RACHEL MOORE: Yellow sticker food is for all to scrap over

Do you or don’t you? Who should and who shouldn’t swoop on the reduced shelf as discount items are priced up?

If you can afford full items full price, is it immoral, unfair and greedy to pop cut-price near its use-by date into your basket when it could be depriving less well-off people who need to save money more?

Does it mean you’re a callous sharp elbowed selfish type or simply cash savvy and environment and anti-food waste-minded?

Or is it all fair in love and bargain hunting and those judgemental eyebrow raisers tutting in disapproval at the Range Rover Discovery driver swiping a basket full of yellow stickers through the self-service checkout can buzz off and mind their own business.

Who would have thought that a waste solution would spark finger-pointing and shaming debates about whether grabbing a bargain should be based on need or want?

Putting it out there now – I am a shameless yellow sticker hunter, who can sniff out a markdown at 20 metres.

There’s little as tempting to me as the yellow sticker shelf, pop up sale or charity shop.

What’s not to like about paying less and save?

For years, too many people were afflicted by some daft snobbery about not wanting to appear hard-up by targeting bargains. Anyone scavenging for cut price items must be on their uppers was how those who wanted to appear to be ‘doing well’ interpreted.

Seeking out and bagging bargains implied some sort of failure at life to them, meaning they were unable to afford items full price.

I’ve never understood the stigma.

But somehow picking up close-to-use-by cheese, salad or seabass fillets was, for some people, downmarket, embarrassing and sad. FYI, spotting a half price seabass fillet never fails to prompt a bouncy jig of joy –and always will.

Now, when everyone’s feeling the squeeze, hovering by the mark down section is more acceptable because it’s saving on food waste.

However, the judgemental are now firing volleys at people doing the hovering, accusing some, based on their appearance, of having no right to the discounted goods. They should be ashamed of seeking a bargain because they are taking what should rightfully be in the basket of someone worse off.

Yup. People are falling out and who is entitled to bag a supermarket bargain, with one camp accusing the other of not needing to save money as much as others and should swerve by yellow stickers to be picked up by those more in need.

I ask you. There was an entire debate on Mumsnet about it at the end of last year with women on their high horses, aghast at people who looked perfectly “well heeled” snapping up yellow stickers. How very dare they?

One contributor described ‘professional yellow sticker hunters…they know exactly when food is reduced and they’re in there with their trolleys formed in a corral so no one can get into the area of reduced stock.”

Another went through some serious soul searching, feeling “morally conflicted” about buying discounted food during a cost-of-living crisis when people were worse off than her. Although few things “beat the thrill of finding a profiterole stack reduced to 25,” she said.

“But should I be thinking about people who might be depending on picking up such bargains just to make their food budget stretch?”

All a bit patronising and polarised, implying Louboutin heels and Mulberry bags were trampling and stampeding poorer folk who needed half price mince to fill their freezers.

Strangely, people take a very different view of buying from charity shops, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, other second-hand sites and the recycling centre shops, because they can virtue signal doing their bit for the environment and climate.

That shopping comes under ‘recycling’ reusing and repurposing, therefore nicely middle class and socially acceptable.

Barmy.

It’s the same for coupons and vouchers now since Martin Lewis made it chic and clever to make money work and secure discounts.

A YouGov survey commissioned by Tesco found that 69% of customers are actively hunting for discounted items and 33% are doing it more often, with more strategising their shopping time to be on the spot at the right time.

To make people feel more comfortable it is rebranding its "reduced to clear" areas to "reduced in price - just as nice".

I always pop into my village Co-op on the way to work to try to pick up marked down salad and fruit for lunch. Why pay £1 for a salad when there’s one for 56p that in a few hours will be on the turn and good for nothing but the compost bin?

As food prices continue to rise there is nothing wrong with the food that has a reduced price on.

If you’re targeting yellow stickers, you are winning at shopping and helping the environment whatever your income or social status by preventing food being thrown away.

If it still rankles to pick up cheap items, make up the difference and do something positive and philanthropic with it to help people in real need.

It’ll do far more good than judging and fretting about such small fry issues.