This is like reading the funeral rites for Caribbean farmers. We already can’t cope, not with input and fertiliser prices as they are. Starving mouths, hungry bellies, and wasted lives will be the legacy.
(Windward Island farmers spokesperson)
With our less ethical supermarkets (Asda, Tesco, Aldi etc) signing up to a price war on bananas, it looks like the producers will find themselves in seriously financial trouble. When you’re surviving on a subsistance wage any cut, however small, means your children don’t get medical care, can’t go to school, won’t get fed properly.
Bananas, like bread and milk, are grocery staples and as such are the first port of call for any supermarket looking to squeeze their competition. While supermarkets always claim to be taking a hit on their profit margins in creating these Loss-Leaders, experience shows that price cuts are passed onto producers. Price wars reduce the price only temporarily as these are obviously unsustainable – but for the growers the effects are long-lasting.
Really, how tight are UK customers that they would grab cut-price bananas to save 50p on their weekly shop – we have free education, healthcare – banana producers and their families do not.
BUY ETHICAL: Show supermarkets you care about others
Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Co-op, M&S – all supermarkets with a good track record in ethical sourcing and selling (see The Rough Guide to Food for evidence of this) – offer affordable Fairtrade bananas. The Fairtrade Foundation says: ‘the Foundation has commended Waitrose and Sainsbury’s for the scale of their commitment to Fairtrade, and Sainsbury’s saw overall banana sales grow by 10% following their 100% conversion to Fairtrade.’
Buy Fairtrade to help protect the livelihoods of growers.
Banana Split: where your money goes (Source: BananaLink, October 2009)
- 40% of the retail price of bananas goes to supermarkets
- 2% to producers
- Does this sound fair to you?
- With Fairtrade 12% goes to the producers
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Read The Rough Guide to Food for more on ethical food and supermarkets (and bananas).
If you’re a cupcake fan – or if you’re not sure what they are and are bemused by their popularity – take a look at my new article for The Times on ‘The Psychology of Cupcakes‘.
Boutique cupcake bakeries are the new luxury stores. Here’s some photos (taken by Rachel Adams Photography) of lovely retro Sweet Tooth Cupcakery in Manchester (see article for details).
Lorna Royle, owner of Cupcakery, Manchester.
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The Cupcakery Counter
Bath’s Country Cupcakes was one of the six winners of National Cupcake Week (14th-19th September) with their unusual Courgette and Chocolate cupcake.
Country Cupcakes vanilla cake with glitter and edible rose
Fairycake recipes coming to this blog soon…
Cupcake fans head to the centre for cupcake blogging: Cupcakes Take the Cake
New Products: High profits
It’s ironic that the biggest-selling ‘healthy’ food product category internationally is one associated with digestive health (in the US cardiovascular health is top-selling category; this is second in UK) – perhaps ironing out problems caused by all the salt, sugar, fat and additives in other food and soft drink categories.
Over 2,861 new ‘functional food’ products claiming to promote digestive health were launched by profit-hungry food manufacturers between 2005-2009 according to the latest Mintel’s Global New Products Database (GNPD).
Artificially fortified products (most listed common first)
* Spoonable/ drinkable yogurt
* Drinking yogurt and cultured milk
* Tea
* Cheese
* Snacks/cereals/energy bars
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Healthy food: Worth the extra expense?
The area of health claims for food is coming under increased scrutiny by the EU which will see all products needing to provide evidence before health claims can be splashed across packaging and adverts. About time too as manufacturers rely on the gullibility of shoppers (and their general sense of confusion around food) to flog questionable products – usually at highly inflated prices – to line shareholders pockets.
Take a closer look at the ingredients next time you buy: the main ingredients in probiotic drinks (supposedly to aid digestive tract health) are water and sugar.
Meanwhile
Major US food co. General Mills, has been threatened with a legal challenge by State Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unless it changes the misleading health claims of bestselling Cheerios (Toasted Whole Grain Oat) cereal. Under US law the cholesterol lowering claims would classify the product as an unapproved drug as it implies eating it can help treat (or even prevent) heart diseases or related conditions.
Visit your local greengrocer or farmers’ market to take advantage of plentiful (and cheaper than usual) tomatoes. Here’s what I’ve been making in the last week: recipes for instant suppers and long-lasting storecupboard goodies.
