WHAT'S THE STORY WITH THE LATEST SUPERMARKET WARS?

THE RECENT SPAT between two of the country's biggest supermarkets has been very public, very bad-tempered and very expensive. Over the past fortnight Tesco and Lidl have been paying big money to tear strips off each other in newspaper ads and on billboards, with claims and counter claims going back and forth about the quality and value of the products they're offering.

Last month, Tesco, perhaps unwittingly, started the mud-slinging by launching what it described as a €100 million price-cutting campaign aimed at stopping its customers switching to the discount retailers Aldi and Lidl. The campaign saw 1,000 products bundled together under a "Cash Saver" range and the retail giant making a promise that its prices wouldn't "be beaten by anyone". It also warned its rivals that it would do whatever it felt was needed to keep its word.

The move was prompted, in part at least, by repeated National Consumer Agency (NCA) surveys which showed that the discounters were between 20 per cent and 50 per cent cheaper than the more established retailers. Separate studies from the NCA showed that, because of the increasingly wide price gaps, consumers had started modifying their shopping habits in search of better value.

To promote its new range, Tesco launched a massive advertising campaign, but not everyone was convinced there was a great deal of substance behind it. NCA chief executive Ann Fitzgerald questioned whether the retailer's prices really were falling.

"We are not calling it a price war. We are monitoring the situation to see if they have genuinely reduced their prices or have simply repositioned certain products in more prominent places in their supermarkets to create the impression prices are falling," she said. "If this is a real price war, then where are Aldi, Lidl and Dunnes?"

Within 48 hours her question was answered when Lidl fired the opening salvos in a war of sorts. It launched an aggressive advertising campaign urging consumers not to spend their "cash on trash", which was how it described some of the products in the new Tesco range. Calling your competitor's product trash is, by any reckoning, pretty hostile, but Lidl went further and favourably compared a selection of its products to their Tesco equivalents.

Tesco's Value range in particular is vulnerable to such comparisons. Pricewatch compared a random selection of products from the two stores earlier this week, and, while the prices were identical, the quality of some of the Tesco products looked decidedly inferior.

Tesco's Value baked beans and Campo Largo baked beans from Lidl are both priced at 25 cent but the Tesco product contains 40 per cent haricot beans and 14 per cent tomato puree compared with Lidl's 49 per cent haricot beans and 27 per cent tomatoes.

Tesco Value sausage rolls are made with 12 per cent pork while their Lidl equivalent are made with 27 per cent pork; again the prices are the same. Lidl processed cheese slices, meanwhile, have 51 per cent cheese while the Tesco Value cheese singles are made with just 11 per cent cheese.

The Lidl campaign put Tesco on the backfoot and it was forced to set aside some of its advertising budget to counter the charges. "More than just a Lidl bit, Tesco gives you a lot more choice and quality" went one response which appeared last week.

It pointed out that its roasting potatoes had 94 per cent potato compared with 88 per cent in the Lidl variety - hardly the sternest rebuttal, but it does go some way to alerting consumers that when it comes to food quality, there is the whiff of pots and kettles to Lidl's trash talk.

ONE PERSON WHOneeds no convincing about the merits of Lidl is Katherine Nolan, the blogger behind www.lidltreats.com. The site is barely a month old but has started attracting close to 1,000 visitors every day. It runs under the motto "Eat like a prince, pay like a pauper" and aims to guide people unfamiliar with what Lidl has to offer through the discount maze.

"As the recession bites in Ireland, more and more people are 'swallowing their pride' and shopping in Lidl. Well, what took you so long?" she writes. "There's lots of good stuff in there and this blog is intended to guide you to it."

Nolan, a web developer from Kilkenny, told Pricewatch that she was prompted to start the blog after reading "all the sniffy coverage that Aldi and Lidl were getting" in the national press, including, one suspects, this newspaper.

She says one of the "greatest myths about shopping in Lidl, or Aldi for that matter, is that it's for people who don't really care much about food. Food and its quality matters very much to me. I enjoy buying it, cooking it, eating it and, especially, feeding it to other people. Where good food is available at cheap prices, taking advantage of that it is just common sense - buying what's good in Lidl means I can then without any guilt spend more than I otherwise might on food elsewhere."

She set herself a challenge recently to feed herself and her partner for a week on just €50 (her 10-year-old son was left out of the challenge). She managed to do it for €10 less than that. She says the store has a "fantastic range of fresh foods" although she is reluctant to buy fresh meat there because her local butcher often works out cheaper.

"The bottom line is, why should I pay inflated prices in one supermarket when I know the same things are for sale in Lidl for a lot less? I never was price conscious until I started shopping in Lidl. I am now, though, and that can only be a good thing."

She does regret setting up the blog without giving it more than a couple of hours' thought and, in hindsight, thinks it was unwise to have used Lidl's name in the title. It limits what she is writing about and she only went with Lidl rather than Aldi because it was closest to her home. "I'm still half expecting Lidl to get in touch to try and shut me down," she says.

They'd hardly be that stupid.