Beneath the surface of everyday commerce, a hidden crime quietly drains between £410 million and £2 billion from the United Kingdom each year — not through violence, but through deception woven into the food supply itself. Researchers have produced the first systematic accounting of food fraud's true cost, revealing that businesses bear the heaviest burden while smaller firms, lacking the layered defenses of large retailers, remain the most exposed. The study is less a final answer than a lantern held up to a largely unmeasured problem, illuminating how much societies lose when trust in someth