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Easy Gazpacho (serves 4)
I became addicted to ice-cold Spanish gazpacho soup after tasting the best ever version at a roadside café in Gaucin, Southern Spain. The secret lies in using sherry vinegar – most English cookery books state red wine vinegar. It’s very quick and easy to make: all ingredients are whizzed in a blender.
Method
1. Rough cut the following and whizz in a blender:
250g fresh tomatoes (better the flavour; better the soup)
1 medium red pepper
Half medium onion
Half cucumber (you can peel this, I don’t bother)
Large clove of garlic or 2 small
1 thick slice white bread (you can use up stale bread)
Then add:
450ml ice-cold water
Few pinches of sea salt
Pinch or two of cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil (see tomatoes on flavour)
1 tablespoon sherry wine vinegar (* see below)
Leave in the fridge for half hour before serving (or 15 minutes in the freezer if you’re in a hurry). Will keep in the fridge for about 2-3 days.
Secret ingredient
* Valdespino Vinagre de Jerez – buy from: Fine Cheese Co. (£4.50), Brindisa, Borough Market and at Papadeli in Bristol (£6.95)
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Zingy Tomato and Ginger Pasta Sauce (serves 4)
This is one of my favourite quick (and unusual) suppers – based on a recipe River Café Green recipe.
Method
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
2-3 cloves garlic
1 small onion
1 red chilli
2” piece of ginger peeled and chopped roughly
Juice 1 lemon
Parsley (or basil)
1. Sauté onion in olive oil and then add garlic, chilli, ginger for a further 5 minutes gentle cooking.
2. Add tomatoes and lemon juice, simmering for a further 15-20 minutes.
3. Whizz in a blender and return to saucepan to warm through.
4. Add few pinches sea salt and 4-5 twists of black pepper along with chopped herbs.
Serve on spaghetti with grated Parmesan.
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Tomato Chilli Jam
(makes 3-4 medium jars – the squat 0.25l Kilner jars are perfect for this)
After serving this at the Rough Guide to Food book launch, I’ve been asked many times to put this recipe on the blog. A great way to enjoy summer tomatoes even in the gloomy winter months. I recently found an old-ish (2 years?) jar and it tasted great. This recipe is based on one in Tamasin Day-Lewis’ excellent Good Tempered Food book.
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Method
1kg ripe cherry tomatoes
4 red chillis
8 cloves garlic
3” piece of ginger
40ml Thai fish sauce
600g caster sugar
200ml red wine vinegar
1. Puree the following with a blender: half the tomatoes, chilli, garlic, ginger and fish sauce. Place in a saucepan.
2. Add sugar and vinegar to the pan. Bring mix to the boil and turn down to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally.
3. Add quartered tomatoes.
4. Simmer for about 20 minutes or until it appears to be setting (test this by putting a little of the mix on a saucer and leaving in fridge for 5 minutes).
5. Pour mix into sterilized glass jars (I wash the jars and leave in oven upside down for 10 minutes at about 150 ºC and then boil the lids on the stove for about 5 minutes). Cover with waxed discs and lid. Leave to cool before storing in the fridge.
“Organic no healthier than ordinary food”
“Organic food: the shock truth”
Great headlines. But they have more to do with a government dealing with the effects of recession together with a powerful supermarket and industrial farming lobby than actual facts. This story originates from an FSA commissioned survey of fifty years of research into the nutritional benefits of food. It is not new research – but merely a summary of what we already know. By applying a set of criteria which excluded all but 55 studies it does not really represent the state of current knowledge about the subject and is therefore rather a waste of taxpayers money.
Importantly the FSA created an artificial cut-off date of February 2008, thereby neatly avoiding having to include the most thorough and up-to-date new research into nutritional and organic food carried out across the EU (see below). Fortunately The Independent bothered to seek out the facts and presented this information but TV news viewers, readers of the Daily Mail and many other papers will come away with a misleading report.
FSA bias against organic
The FSA (a UK government body which advises the public on food) has a history of playing down any research which provides evidence of the benefits of organic and in 2004 in its own review admitted that “the vast majority” of people consulted felt the Agency had “deviated from its normal stance of making statements based solely on scientific evidence” when “speaking against organic food and for GM food.” The truth is that the FSA has to balance its advice with economic and business considerations and cannot be seen to be criticizing non-organic agriculture which provides the majority of the country’s food and which provides the cheapest food.
In 2000 FSA director, Sir John Krebs, said:
“[the public are] not getting value for money in my opinion and in the opinion of the FSA if they think they’re buying food with extra nutritional quality or extra safety.”
