I was a little surprised last week to read that supermarket private label product sales have grown by 85 per cent in the past five years and that private label products are expected to make up around a third of supermarket sales within five years.

That's scary!

Do people really think that the supermarkets won't increase their prices once they have wiped out the competitor brands?

All this discounting means that someone is paying the cost of purchasing $1 litres of milk and $2 loaves of bread - and it's usually the producers - like Milk Maid Marian who wrote recently about how falling milk prices affect her dairy cows.

The major supermarkets are now introducing premium, organic and fair trade products to try and attract private-label buyers 'from all walks of life'. Sneaky -lets just hope that people who are prepared to pay a premium for organic and fair trade aren't prepared to buy supermarket own labels.

Has anyone, partuicularly those of you in small regional towns, been forced to buy a supermarket own label because there was no other option?

We're still going well with the Skipping the Supermarket Challenge and I'm pretty certain we'll likely continue to skip supermarkets next year. Although I suspect moving to a regional area is going to test us.

How are you going with skipping the supermarket?