1997 and, since that time, local businesses and agriculture have flourished. Despite an overall decrease in the number of smaller, independent stores throughout Britain, the number of businesses in town has remained the same and the number of local/regional food suppliers increased from 300 to 370, meeting the demand from local butchers, bakers and greengrocers. The local shops primarily source from local sources, and have not found themselves to be limited in what they can offer their customers. In fact, they have slowly been expanding into more diverse foods and vegetables as suppliers find people to grow them.

Over the past decade, many other store proposals from developers have been turned down and the locals' position gets stronger after each refusal. The hardest part is shaking the mindset that values convenience and sometimes price, over quality and belief. The locals would rather know where their food is coming from, who is selling it to them and that they are supporting quality food in their community, than save a few pennies on carrots from elsewhere in the world at Tesco.

Stores like Waitrose and Marks & Spencer have already put effort into sourcing more local ingredients, which has made customers and local business people alike very happy as well as demonstrating that local foods can be utilized on a larger scale. This is useful to note because it is not possible for the Suffolk strategy to work everywhere; some areas are simply not suited to agricultural purposes. What the Suffolk example does show is that the local food movement can still thrive in a modern environment as long as people are committed to it.

 

The UK's top supermarket Tesco has announced that they are to introduce bio-degradable carrier bags. It also aims to cut the number of plastic bags given to customers by nearly a billion each year.

According to letsrecycle.com the UK gets through over 17.5 billion plastic carrier bags a year from supermarkets alone. So you would have thought they would be happy with the supermarkets plans. Not at all.

The fact they are to be biodegradable got the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne a bit fired up. He accused the supermarket chain of misunderstanding waste issues, suggesting that degradable plastic bags will produce greenhouse gases when they break down. You just can't win sometimes.

Sales of long pasta like spaghetti and linguini are down at Tesco, the UK's top grocery chain. The decline in popularity comes from young diners opting for shorter pasta because they can't eat the long strands without getting sauce all over themselves, Tesco says. Not surprisingly, demand for short pasta like penne and has gone up. "Unfortunately some younger British diners appear to lack the same culinary skills that their parents have which is why we've had to tailor our new range accordingly," a Tesco spokesperson told Food Business Review.

Now this is interesting. Following the introduction of health warnings on the front of food packaging by major UK supermarkets, sales of certain products fell. In some cases, the drop was quite dramatic.

Today's Sunday Times reports that within two months of Tesco's introduction of nutrition labels, sales of Prawn Mayonnaise sandwiches have fallen 26%-37% over the past year. Sainsburys says that sales of Chicken Madras have fallen 40% since it began its labelling scheme 15 months ago. Similar declines were reported for Sainsbury's other ready meals.

While the government's Food Standard Agency has been trying to introduce a "traffic light" nutrition labelling program since 2004, individual supermarkets' efforts are having an immediate effect on customers' purchasing habits.

Other indications show that consumers are heeding the various warnings. Sales of Salmon en Croute fell by more than a third; that's unsurprising when you read that a package contains 91% of the daily recommendaded saturated fat intake. Croissant sales fell by 8%. In comparison, sales of low-fat, low-salt egg and cress sandwiches doubled.

The British supermarket chain Tesco has launched a new product into its stores. Their Healthy Living Tomatoes are supposed to contain twice as much lycopene as an ordinary tomato. Lycopene is an antioxidant found in tomatoes that is believed to help prevent or decrease the risk of getting cancer, though some recent research suggests that it may also help to lower blood pressure.

The Healthy Living Tomatoes are bred naturally and are sold on the vine. A spokesperson for Tesco said that the tomato is the first product in a line of naturally super-functional foods that they hope to introduce. Though a varied diet is important to overall health, says the market, they are hoping to target consumers who want to get more bang for their nutritional buck - in addition to getting more nutrition for their actual buck.

Tina Cosby got quite a surprise when she took the broccoli she bought the day before at Tesco out of her refrigerator. Nestled amid the florets was a footlong snake.

Cosby, who has a fear of spiders, was hysterical when she saw the European smooth snake. While the snakes are not poisonous, she's lucky it was only a baby. They're known to grow up to three feet long. Tesco has apologized to the family, and has assurances from its suppliers in Spain that this will not happen again.

Hailed in some quarters, and with me, as an unnecessary 'nanny-state' imposition the planned introduction of a traffic-light system on food packaging will not be taken up by Tesco and Morrisons, two of the UK's largest supermarket chains.

The UK's Food Standards Agency has been planning for months to introduce the nationwide scheme as an easy way for consumers to check if food is healthy or harmful. I mean how difficult is it to know that chocolate coated hobnobs ain't that good for you without having to stamp the packet with a red circle? Tesco also raised concerns that things like apples - with high sugar content - would also have a red circle.

While other supermarkets such as Waitrose are (or were) planning to comply with the voluntary scheme many food producers such as Kraft Foods, Danone, Kellogg's , Pepsi and Nestle were not. 

It seems a long time in coming. Concerns over the dominance of the four big supermarket chains in the UK have been bubbling along for several years.

At last, an inquiry is to be launched after the Office of Fair Trading ruled that the Competition Commission must launch a probe into their activities. The main source of concern is that the top supermarkets - Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrison's - are forcing local convenience stores out of business. Their dominance of food retailing has risen dramatically over the past few years.

While there are avenues independent retailers can take - specialism, niche and upmarket, this is obviously not suitable for every town and area. To me, the obvious step is to give substantial tax rebates (lower council imposed rates for example) to the one or two shop independents to allow them to prosper.

The UK's top supermarket chain, Tesco, is expanding not only into Eastern Europe and the Far East but now into America, a market where many foreign companies have come unstuck. (Top UK firms Marks & Spencer, Dixons and Next all tried and failed).

There was huge secrecy surrounding the plans to launch in America. Company executives were said to have masqueraded as Hollywood film producers claiming they were making a film set in a supermarket as cover for their research. They also built a complete store hidden in an aircraft hanger as the "set".

Tesco revealed plans to launch a £250 million "assault" on America's West Coast in 2007. Up until these plans were revealed, Tesco's main link with America has been a deal to bring the Cherokee clothing brand to Europe.

Specifics are still vague but it appears they will shun the big store format for convenience stores similar to the Tesco Express concept in Britain - smaller convenience stores situated at the heart of the high street - suggesting they are not planning to compete with market leader WalMart.

Tesco currently operates 2,467 stores in 13 countries.