Comment & opinion
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Comment & OpinionShoplifting is down. So why is retail crime getting more violent?
Co-op’s expectation that retail crime will fall to a post-pandemic low in 2026 represents a genuine milestone
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Comment & OpinionThe great protein panic: are we solving a problem most people don’t have?
Supermarket shelves and social feeds are obsessed with protein targets, but for most healthy adults the bigger risk is losing sight of everything else on the plate, says Dr Ando Ahnan-Winarno, founder and COO at Better Nature
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Comment & OpinionThe wholesalers that survive to 2030 won’t be the biggest. They’ll be the problem solvers
Buying power no longer sets wholesalers apart. Now it’s about solving customer problems, says Kaan Hendekli, chief operating officer at JJ Foodservice
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Comment & OpinionBlack History Month shouldn’t live on a shelf wobbler
Retailers have become increasingly supportive of Black-owned brands during Black History Month. But if that support disappears when the displays come down, has anything really changed, asks The Black Farmer commercial director Alex Emmanuel-Jones.
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Comment & OpinionWhy rewilding needs an ‘ag’ in it
The empty-glen imagery of rewilding is bad for farming and nature alike. Restoring Britain’s uplands means bringing farmers back in, not fencing them out, says Jamie Jack, member of UK Youth Food and Farming Forum
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Comment & OpinionWhat now for Aldi and Lidl after the CMA’s property decision?
Aldi and Lidl have said the CMA’s decision will change little, but both will have to remove restrictive clauses from their land deals
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Comment & OpinionThe grocery sector’s risky approach to risk – and how to fix it
Grocery manages cyberattack and currency risk with precision – but climate risk, which is already hitting margins and supply, still has no clear owner. Here are three fixes
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Comment & OpinionGreenwashing rules risk fuelling a new problem: greenhushing
Tougher regulation of sustainability claims is welcome. But without clear guidance on what constitutes good evidence, brands may choose silence over transparency, says Provenance CEO Sarah Arana-Morton
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Comment & OpinionHow food brands can resolve the industry’s trust problem
The problem isn’t always what food brands say. Sometimes it’s what the packaging, the language and the visual cues lead us to believe. Ben Martin asks whether the industry needs a clearer line between persuasion and implication.
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Comment & OpinionWhen everyone’s an expert, who should shoppers trust?
As influencers, AI and wearables flood shoppers with advice, brands will win trust not by shouting louder but by being verifiably honest, says Alice Pilkington, associate principal at Mintel Food & Drink
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Comment & OpinionEditor’s picks: Aldi x Lidl, budget hopes and falling fibre fans
Lidl and Aldi are now in competition with each other, rather than their full line rivals, as Tesco is taken to task on preservatives, and Andy Burnham explores different options for the UK’s relationship with the EU
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Comment & OpinionJust Eat gets sentimental as it plays up family time
Where once stars like Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry sang, a crop of new ads instead lean into food delivery’s role in preserving precious family time
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Comment & OpinionThe Paneer Cookbook: Riya Patel showcases cheese’s versatility
Patel is on a quest to bring the Indian cottage cheese into the mainstream. Her book, with over 80 recipes, shows just how versatile the cheese can be
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Comment & OpinionBeing busy shouldn’t be a badge of honour: focus on lifeformance
We’re normalising overwork, glorifying exhaustion and treating imbalance as commitment, says Making Business Matter’s Darren A Smith
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Comment & OpinionTesco needs to show its workings on additives
Tesco wouldn’t say which additives it had banned, which it was restricting, how it had decided on what to include in its list, where it was on the journey or, crucially, how long it would all take
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Comment & OpinionCan Food Nation 2040 overcome ‘disagreement across the board’?
Billed as the next chapter in the food strategy process, and overseen by IGD, Food Nation 2040 aims to build a coalition of industry, government and NGOs that will decide a framework of action on priority areas
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Comment & OpinionWhy marketers’ one-eyed focus on younger shoppers is flawed
The urge to recruit ‘the next generation’ often reveals more about marketers’ biases than it does about the market, says Francois Bazini, former international CMO at Suntory
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Analysis & FeaturesModern slavery: the small brands funding survivors’ fresh starts
It can feel like it takes the resources of a big company to shift the dial on the worsening modern slavery problem. But as these challenger brands show, startups and SMEs can make a real difference too
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Comment & OpinionDispatches from California: how the Iran war and Trump tariffs are hurting farmers
It comes after a summer that has battered their bottom lines, with the NFU in August going so far as to say next year’s food production could be at risk without immediate government intervention.
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Comment & OpinionIs regenerative agriculture the answer to the farming crisis?
From Jeremy Clarkson to Nestlé, everyone’s talking about soil health. After the worst harvest on record, the case for regenerative farming is as much economic as it is environmental, says Adam Leyland, editor-at-large at The Grocer