Food waste charity The Real Junk Food Project has hit out at retailers regarding overproduction.

The charity’s Sheffield café branch announced it would be suspending bakery collections from major UK retailers including Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Morrisons, as it claimed the retailers were producing bread that was never intended to be eaten, rather just displayed and used to spread a bakery aroma in-store.

It said that by taking this excess away and making use of it to avoid waste, it might in fact be perpetuating the problem of overproduction and encouraging wasteful behaviour. 

Greenhalgh’s director and former CBA president David Smart told British Baker: “It’s terrible, I mean it’s food that somebody can benefit from, but that’s business I’m afraid.”

He added: “Retailers have a policy to keep the shelves full. When people don’t buy them, they have shelves full of out-of-date bread.

Smart added that supermarkets that have surplus bread should give it to those less fortunate than “the average working class citizen”.

“They can definitely do something with it. I know some supermarkets already do, but it could feed a lot of people in food banks.  I am sure there is a happy medium where people are less fortunate than we are who can benefit from this surplus.”

In June Smart gave his reaction to the recent trend for ‘clean eating’, and described it as a “cutesy one-liner aiming to sell books”.