Bogofs be gone!

I've just been reading that the supermarket bogof - buy one get one free - offer is now thought to be one of the causes of childhood obesity and is to be no more. Great news.

Well, it's good news for people like me who end up taking a lettuce + a free one and have the pleasure of watching (and smelling) the second lettuce rot in the fridge. Not just lettuce: green beans, melons, cabbages. And not just veg: crisps, ready meals, breakfast cereal, chocolate, tins of soup.

Well, there is only me in my house. And so long as I have problems with my gut, there's a limit to how much I can consume. I also don't have the space to store bogofs. It's not the first time I've had to phone a relative to come and take away a bag or two of food I can't use that's approaching its sell-by date. Once, when I realised I was overwhelmed by bogofs, I spoke to the woman ahead of me in the Sainsbury queue. Would she like to take my extra lettuce and a melon? She looked as if I was trying to sell her class A drugs.

O no! she said. We don't eat fresh fruit and veg in our house!

Really?

No! Only frozen stuff. My boys just won't look at fresh veg. They prefer things like Nutella.

Nutella. That's a food?

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask: Have you ever heard of soup? Generations of boys in my family have been conned into eating their veg by a plate of their mammy's lentil/chicken/carrot & rice soup. But I didn't. I also tried very hard to stop my eyebrows disappearing into my hairline.

Forget the obesity. Think of the waste. Any time Sainsbury fails to deliver what I've asked for (even if they do manage to make a suitable substitution) they send me a free gift. One week they had no beef in black bean sauce so I got 2 bottles of Palmolive liquid soap as well as a perfectly ok substitute for the ready meal. Another time, I didn't get the Ayrshire bacon I wanted and they sent me some perfectly ok bacon plus 2 packets of hygienic hand wipes. I'm still trying to sort that lot out in my head. Right now in my kitchen there are quite a few bottles of Peroni beer which I bought at Majestic Wine at the New Year in a two-for-one offer waiting for a new home. Don't all rush!