Which Foods Are Going Viral in “Culinary Wasteland” Britain?
That bread was sold out again.
At the weekend, I walked into the supermarket as usual to buy next week’s “survival rations”. I made my way to the bakery aisle, looking for the sourdough loaf called Jason’s Sourdough, only to find — to my disappointment — that the shelf was completely bare, with nothing left but a small white “being restocked” label. In just a few months, this was already the third time I’d come back empty-handed.
This sliced bread, priced at £2 (roughly 19 yuan), had always been a staple in my kitchen. How had it suddenly become so sought after?
Searching on my phone, I discovered it was apparently a massive online sensation. Social media was awash with glowing praise — people posted videos of empty supermarket shelves, others said finding a loaf was like “winning the lottery”. Someone joked: “Getting your hands on Jason’s sourdough should be treated as a full-time job.”
In 2024, premium olive oil, vinegar, flaked sea salt and this sourdough loaf became the hottest items on UK supermarket shelves. According to Waitrose’s annual food and drink report, demand for apple cider vinegar grew by 6% last year, while sales of flaked sea salt from Cornwall surged by 79%.
Demand for quality extra virgin olive oil also rose by 15%. Despite prices soaring due to a sharp drop in 2024 production, shoppers continued to flock to extra virgin olive oil.
After years of tighter budgets during the pandemic, consumers seem willing to spend more on food — pouring a larger share of their budget into affordable staples such as bread, oil and condiments.
But the trend is about more than the food itself. Repeatedly in social media posts and news coverage, a single phrase keeps cropping up, pointing to the collective anxiety behind this shift in consumption habits: ultra-processed food (UPF).
I. The Anti-Ultra-Processed Food Movement
As industrialised food has become ubiquitous, people have realised that many health problems have little to do with the nutrients in a product; rather, it is the processing itself that drives out-of-control eating habits.
In 2009, Brazilian nutritionist Carlos Monteiro first proposed the NOVA classification system, which divides food into four categories by degree of processing, with the last being ultra-processed food (UPF).
Ultra-processed foods are complex products that undergo extensive industrial processing, often containing emulsifiers, flavour enhancers and artificial flavourings. They have long shelf lives and are convenient to consume, yet they are a far cry from their original ingredients.
Since the 2010s, a growing body of research has linked high consumption of ultra-processed food to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, potentially triggering stronger appetite stimulation and a greater metabolic burden.
In recent years, ultra-processed food has entered public policy debates and international discussions. In 2014, Brazil revised its dietary guidelines to explicitly recommend reducing UPF intake. France, Canada, Belgium and other countries have since written UPF restrictions into their health policies.
In the post-pandemic era, people are more health-conscious than ever, and the concept of ultra-processed food keeps appearing in the media, in books, in short videos and in consumer reviews. In the UK, more and more shoppers have begun poring over ingredient labels, fuelling a movement against ultra-processed food.
Jason’s sourdough clearly rode the same wave. The brand’s sales director once stressed: “We don’t use emulsifiers, additives or preservatives. That is the very foundation of this brand.”
II. Eating Clean, or Eating Respectably?
Waitrose’s annual survey also found that 55% of consumers prefer cooking at home, 46% said they cook every day, and a considerable number have tried baking their own bread or pickling their own vegetables over the past year.
According to Campbell’s Q2 2025 data, the proportion of consumers cooking at home has reached its highest level since the pandemic, with spending in the food-to-eat-at-home category rising across all income groups.
The cooking habits formed during the pandemic appear not only to have persisted but to have become more entrenched. This shift has fuelled demand for quality staple ingredients and, indirectly, the popularity of olive oil and sea salt. Rather than reaching for a ready-made sauce or a snack with a mile-long ingredient list, consumers are increasingly willing to pay for the basics.
Yet this change in taste has not stopped at the palate; it has quietly extended into the realms of aesthetics and identity.
For instance, nearly every major UK supermarket chain stocks its own-brand extra virgin olive oil at around £5 (roughly 48 yuan) for 500 ml. But last year the standout was a bottle of Citizens of Soil olive oil, priced at three times that.