Three years later he had changed his mind:
“organic food contains fewer residues of the pesticides used in conventional agriculture, so buying organic is one way to reduce the chances that your food contains these pesticide residues.”
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So is organic healthier?
Pesticides
“long-term exposure to pesticides can lead to serious disturbances to the immune system, sexual disorders, cancers, sterility, birth defects, damage to the nervous system and genetic damage.” European Commission, 2006
The main health argument for organic is the absence of the many artificial additives used in intensive agriculture: antibiotics, growth hormones, GMOs and agrichemicals, including fertilizer, fungicides, herbicides and insecticides. Scientists admit that we have no way of knowing yet (they’ve only been used extensively in the last 30 years) what the effects of a cocktail of low-level but sustained doses of toxic chemicals will be on human health.
Recent UK government data showed that 44% of non-organic fruit and vegetables samples contained pesticides. A trawl through the government quarterly records of pesticide residues by supermarket and brand reveals persistent low (and sometimes high) levels of pesticide residues in our food.
Pesticide use is increasing without the ordinary consumer realizing it: over half of all pesticides ever produced have been applied since 1984. In the UK alone, 31,000 tonnes of pesticides are applied to UK farmland each year.
Read The Rough Guide to Food to find out more about babies and children regarding pesticides.
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Nutrition
After years of conflicting advice (and minimal investment on the part of the UK government into organic food research) the findings of a recent £12-million, 4-year EU project across 31 countries found in favour of organic.
The EU research findings:
- Organic fruit and vegetables contain more nutrients and 40% more antioxidants – substances which scientists believe can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease, Britain’s biggest killers.
- Organic foods have higher levels of iron and zinc, vital nutrients lacking in many people’s diets.
- Organic milk contains up to 80% more antioxidants; higher levels of vitamins A and E.
- Organic wheat, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions and lettuce had between 20 and 40% more nutrients.
Milk is the organic food most thoroughly researched by scientists. A major research project carried out by Liverpool University and Glasgow University (2006) provided evidence that for a few extra pence on the price of organic you get:
- 68% more total omega-3 fatty acids than non-organic milk.
- One-third reduction in the incidence of eczema.
- Higher levels of vitamin E and beta-carotene.
- 60% more conjugated linoleic acid (a fatty acid which lowers risk of heart problems and cancer).
Meat The FSA has acknowledged (but not actually promoted the fact) that beef produced from organic animals fed a predominantly forage-based diets rather than grain, has lower levels of unhealthy saturated fatty acid concentrations and higher levels of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. And who can forget watching a cooked factory chicken having the vast amounts of fat squeezed out of it on TV.
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Cost: avoid overpriced supermarket organic and buy direct
It does cost farmers more to produce food naturally – without growth promoters and pesticides and with high animal welfare. But unlike industrially-produced food where manufacturers effectively overcharge for cheap processed food concoctions of fat, salt, fillers, sugar (and additives to conceal the lack of real ingredients) – organic producers tend to undercharge in order to make their products affordable. We’re only just waking up to the links between industrially-produced food and the obesity epidemic in the US/UK but it will be a while before the FSA gives us any real information on this – for obvious reasons.
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Get a veg box: save time and money
Award-winning Riverford Farm works with organic farmers regionally to sell direct to over 40,000 customers across the UK and makes great efforts to keep costs down and the quality always very high. Good Housekeeping’s always stringent research showed recently that vegetable box delivery schemes won hands down when compared to supermarkets on convenience, value for money and quality (all prices were compared over a 6-week period). Setting up a box delivery from scratch is as easy as ordering from Amazon. It’s much quicker to order than supermarket online and there’s no delivery charge.
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Read the Organic Food chapter in The Rough Guide to Food for more on this.
On a recent trip to Bergamo – a hilltop town north of Milan – I discovered a truly delicious cake. Lurking in the chiller of an excellent deli (which was, as luck would have it, only metres away from the flat we were staying in) was a wonderful looking chocolate and pear cake. It was nutty, not overly chocolatey and the pears were really tasty.
In the interests of forensic examination – necessary in order to work out the recipe – I managed to have a couple of pieces during a 3-day stay.
