OneGuyFromBarlick

Historically, food retailing in the UK has always made a higher profit than elsewhere. That was why Walmart bought Asda, the profit margins here are so much higher than in the States. That's why they need to be big to survive and with increased market share comes increased power over the suppliers and they can';t resist using it. This completely ignores what is good for the country or a varied diet. The logical conclusion of their marketing methods is that we all eat pre-processed and pre-cooked foods as this allows them greatest control of profits.... The only way we can fight this is through education. That way we might be able to successfully combat campaigns like the closely related fast food industry initiative, 'Don't cook, just eat!' I hate it......
They say that the customer is only interested in price, if this was true everyone would be cooking raw meat and eating fruit and veg. The reality is that the majority of consumers are looking for convenience, take the packaging off, microwave for five minutes and that's tea sorted! They have forgotten what proper food tastes like.....
(Two shear joint on a bed of onions and olive oil on the stove in the front room. First of the winter slow cooking with free heat!)

Another example Stanley. A £2.40 ham hock from our butcher, done overnight in the slow cooker. Enough meat for two doorstop sandwiches (on chia), enough stock for two large pans of pea and ham soup (added dumplings of course) and two cheese, leek and ham pies. It's not expensive or rocket science as some would say. One batch of pea and ham and one of the cheese and ham pies are in the freezer for my future convenience.

Dumplings...ahh, memories of a visit to Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s when it was under Communist rule. In Prague you could go into enormous places like refectories and get a very filling hot meal that was very cheap even for the locals...and a glass of superb lager to wash it down. You sat on benches at long wooden tables and could keep to yourself or get all the local gossip while fuelling up. Great places, probably long gone now and replaced by expensive trendy restaurants!

Not so Tiz, it's a few years since we were in Prague but certainly within this century. We dined on the dumpling stew which is traditional workman fair in such an establishment near to the Paratrooper pub. No heirs and graces, find your bit of bench stick your hand up and get served. As you say very cheap and you knew you had been fed.

When roaming, you always get value if you eat where the locals do, pity those that holiday and only scratch the surface, they don't know what they are missing. Recently in Rome we stumbled on where a lot of office workers got their lunch. Tiny backstreet restaurant with more tables in the street than inside. When we were going to order our choices the proprietor noted our single pasta dishes and then suggested we should have the workers special. Three different pasta dishes on each plate, duly adjusted for carnivores or veggies, charged at less than the singles we were going to order. Why only have one when you can sample three, the special came with a choice of drink as well, about 5 euros I think, very civilised.

Ham hocks are a good example. Ask any butcher who sells jointed chicken to save you a bag of chicken carcasses which they generally throw away and make chicken soup. In any large city find out where the taxi drivers eat. It will be no frills, good quality and cheap.

Ian, I'm heartened by your news that those eating establishments still exist in Prague. There's a lot to be said for eating in large communal places where they can make good, filling, nutritious meals cheaply by doing it in bulk, on site and with a minimum of choices.

This is relevant to today's big news headline about food banks and the need for "quicker benefit payments, the extension of free school meals and a living wage to reduce hunger". I agree with all this but they're missing another big problem. It's not all about low incomes, there's also the inability of some of the people concerned to buy raw food and make meals economically. Some of them could eat well but are used to living on ready meals and takeaways which are more expensive.

Another related story...an article in The Times (Saturday) shows how many infants don't know how to use a knife and fork and this is having repercussions where more children are going onto free school meals . In particular, there's an example of a rural infants school near Buckingham in an affluent area which has 77 pupils and 50 of them have taken up school meals, served by the staff in the school hall. The head found that many of the 50 can't use a knife and fork and she and a colleague have to cut up the food for them. She says that by the time they've done it the food is cold, and lunch takes so long that they can no longer use the hall for PT in the early afternoon. The school is given £18,000 a year to provide the meals but the head calculates they would need £32,000 to be able to do it properly. They have to run a big industrial dishwasher and have a staff rota for taking home the dozens of tea towels for washing. To cap it all, some of the parents demand special meals for their children - she's not talking about those with allergies but the ones who want vegetarian meals, meals bought from specific shops, certain brands of food and so on. The head says some other schools have it even worse and one has had to shut down its library to use the room for serving meals. Amazing!

