Frozen food is cool in everyway

According to this morning's Guardian UK shoppers are cancelling their orders of organic food and are abandoning bottled water in favour of the tap. Premium-label heat-and-eat meals are left on the shelf, along with exotic fruits airlifted in from Africa. There is a new air of austerity in the aisles of supermarkets and a back-to-basics recession diet - which has made frozen food cool again. Until recently many shoppers regarded frozen food as a rather ghastly, downmarket option. Fresh was best, and stores cut back on freezer space to make room for more chilled products. But now frozen food is back in vogue as shoppers search for value and try to cut back on waste. Sales of Sainsbury's frozen peas and roast dinner platters have more than doubled since last year and its frozen garlic bread is ahead nearly 40%. The biggest increase has been sales of frozen raw prawns - up 400% year on year. According to TNS Worldpanel market research, the fastest growing grocers are discounters such as Aldi and Lidl - which devote more space to frozen food than their bigger rivals.

Brian Young of the British Frozen Food Federation puts much of the decline in frozen-food sales down to snobbery - and reckons Marks & Spencer started the rot. "M&S led on chilled food, particularly ready meals, and made great margins. But prices went up because there was so much wastage. The packs were open and visible and people believed it was better. The other supermarkets followed. It was just a form of snobbery, and that is now fading away."