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Back home in the Food Digest kitchen I had a go at making it. I’d got the main ingredients (but no quantities obviously) from the deli counter but wasn’t sure if the pears had been cooked before being put into the cake mix. I based my interpretion on another recipe I’d developed for a chocolate almond cake. Version 1 was too chocolatey (I added dark chocolate as well as cocoa) and the pears were not cooked enough (I put them in raw).Version 2, made a few nights ago got much closer to the real thing and I might settle at this version for now.
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Chocolate and Pear cake
Ingredients
170g (6oz) Softened butter (no problem in this heat)
170g (6oz) Caster Sugar
Dash of vanilla extract (or a good quality vanilla essence)
90g (3oz) Plain flour (Italian ‘OO’ flour would be very good in this)
90g (3oz) Ground almonds (it’s a faff but grinding your own tastes much better)
3 eggs (room temperature is best for any cakes)
60g (2oz) Cocoa (use Green & Black’s – it needs to be a good quality one to taste good)
3 Pears (not ripe ones – use relatively hard ones – conference are good for this)
Heaped tablespoon of toasted almonds (you can buy them ready-toasted)
Cake tin: 22cm (9″) round springform tin (the ones with the clip at the side for easy dispensing)
Method
1. Poach pears in water for 10 minutes or until they look a bit transluscent, drain, cut in half lengthways taking the pips etc out and leave to cool.
2. Beat the butter and sugar, then add the vanilla.
3. Add eggs, one at a time (if any curdling add a little of the flour).
4. Add the ground almonds and sifted flour and cocoa – beat in gently.
5. Line the cake tin with silicone paper.
6. Pour the mix into the tin and scatter a ring of the crushed toasted almonds around the outside edge (I push them in a bit).
7. Arrange the pears ,bottoms out, on top of the mix and gently push them down a little in to the mix.
8. Into the oven at 175ºC for 35-40 minutes – middle shelf (check it’s cooked by inserting a knife into the cake – if it comes out clean it’s cooked).
Love fish and seafood? Well enjoy it while you can as it’s running out – and fast.
Charles Clover: The End of the Line
Across the UK an important new film, The End of the Line is being previewed based on environmental journalist, Charles Clover’s book of the same name – ask your cinema when they are screening it. I researched the fishing industry and fish farming for the Rough Guide to Food and what I found out changed the way I buy fish and seafood.
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Out of sight – out of mind
Forget the tiny wooden fishing boats of our nostalgic imaginations. The majority of the fish we eat are caught out at sea thousands of miles away – far from prying eyes. With a lack of effective regulation and financial rewards aplenty, factory fishing ships are scooping up their prey – and any unlucky turtles, unwanted fish species, dolphins, coral – in vast quantities.
The sight of a bottom trawler dredging up everything in its wake and its heavy rollers crushing the life out of seabed creatures is depressing as is the fact that the largest trawler nets can hold 18 enormous 747 planes.
The film shows how our industrial fishing techniques are so effective that we’re literally emptying the sea of all life – and it won’t come back. Overfishing of cod off the Canadian coast has led to a complete collapse of fish stocks there: 40,000 fishermen lost their livelihoods and we lost an important breeding ground. We are overfishing to the extent that once the larger predator fish (and their young) we are fishing down the food chain to their prey (lobsters, shrimps) and once they’ve gone to mud, worms and jellyfish. Unless you like the idea of grilled jellyfish and a squeeze of lemon, we need to take action now.
This is not the stuff of fantasy: the loss of Canadian cod stocks was so shocking and unexpected that it led to new international scientific research and so, now we have facts and figures to back up the anecdotal tales from fishermen the world over, that there are fewer and fewer fish in the sea. Scientists estimate that most of the fish we enjoy now will have collapsed by 2048.
What can you do?
Despite a bleak picture is of how we have destroyed yet another natural resource, the film does offer hope and encourages us to fight back to show the industry and politicians that we, the consumer, do care where our fish comes from.
1. Ask before you buy: only eat sustainable seafood
Look for the MSC label or MCS label on the fish you buy (if it’s not labeled you can’t be 100% sure it’s sustainable). Check the list of fish that are ok to eat and fish to avoid. Buy sustainably caught prawns (read my book if you want to know why).
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2. Show the food industry you won’t support their blasé approach to fish: buy sustainable fish.
Boycott John West tuna – they came out as the worst offender in a recent Greenpeace survey; buy Fish4Ever tuna, Sainsbury’s own label tuna, Waitrose’s sustainable tuna and fresh fish.
