Asda's executive director Rick Bendel believes it is too. And, in an extraordinary claim, he says Britain's second biggest grocer is in a position to fix it.

He told me during a recent interview: "Every parent when a child is born says, 'my child is going to have a better life than me'.

"That's what parenting is about. How many parents today are scared they cannot do that?"

The advertising guru gave a similar message at a major retail industry gathering. It would have been interesting to see the audience reaction.

Later, Bendel told me: "Britain is broken for lots of reasons and we are at the heart of every family."

According to Bendel, supermarkets have a duty to support families who are worried about their finances and their employment and what will happen in the future.

"Supermarkets can fill the void that has been left by the demise of the trusted bank," he claimed.

He cited recent YouGov research which showed that 40 per cent of people have less trust in supermarkets since the downturn and 88 per cent of people agreed that the food industry was putting profits before people.

Now he said there is "fertile ground" to change these beliefs and get in step with what families want, rather than management consultants.

So can a supermarket mend Broken Britain?

Grocers can and should offer good value for money, especially for those on low incomes. We do visit them regularly, so in a sense they are at the heart of every family.

Rick's boss, Andy Bond, certainly believes grocers can have a social purpose. In an interview, he said that supermarkets must deliver "good, honest value" and that over the last decade, too many businesses have focused on profit rather than helping their spectrum of customers.

This brings us to the obvious question: can supermarkets profit from doing social good? In Asda's definition, social good is offering good value and, in that, they are doing well, according to the latest results.

Furthermore, in Bond's view, those companies that do not offer good value will "do least well" in a recession.

So it pays to be good, in his universe.

I asked him if he agreed with the expression that Britain is broken. Perhaps wary of the headline potential, he chose his reply carefully,

"I wouldn't differentiate Britain from a lot of other Western countries but consumerism will be redefined in the future."

He goes on: "We have become a society of consumption and of waste and I think that is going to change dramatically and change for a long time."

His message is simple. Return to the fundamentals of shopkeeping; that is, provide "good products at good prices".

Debt-fuelled consumerism is over, he believes, at least for the next few years.

People have less money to spend. They expect their cash to go further. Retailers – and indeed any businesses that sell goods and services – that offer value can prosper.

According to Bond, this point leads neatly onto the sustainability agenda. At the outset, I'm not sure everyone would agree here.

I've had conversations with businessmen and women who say that efforts to go green have gone out of the window following the economic downturn and the priority now is survival alone.

There is plenty of sense to Bond's logic however. We will have less money to spend, so we will waste less and therefore take more care over what we consume and before long we will be recycling almost everything.

Is that such a bad thing?