At first glance, war in the Gulf can feel oddly distant from the British weekly shop. Iran is not where we buy our bananas. Our strawberries are not shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Most of what fills UK supermarket shelves is grown here or imported from Europe, Africa, America, Asia and Australasia, not from the Middle East.
And yet, the moment the region flares, the price of the basics can start to wobble. Not because Britain suddenly can’t get hold of food, but because food is glued – more tightly than we like to admit – to energy.
If you are looking for a neat “will this cause shortages?” story, the evidence points to food security being most challenged in the Gulf states. Iran and Saudi Arabia are heavily reliant on imported food staples such as grain and wheat, much of which passes through the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf ports like Jebel Ali. Smaller Gulf states like Kuwait and Bahrain are particularly exposed because almost all their food arrives by sea via Hormuz, and alternatives are limited. Disruption to these shipping routes will immediately threaten food imports to these regions.
Europe does not generally face outright shortages from Middle East conflict alone, but we aren’t immune to the effects of war either, and we are likely to feel this through prices and supply chain pressures.
The UK is a big food importer. Defra put the value of UK imports of “food, feed and drink” at £64.1bn in 2024, the latest statistics. But the source of that food matters: the government’s own food security analysis says the EU remains the main source of UK food and drink imports and is “essential to the UK’s food security”.
Most of the big, boring, high-volume stuff that keeps fridges stocked – dairy, meat, fruit and veg, ambient staples – is sourced domestically or through European supply chains.
The UK Food Security Report is blunt about what this resilience has looked like through recent shocks, incurring after the Ukraine war, which caused shortages of wheat, maize and sunflower oil: “At no point in the last three years has the UK population faced shortages of food items for a sustained period.”
So why does the Middle East still matter? Because while Britain doesn’t rely on the region for tomatoes, it relies on it, and the sea lanes around it, for something that touches almost every tomato’s final price tag. The real risk is energy, not edible imports.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s key energy checkpoints. In 2024, the oil that flows through it averaged the equivalent of about 20 per cent of global petroleum liquids consumption, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The same agency also noted that in 2024, roughly 20 per cent of global liquefied natural gas trade transited the strait, primarily from Qatar.
In other words, even if the UK is buying most of its food from the EU, the price of moving, chilling, processing and packaging that food is heavily influenced by global oil and gas markets. When those markets lurch, food costs tend to follow.
That is exactly the channel economists are watching closely now. Reuters reported this week that UK grocery inflation has edged up to 4.3 per cent (four weeks to 22 February 2026), reversing a recent dip, with the Bank of England watching food prices closely because of how they shape public inflation expectations. The surprise move has been linked to the broader jump in oil and energy prices amid the escalation.
Unlike the Ukraine war, this is not about a single ingredient suddenly becoming unavailable. It is about the cost base for the entire food system.
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A tanker loading condensate at Iran’s Bandar Asaluyah energy hub – oil and gas exports from the Gulf help shape global energy prices (Middle East Images)
Energy shock works its way through the food chain in a series of fairly unglamorous but unavoidable ways. Farming itself is heavily dependent on fuel: tractors, harvesters and other machinery run on diesel, while many crops rely on heated glasshouses and other energy-intensive inputs.
Once food leaves the field, the processing stage adds further exposure to energy costs. Bakeries, dairies and food factories all depend on large amounts of electricity and gas to run ovens, pasteurisation systems and production lines.
Transport then becomes another pressure point. Moving food from farms to warehouses, from ports to distribution centres and finally to supermarkets, relies on lorries and shipping that are sensitive to fuel prices.
The cold chain – the refrigeration required to keep food safe from depot to shop floor – is also highly energy-hungry. Even packaging is affected, as much modern food packaging is derived from petrochemicals, tying its cost back to the price of oil.
Retailers can absorb some costs for a time. Shoppers can trade down. Promotions shift. But when energy prices stay high for long enough, customers feel it at the till and it becomes harder to pretend food security “is someone else’s problem”.
The macro backdrop matters too. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the Iran war could have a “very significant” impact on the UK economy, principally via higher energy prices and wider market disruption. If energy-led inflation pressures rise, central banks can become more cautious about cutting interest rates, which keeps borrowing costs higher for businesses, including food producers and retailers.
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Map showing the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding shipping lanes – a key route for global oil and gas (Getty/iStock)
A sensible reader might ask: has this happened before?
History offers a few clues as to how shocks in global energy markets can ripple into grocery prices. The most famous example remains the oil crisis of the 1970s, when the 1973-74 embargo sent oil prices soaring and helped drive a broader surge in inflation, including the cost of food. It remains the reference point economists often reach for, largely because it showed how quickly rising energy costs can spread through the wider economy when fuel suddenly becomes scarce and expensive.
Later geopolitical conflicts have produced similar dynamics, though often on a smaller scale. During the Gulf war in 1990, oil prices jumped sharply after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but the spike proved relatively short-lived. The episode demonstrated that while energy shocks can be powerful, their lasting impact depends heavily on how long the disruption persists.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 underscored how geopolitical events far beyond Britain’s borders can still shape what shoppers ultimately pay at the supermarket checkout.
ONS analysis shows UK food and non-alcoholic beverage inflation rose to 19.1 per cent in the year to March 2023, the fastest pace for over 40 years. The ONS explicitly linked the surge to supply disruptions over the previous 18 months, including the invasion’s impact on global grains and fertilisers and on European energy prices.
That period also supports the “availability versus affordability” point. Prices soared; the system largely kept working.
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Tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, where tensions can send shock waves through oil markets (Reuters)
So what does that mean for today? Whether shoppers ultimately feel the impact in their trolley will depend largely on how long the disruption lasts. If oil and gas prices remain elevated for weeks or months rather than days, the pressure on the food supply chain becomes harder to ignore.
Retailers may be able to absorb some of these pressures for a time, but if costs continue to rise, the scope to shield shoppers becomes increasingly limited. Conversely, if tensions ease and energy markets stabilise, the impact on supermarket prices may prove relatively modest.
It’s tempting – and reassuring – to look at a map and note that Britain’s food supply is diversified, with strong European sourcing. But the tension in the Strait of Hormuz is a reminder of how quickly an event thousands of miles away can nudge the cost of living back in the wrong direction.
So, no – this is not a story about imminent empty shelves, but it is a story about how an oil and gas shock risks making dinner more expensive again.