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3. UK Marine Bill: Lobby your MP
Scientists support the development of Marine Reserves to protect areas of the sea from fishing to allow sealife and fish to recover. The aim is to protect 30% of the ocean (at present less than 1% is protected). There’s only one reserve in the UK (Lundy) and we need more. The UK Marine Bill is being considered by MP’s this summer.
Tell politicians you care about the future of fish and back the campaign for marine protected areas and responsible fishing.
Contact your local MP and tell them you care about this.
Contact the UK Fisheries Minister, Huw Irranca-Davies, to tell him you support Marine Reserves. He recently said: ‘We want ambitious reform that integrates fisheries management with that of the wider marine environment.’ (April 09) so support him against the fishing industry lobby.
Email the UK Fisheries Minister
ps.huw.irranca-davies@defra.gsi.gov.uk
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4. Watch the film and tell your friends about it
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5. Follow the film on twitter for the latest news
On Friday 22nd May, 60 children (9-10 year olds) at St Stephen’s Primary School in Bath learnt how to make pizzas from scratch. I went along to help out and thoroughly enjoyed the day. I was impressed by how smoothly it went. This was a great example of how, with imagination, cooking can be a valuable part of children’s learning in all sorts of ways.
The monkey pizza group with mascot
The pizza project
Working in groups of 4, the children had been working on this project all week: designing their pizza toppings and making their own pizza boxes using folded card and plenty of colouring pens. The cooking rota, penned up on a whiteboard, helped the day run like clockwork and the children were incredibly well behaved (absorbed by the task, they just got on with it).
Pizza box designers
Chopping mixed herbs from a home herb garden
One boy had brought in herbs from his own herb garden; others had very determined ideas about exactly where their olives and circles of mozzarella were going; all had prepared well.
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Homemade oven
Being a progressive school, they didn’t use a normal kitchen cooker but instead built their own oven outside in a grassy bank – complete with its own chimney (a hole in the top of said bank). Group by group, children carefully carried their pizza down the school’s landscaped field to the oven where they watched, captivated, as it cooked.
One group designed a monkey pizza
This unlikely-looking cooking device proved the star of the show and produced really professional pizzas complete with wood aromas, and crispy crusts (and a certain amount of charcoal). There were a few teething troubles – we had to prop up the baking racks with flowerpots to prevent the base cooking too fast and occasionally rush to halt the progress of sliding pizzas with sticks.
The cat pizza group
By the end of the day we had around 16 large pizzas. Some looking as if they’d come straight from a traditional Italian restaurant; others were carefully designed to look like a cat, a monkey or the Italian flag.
The grand finale: a pizza sale
An Italian flag pizza
The pizza sale
The groups set up shop in the playground with hand-drawn price tags and posters, to sell slices of pizza to parents (they had worked out the ingredient costs and were doing some pretty nifty marking up!). Meanwhile in one of the classrooms a slide show allowed parents to see highlights of the day.
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Cooking in school
Active Kids 'Get Cooking' scheme
In an ideal world all schools would have a teaching kitchen so that all children would learn how to cook and how to enjoy experimenting with ingredients and techniques. Thanks to Jamie Oliver highlighting the dire state of our nation’s school food and cooking abilities, cooking is now firmly on the agenda in education, but we still lack the facilities.
Some of the children pictured are wearing special Active Kids ‘Get Cooking‘ aprons. This is a national initiative run by the British Nutrition Foundation (sponsored by Sainsbury’s) to encourage cooking in primary and secondary schools. But what is needed is more government and local authority funding: Ed Balls signed off on £150 million funding for new kitchen teaching areas in 170 lucky schools – but we need more.
As it has been so wonderfully sunny and hot today, I really wanted to make a summer-y cake and so searched through my cookery books and adapted a few recipes to come up with an orange cake recipe. We’d already eaten a quarter of it, when I decided it was so delicious (and so quick and easy) that I should share it.
Orange Polenta Cake
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Ingredients:
225g butter (softened)
225g caster sugar
3 eggs (medium)
Zest of 2 oranges (see kitchen kit for my favourite zester)
Juice ¾ orange
200g ground almonds (tastes even nicer if you grind some whole ones)
120g polenta flour (a fine pale yellow flour)
1 tablespoon plain flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
Few pinches salt
Method:
1. Cream butter and sugar
2. Mix in almonds and zest
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time
4. Mix in flours, baking powder and salt
5. Add orange juice
Pour mix into a lightly buttered and lined 8” loose-bottomed cake tin (preferable one with high sides of about 1.5”)
Bake for 45 minutes at 160°C
Leave in tin and hand-squeeze the juice of a whole orange over the top while still hot. Then sift a dessertspoon of icing sugar over the top.
