Britain’s Really Disgusting Food
I hope some of you managed to catch last night’s BBC1 documentary “Britain’s Really Disgusting Food”. Alex Riley(sounding a lot like Louis Theroux) set out to unearth the horrors in meaty snacks. Although its nothing we havent seen before I think its a worthy subject to keep looking at.
There is still a huge issue over cheap poultry and meat for those on severely restricted budgets – Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley Whittingstall have covered this in their excellent campaigns and TV programmes. One side of the argument is to keep producing cheap meat with connective tissue and all the grissle, additives and chemicals because of consumer demand or stop it completely. Stopping it completely means that there would need to be a clear message from the FSA about the minimum amount of meat/poultry in a product. It is still legal to have 10% chicken in a bought chicken kiev. Perhaps that level should be increased to at least 70%. Obviously the best way to steer clear of all this is to make it yourself.
The sad thing about these reconstituted meat products is that they actually dont taste too bad (as seen at the Henley food festival) but thats the additives and flavours added to disguise what is essentially the left over pieces of the carcass. The thought of eating canned meat makes me physically sick but then its served an entire two generations of people who clearly like it and eat it.
Do you buy one free range chicken that hasnt been injected with water and use every bit of it and get as many meals out of it as you can, or buy the plumped up two for one creatures with hock burns and hormones? Its a chicken and egg situation – if the supermarkets stopped selling this stuff, the public wouldnt buy it and if the public stopped buying it the supermarket would stop selling it.
Moving on to another tv programme – Delia Through the Decades, a wonderful nostalgic look at the rise of the Queen of Cooking. Although not a huge fan of her recipes (she’s always been a bit domestic science for me) she has done more for British cooking than anyone in the last 30 years. Do you remember when supermarkets ran out of cranberries!!!!! Wonderful stuff.
