There has never really been such a thing as ‘cheap food’. Manufacturers have, for years, been developing ways of mixing food with a vast array of additives and chemicals, like the mixology industry does to convince us that there is yet another wonderful way of consuming alcohol. The food manufacturing business has consistently pushed the price of food down with its concoctions – but now, the era of ‘cheap food’ as they call it – is over.

The reality is that basic food staples are getting more expensive and ‘cheap food’ is bad food. It makes people ill by giving them a whole host of ailments from diabetes to heart attacks.

The cost of living crisis means that the government is worried about the ‘fuel or food’ narrative hitting the headlines, which is why it has delayed a Food Bill to enshrine tough food targets in law. The UK’s obesity epidemic lies at the feet of an industry who have doggedly pursued cheap and largely addictive foods in the search for profits.

But the world is changing fast and so is the food industry.

Former Sainsbury’s CEO Justin King has said the UK’s “golden era” of cheap food has come to an end as high grocery bills continue to climb.

The Grocery Gazette reports that – Despite Tesco and Sainsbury’s reporting tripled and double profits, King has claimed that supermarkets can’t absorb extra costs entirely or protect consumers from price hikes.

“The headline profit numbers are of course, large in the context of any household budget,” King told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“But the margins in supermarkets are around 3%. So even if supermarkets made no profits at all, they wouldn’t really be able to make a huge dent in the cost inflation that is coming through the system.

The news comes as food CPI has reached 5.9%, the highest since December 2011.

Last week, the Bank of England also said inflation was likely to exceed 10%, the highest since 1982.

“We have been perhaps through a golden era. We spend much less as a proportion on average of our household budgets on food than we had almost any time in history, and that’s been [on] a long, gentle decline,” King explained.

“So I suspect what we will see is a higher proportion, across the piece, spent on food for the longer term. It won’t actually be that high in historical terms but it will require adjustments in terms of how we all prioritise our family budget spending.”

However, King added that the government played a role in ensuring that low-income families could cover rising food bills.

The former Sainsbury’s boss highlighted the £20 Universal Credit uplift during Covid, and said he would be “very supportive” in re-instating that approach.

“For most of us, we can make choices about how much of our household budget is on food … but for some, of course, those choices don’t exist. That’s why the benefits system has to exist,” King added.