As far as school meals are concerned there should only be one variation for vegetarians. If you don't like it, lump it! This would cover ethnic variations as well, I think all creeds regard veggies as OK.
It's an old beef of mine but old fashioned Domestic Science with basic cooking skills should be taught in all schools. Remember all the girls carrying baskets to school one day a week? Forget about PC, just teach them to boil an egg!

In the 1960s when two of my daughters were enthusiastic members of Kelbrook Young Farmers there used to be a class at the annual show for the best lined cake tin, only the lads were allowed to enter!

See THIS for a report on the latest food scandal in China in which diseased meat was bought from farmers, officials bribed and the meat sold on as fresh clean meat to the public. Interesting that in China official news of things like this is only released when the miscreants have been caught.
Thankfully we are better protected here but it's as well to remember the affair of the condemned poultry meat and the 'horsemeat' burgers.

Worth looking for the Horizon mini series on dieting. A new approach.....

See THIS for a BBC report on the latest health policy proposed by Labour. They want to introduce much more stringent limits of salt, sugar and fat in processed foods, especially those targeted on children. On the face of it long overdue but the question is how will they fare against the combined might of the food processors who are perhaps the most effective lobbying organisations in history?

I watched Jamie Oliver's programme comparing diets all over the world and was pleased to find that apart from rye bread and large amounts of fish my diet matches the best. If you factor in my daily dose of Cod Liver Oil it could make up for some of the deficiency in fish. On the minus side I think I eat too much carbohydrate in the form of bread and spuds... One thing is certain I score heavily on the absence of soft drinks and sugar and these days a bottle of single malt lasts two years so no worries on that front!

PanBiker wrote:When roaming, you always get value if you eat where the locals do.

Getting more difficult , locally around London the cheaper places have closed down / forced out through rents - the tea bar on the platform of local station 70p/ cup replaced with a Costa brand - £2.95 for cheapest coffee now.

Answer is a vacuum flask and a butty.....

See THIS for echoes of the horse burger scare. Interesting that there is no suggestion of any danger to public health, simply the fact that horse meat (and goat) got into the food chain. Probably just as clean and nutritions as any other meat. Indeed perhaps cleaner than the majority of poultry meat, much of which carries Salmonella.

See this ARTICLE for the latest blow to the discredited saturated fat warnings we have been bombarded with for twenty years. Could Tizer and Stanley have been right all along? Fir pity’s sake! Read this and change your eating habits!
Later I heard a commentator saying that despite this news, 'we all know that cholesterol causes heart disease'. Indeed, but do we know what causes the cholesterol to gather in our arteries? Indeed we do and it's not the consumption but the imbalance in our diet between Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats. This shop be made clear!

It all had its origins back in the 1960s and 70s with campaigns against dairy fats and the assumption that because cholesterol was found in arterial plaque it must be the cause of heart disease. Correlations were confused with cause & effect (as still happens now, more than ever) and the `ban the fats' mafia relied on there being a positive correlation between cholesterol level in the diet and in blood, and also between cholesterol in the blood and heart disease. They couldn't find a correlation between cholesterol level in the diet and heart disease but they conveniently combined the two correlations (like adding 2 + 2 and getting 7) and still jumped to the conclusion that dietary cholesterol caused heart disease. It suited many people to believe it and the so-called `lipid hypothesis' became embedded in health advice.

Following my latest annual assessment just before Christmas gone, my bloods showed my cholesterol level had gone up over 20% and was now at a level where the algorithm used to assess the risk of a future cardiovascular event would suggest an intervention (I’m already on BP medication and have been for some time – just one of those things; I have high BP if it’s not controlled). My GP was pretty relaxed and in her advice, before we repeat the bloods in June, was simply to get a bit more active, try not to drink too much and eat a balanced diet. Her emphasis was on balance, and not getting worked up about this and that.