The brand champions principles such as regenerative agriculture and women-led production, but what truly sets it apart is its wine-bottle-style design and its refill pouches that encourage customers to reuse the bottle. Elegant, eco-friendly and effortlessly photogenic, it seems to tick every box for what consumers imagine a “good olive oil” should be — and has become a new way to showcase one’s taste.
House & Garden magazine reported that a beautifully designed bottle of olive oil is steadily taking red wine’s place as the go-to gift when visiting friends. Tinned sardines share a similar trajectory.
Although supermarket own-brand versions sell for around £1, the Ortiz yellow tins — with their stylish packaging and a price of £6 (roughly 58 yuan) — remain hugely popular.
The wave of gentrification seems to have swept through every corner of the kitchen. From tinned fish to tinned beans, from vinegar to salt — the humble staples once tucked away at the back of the cupboard, serving as mere background players, are undergoing a glamorous makeover: prettier, more storied and pricier.
Social media and algorithm-driven feeds play a decisive role.
According to Waitrose’s annual report, 18- to 34-year-olds no longer rely on traditional recipe books. Instead, they search social platforms for “what to have for dinner”, and short-form videos and illustrated posts are reshaping how people decide what to eat.
Under popular hashtags such as #eating clean, countless food and lifestyle bloggers answer that question with the same carefully chosen ingredients and beautifully styled spice jars on display.
III. The Anti-Ultra-Processed Food Movement Must Also Examine the Food Industry Itself
For many more people, ultra-processed food remains the cheapest and most readily available everyday staple. The Food Foundation’s latest data shows that healthy food costs more than double per 1,000 calories compared with unhealthy food.
The UK government’s recommended weekly spend on a healthy diet works out at roughly £9 (around 87 yuan) per person per day. For the lowest-income households, that means forking out 45%–70% of their disposable income. In reality, low-income households spend just around £4 (roughly 38 yuan) per person per day on food — less than half the government’s recommendation.
Moreover, the movement against ultra-processed food was originally a reflection on the modern food industry: rejecting the proliferation of additives, calling on people to return to the essence of food, and ultimately aiming to make eating healthier, simpler and more equitable. Yet in the rush to commercialise, this de-industrialisation initiative has, ironically, reinforced a more hidden, more polished form of industrial structure.
Take sourdough, for instance. More and more brands now tout their use of natural starters and additive-free recipes, which does set them apart from the “fake sourdough” loaves lining supermarket shelves. Yet they too depend on automated equipment and standardised processes. Behind the packaging and the marketing, they look as close to artisanal baking as you could get, when in reality they are simply finding a balance between efficiency and brand narrative within an industrial system.
What’s more, there is as yet no universally accepted labelling or standard for ultra-processed food, and different groups interpret the NOVA classification with varying degrees of consistency.
For example, Jason’s “wholemeal ciabatta” and “Tiger roll” were classed as “ultra-processed” by the open food database Open Food Facts, which stirred some debate among consumers.
In the absence of agreed standards, some brands, eager to meet consumers’ expectations of “clean” and “low-additive”, have quickly tethered the idea of “clean and healthy” to exclusive-terroir sourcing, premium craft and sustainable packaging. In this way, foods that simply meet basic nutritional needs have been reimagined as higher-priced, more beautifully packaged lifestyle goods with a stronger sense of status.
Fanned by the influencer economy, consumer choices still gravitate towards a handful of products that have “broken out” into the mainstream. Far from stepping outside the industrial system, this trend has reinforced a new consumption hierarchy in food — one steeped in cultural capital.
It is also a systemic issue that spans the food industry, social equity and cultural imagination — one that calls on people to learn how to identify real ingredients, understand nutrition and reflect on their own consumption.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ultra-processed-foods
https://www.johnlewispartnership.media/news/johnlewis/28112024/waitrose-food-drink-report-2024
https://foodfoundation.org.uk/publication/broken-plate-2025
https://uk.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?search_terms=Jason%27s&search_simple=1&action=process
Editor: Z’en