In a scathingly critical report, the campaign highlights a common practice by many retailers of freezing pre baked loaves of bread, and then re-baking them in store, which has the effect of softening the loaves and making their crusts crunchier.

The campaign says it contacted six retail chains, and found that only Marks and Spencer stocked bread baked in-store that met the campaign’s definition of ‘Real Bread’ , i.e, made with flour, water, yeast and salt, with all natural ingredients and using no processing aid.

The Real Bread Campaign seeks to highlight the increasing loss of jobs in the bakery industry and the worrying trend of including hidden additives in bread.

According to the report many supermarkets make use of a legal loophole which does not force them to disclose a number of additives on their bread labels.

By law, the burden falls on the customer to ask what additives are in the bread rather than the responsibility falling on the retailers to publish.

According to the Food Labelling Regulations 1996, processing aids such as enzymes used to affect colouration and prolong softness need not be declared at all, even if a customer asks for an ingredient list.

The campaign claims that loaves of bread that have been re-baked, which many retailers sell often go stale much faster and requires far more energy to produce.

In the most recent UK Customer Service Index, the UK’s supermarket chains received an average score of 80 out of 100 for their customer service in a study which polled some 26,000 shoppers.

The top retailer which provided consumer satisfaction in the index was Waitrose who scored an average of 86, and was closely followed by Marks And Spencer who scored 85 points.

Asda came in third in the rankings, scoring 81 points, and was followed by Sainsbury’s and Iceland. The UK’s largest retailer Tesco scored 79 out of 100.

Bottom of the supermarket customer service list was the Co-op with a score of 75.

The top non-food retailer in the UK John Lewis was John Lewis and as a category non food retailers managed an average score of 79 points.

The results of the survey show that the retail sector in general has managed an improvement of four points during the last two years, and now top the industry consumer satisfaction rankings ahead of tourism and consumer services.

Speculation about which retailers emerged as the winners of the Christmas retail price wars have intensified over the last few weeks.

Clothing retailer Next will also be announcing its results on Wednesday and is also expected to report a rise in sales. Sainsbury’s reports on Thursday and is expected to report a slight decline in its sales figures, largely as a result of a drop in food price inflation.

John Lewis which is viewed as a benchmark indicator for the overall performance of the entire retail sector has seen improvements in the performance of both its high end food store Waitrose and at its flagship department stores, boosting expectations of improvements in trading results of the industry in general.

After what can only be described as a terrible economic calendar year, expectations have risen after an extremely robust and busy Christmas shopping season.

The level of discounts declined compared to the previous year, suggesting that retailers have managed to hold on to their margins. However sales figures for the period may be artificially inflated due to a large increase in the number of consumers purchasing big ticket items such as electrical products and white goods before the increase in VAT becomes effective on January 1st.