This is especially good served with a dollop of crème fraîche or mascarpone.
Every Italian knows that a tomato pasta sauce is easy and quick to make. The prevalence of tomato sauce in a jar is perhaps a sign that we really have lost the plot. It bears no resemblance to a ‘real’ homemade pasta sauce despite feats of manufacturing trickery with thickeners and powdered this and that. Even if we’ve mislaid our tastebuds over the decades, perhaps the high price/profit margins might – in our credit crunched times – make us think twice? I tried 6 sauces in a jar to see if any could come close to a real pasta sauce.
TASTE TEST
Supermarket Tomato and basil sauce in a jar
(prices are for large-size jars around 500ml)
Worst: Joint winner: Loyd Grossman (£2.10)
What on earth is Grossman doing endorsing this? Really unpleasant in all ways; sauce appeared to be an a watery slick of oil speckled with tomato juice and enormous lumps of tinned tomatoes. It tasted as though the ingredients had not been cooked in any way?
Smell: vinegar with musty herb top notes!
Taste: Bland, no discernable tomato taste, but with strange acidic aftertaste
Appearance: lumps and watery ‘sauce’, brown herbs, visible oil slicks
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Worst: Joint winner: Seeds of Change (mass market organic-owned by Mars) (£2.29)
Why are the Soil Association endorsing this? The long list of ingredients and fillers (tapioca starch, locust bean gum) surely do not comply with the ethos of organic which aims for as little processing as possible.
Smell: peculiar strong, vinegary aroma
Taste: acidic taste/ cloying texture which coats mouth unpleasantly and stings slightly. No tomato taste detected. Long list of ingredients competing unsuccessfully with each other.
Appearance: overly orange, visible oil slicks, very thick (because of the fillers not the quality of the sauce)
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Best: Morrisons’ ‘Best’ (£1.40)
A surprise winner – own-label supermarket brand.
Smell: Slightly tomato-ey
Appearance: most like a home-made sauce – not too thick, not too thin
Taste: Definite taste of tomato – but still a little too herby.
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Verdict:
All must try (a lot) harder and fix the balance of flavours. Not good value.
Would I eat them again? – No – and my children have begged me not to make them eat them either!
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THE ALTERNATIVE
Real (quick) tomato sauce
15 minutes start to finish
40-50p for 4 people
• 1 fine chopped small onion and 1-2 cloves chopped or squashed garlic fried gently in olive oil (no need for extra virgin here) for 5 minutes min.
• Add pinch of oregano and thyme (dried herbs are fine and add a certain sweetness)
• Pour in a tin chopped tomatoes (better the quality, better the taste: obvious really. I’d go for Waitrose own label (more tomatoes than other brands). Simmer for as long as you’ve got – about 15-20 minutes is ideal).
• Add black pepper and pinch salt.
• Ring the changes by adding a few tablespoons of mascarpone cheese or some mushrooms or red peppers and/ or some fresh basil
That’s it: 5 minutes to get the ingredients chopped and into the pan. 10 minutes to cook. It is ultra convenient: you can heat it up later, leave some for the next day.
Time and motion: While the tomatoes are simmering, put the pasta into a pan of boiling water to cook for 10 minutes. Meanwhile make a quick salad or toss some French beans into boiling water as a healthy accompaniment.
So why doesn’t the UK cook?
Europeans are mystified by the quantity of TV cookery programmes we in the UK watch and the amount of processed foods we eat. The myth that all cooking is just too hard or that in a 24-hour day we can’t spend 15 minutes making a meal has been perpetuated by the self interest of the food industry. With their vast advertising budgets delivering a series of images of stressed out parents and busy-busy ‘professionals’ we have been continuously told over the last 30 years that we are too busy to cook – and the subliminal message is that if we’re not then somehow we are losers; not part of an achieving society.
Of course, it’s not just advertising manipulating generations of refusenik cooks. With increasing numbers being happy to admit they ‘can’t cook, won’t cook’ it’s no wonder that many of us in the UK can’t even boil an egg. We are currently raising generations of children who never see their parents cook and learn that food comes form the supermarket in a tin, jar or cardboard packet. How can we expect children to recognise good food (or see the point in cooking) when they’ve been trained to recognise processed food flavours not real ones?
