Changing lifestyles mean that eating habits, and consequently food shopping habits, are altering. Factors such as access to a car, ease of public transport, ownership of appliances including microwaves and deep freezers, and availability and prioritising of time all affect the way we shop.

Post-war Britain was accustomed to stretching meagre supplies, as many foodstuffs remained in short supply. Feeding the family was a labour-intensive occupation with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. Now, the dramatic increase in the number of working women and in the number of single households has changed the pattern of daily life. Recent research suggests that we have become a nation of 'grazers' rather than sitting down to set, regular family meals. An extensive market has thus emerged for snack food and preferably snacks that can be eaten 'on the hoof' at that.

While many shoppers will do a weekly bulk shop from the supermarket, there is still a demand for top-up shopping from convenience stores. In fact, such is the demand for ready prepared meals and snacks that the main supermarket chains, once primarily associated with out-of-town superstores, are returning to High Street sites, selling sandwiches and snacks at lunchtime before changing the stock to ready meals and wine as workers head home.

A proliferation of cookery books and 'celebrity' chef programmes might have us believe that we have become a nation of food lovers. We are, however, curiously reluctant to pay for it, spending less of our disposable income on food than ever and less than our European counterparts. On the one hand, shoppers in the UK happily pay over the odds for products saving time and effort, with ready-washed, mixed salads and peeled vegetables being prime examples, yet on the other are relentlessly seeking out supermarkets' value lines.

However, a National Opinion Poll commissioned for this report detects a slight shift in opinion, with more respondents saying that a wide range of choice of products is more important than low prices. A previous survey undertaken in 1998 found that 71 percent of respondents tended to shop where they were assured of low prices, while 69 percent cited a wide choice as important. The survey carried out for this report concluded that 60 percent felt choice important and that the percentage of those governed by low price had fallen to 57 percent.

The retail grocery market is fiercely competitive and has been accused of squeezing farmers and suppliers to keep its own margins intact as it offers cheap food to shoppers. There have been accusations of profiteering from the foot and mouth crisis, with the Prime Minister accusing supermarkets of having farmers in an 'armlock.

Food safety scares have provoked people to turn to organic food that, being more expensive, grows market value. However, even the organic movement has recently been tainted with bad publicity with a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority that its claim to be free from artificial pesticides and fertilisers is illegal. Additionally, no effective European Union (EU) system is in place to check on the origins and authenticity of organic food and, because so much is imported, there have inevitably been reports of bogus organic food reaching our shops.

Certainly, there is now an impressive choice of products with endless different varieties of, for example, fruit and vegetables. In fact, there is a school of thought that blames the increasing incidence of food allergies on the fact that our diet is so varied and includes exotic produce that is not natural to our immediate environment.

The major grocery chains may have been cleared of operating a cartel but their power is indisputable. They offer us the cheap food we have come to expect but, in the light of so many disturbing facts about intensive food production and in a current wave of sympathy towards the farming industry, it is likely that at least some of us will learn that good food must be paid for and will make an effort to buy directly from source. The growth in popularity of farmers' markets would seem to stand testament to this and the Internet offers suppliers and producers easy access to their end-user, knocking out the profits of retailers.