We will see how the bloods shape up in June.

Nothing wrong with horsemeat – have had it a lot in France and Switzerland. I was in Boulogne the other month and the biggest queue at the Saturday market was at the horse butchers. The blood sausages were selling like hot cakes. Goat is very nice too – the butcher on Barlick market has goat and I bought some the other month. Kid is the traditional Easter dish in Switzerland.

Richard Broughton

Richard, I wish you well with the levels. Have you considered the balance between long chain Omega3 and Omega6 fats. There's a book called Queen of Fats by Susan Allport. Well worth a read.....

There was an 'explanation' of 'the facts' behind the current saturated fat controversy in which the anti-fat brigade are challenging yesterday's report. Unfortunately it was riddled with half truths and fudged logic. My advice is to eat the natural fats in moderation and ignore the squabbling. Use the simple test, which tastes best and satisfies you most? Oh, and walk in the fresh air for an hour a day at least.....

Look at this, I was tempted to put it in the Mystery Objects thread! It looks like Branston having a bit of fun...but there's a dark side to this, and the Japanese company that now owns the Branston Brand is being stupid. They are undermining their brand name and playing into the hands of fraudsters. In fact they are doing exactly the same as the fraudsters who `pass off' (technical term used in the industry) their product as something well-known. Some of you will remember back in the days when Gordon Brown was PM I used to refer to him as `Godron' (sic) and the story behind that name. For those who don't know, in the days when I was involved with the food industry Godron's was the misleading name on what otherwise appeared to be genuine bottles of Gordon's Gin sold in the bars and shops of Spanish resorts to holidaymakers. The idea of course is to make your product look like the well-known brand so that shoppers don't notice and just grab it off the shelf or get served it in a shop or bar. So Mizkan Euro, the British branch of the Japanese company, is being very silly and naive, and asking for trouble in the future. If they try to defend themselves against fraudsters and passing off they'll find it difficult when it can be shown that they've undermined the brand name of Branston. This is another reason why I'm losing faith in the ability and competence of companies and other organisations.

A press release from Mizkan tells us "Branson Pickle was bought by Mizkan Euro in February 2013 for a cash consideration of £92.5 million as part of its acquisition of Premier Foods’ sweet pickle and table sauces business." It calls this pack `limited edition packaging' and continues: "For minimal financial investment covering artwork redesign and clever printing to mix up the designs, the two new front labels aim to increase the average basket purchase from one to two jars, as consumers buy the special-edition Branston Pickle labels to enjoy the ‘Bring out (the) Branston’ humour at home." Another Cunning Wheeze then, but one that might backfire in a big way in the future.

I wonder if they checked whether anyone else already owns the brand name `Bring Out'? Could be another foot-in-mouth moment!

I haven't forgotten Godron or the story behind it, he's still Godron Brown to me! Didn't know about the take over but I went off Branston quite a while ago, something different about it didn't agree with me..... Why anyone should buy two jars instead of one because of the label design beats me.....

"Something different about it didn't agree with me....."
You've probably heard about the recent finding that food companies have been cheating by using ingredients different to those on their labels. It surfaced when products supposedly containing cumin seed started triggering nut allergies. It turns out that cumin has got expensive and the companies have been substituting ground up peanut. Further such substitutions have appeared, but they're aren't flagged up on the labels. Of course you can get away with a lot when the products are baked goods sold without labels. Adding nuts where they are not expected could kill someone with a serious nut allergy but the companies don't seem worried by that.

That's the big flaw with any processed food, if an ingredient gets expensive a cheaper one has to be found. Question is whether we think they are trustworthy. I don't, that's why I refuse to eat any processed food unless I fully understand it. Even then I have no doubt I am fooled at times...

Having issued my usual blast against processed food yesterday I am forced to admit that I don't fully understand what goes into two of my favourite meat products, traditional Haslet and Haggis. All I know for certain is that 1) the squeamish wouldn't like the use of offal like heart, lungs etc. And 2) I would only buy it from my butcher who has my complete trust.