The True Cost of Cheap Food?

irishwexford

As others have said, I was surprised at the budget of £130 - £150 each week for food. I do not buy value meat but many people have no choice and they are at least putting a home cooked meal on table.Pies I do not buy and sausages only from the butcher. I can afford this as we do not have any children at home now and do not work full time so have time to make apple pies etc. The only way you can guarantee 100% meat and apple is to make them yourself. I can remember when I had three children to feed and money was tight so supermarkets will always find buyers for their cheap food. When I was a child we loved pigs trotters, sold in shops with chips, but my children would turn their noses up at something like that. I noticed the children all had veggies on their plates so that helps the lack of meat.

Larumbelle

Here is the channel 4 link for those who missed it:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-3/episode-1

mummysaver

buxtonrabbitgreen wrote: »

That was an interesting article. Mostly I cook from scratch using basic ingredients. But he was going on about the pig skin in sausages. Well if it is full of protien and you can't see it, I have no objection to it.

Me neither, don't they sell it in France on it's own, not sure what people do with it though, think it's meant to be fairly tasteless just to eat on i's own, so it must be turned into something, I'm sure the French nation don't all turn it into pork scratchings!

I guess the problem comes if someone is expecting "meat" rather than animal parts! Nutritionally some parts are better than others, but all parts used to be eaten.

I have to say that I'm not so worried about the animal parts used for sausages, more about all the additives!

thriftlady_2

Quite agree about the pigskin -I love pigskin especially when it goes all crackly on a roast;) Sausages are supposed to be thrifty after all. And let's not forget a nice rump steak is a bit of cow's bum.

Larumbelle

thriftlady wrote: »

Quite agree about the pigskin -I love pigskin especially when it goes all crackly on a roast;) Sausages are supposed to be thrifty after all. And let's not forget a nice rump steak is a bit of cow's bum.

People are selectively squeamish when it comes to food, I find. One of my friends thinks I'm practically a savage for eating black pudding! I asked her what she thought the red stuff in her meat was, food colouring :rolleyes: And look at what stock is, essentially...

A lot of our traditional meat dishes, sausages included, were created to make the best use of all the 'leftover' stuff, and that's fair enough - it's thrifty, and it somehow shows more respect to the animal if you use what you can of it.

Ithink a major issue is the lack of trust people have in the food they eat and the supermarkets and mass-processors that supply it. Because they want cheap food, a lot of people try to bury this mistrust, and it's easier to do this if you look no further than the nicely packaged food in front of you. Once you dig beneath the surface a little more it's harder to pretend. Also, I think a lot of it comes down to your perception of what 'normal' is. These days 'normal' seems to be that mass loads of E numbers is normal, and use of non-prime meats is not. I think we need to readjust what we consider to be 'normal'. That's just my feeling, anyway.

A_fiend_for_life

thriftlady wrote: »

Good point -this is what is in a Tesco Finest Chocolate sundae which they flog for nearly £2 a pop.


Sugar, Milk, Skimmed Milk, Stabilised Whipped Cream, Cream, Wheat Flour, Milk Chocolate Powder, Chocolate Chips, Water, Vegetable Oil, White Chocolate Powder, Milk And White Chocolate Decoration, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder, Maize Starch, Partially Inverted Refiners Syrup, Dried Skimmed Milk, Vegetable Margarine, Dark Chocolate Powder, Milk Chocolate, Dried Glucose Syrup, Dried Egg, Dark Chocolate, Butter, Evaporated Milk, Cocoa Powder, Stabiliser (Pectin), Emulsifiers (Lactic Acid Esters of Mono- and Di-Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Mono- and Di-Glycerides of Fatty Acids, Soya Lecithins), Salt, Whey Solids, Milk Sugar, Whey Powder, Flavouring.
Stabilised Whipped Cream contains: Whipping Cream, Dextrose, Stabiliser (Sodium Alginate).
Chocolate Chips contains: Cocoa Mass, Sugar, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Flavouring.
White Chocolate Powder contains: Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Dried Whole Milk, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Flavouring.
Milk And White Chocolate Decoration contains: Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Dried Whole Milk, Cocoa Mass, Milk Sugar, Whey Powder, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Flavouring.
Milk Chocolate Powder contains: Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Dried Whole Milk, Cocoa Mass, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Flavouring.
Dark Chocolate Powder contains: Cocoa Mass, Sugar, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Flavouring.
Vegetable Margarine contains: Vegetable Oil, Sunflower Oil, Coconut Oil, Water, Lemon Juice.
Milk Chocolate contains: Sugar, Dried Whole Milk, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Flavouring.
Dark Chocolate contains: Cocoa Mass, Sugar, Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Flavouring.

:eek: :eek: Flaming heck -just how many rubbish ingredients does a pudding need?? OK some of them are ordinary foodstuffs but really!

Health and diet issues aside, ingredients lists like this highlight just why supermarkets are reluctant to analyse and publish their carbon footprints. It would be impossible.

It begs the question just what levels of embedded energy and water are in those ingredients and just who is losing out in growing their own food.

grimerking

I have a friend that will only eat processed food. He is 30 and incredibly fussy (food phobia, I guess). For some reason he thinks that ground up chicken shaped into burgers is 'nicer' than home made chicken burgers made from chicken fillets. Unfortunately, there is very little that can be done to help people like this. Their minds are closed to 'new' things.

I once had a summer job, while at uni, working in a meat factory. Some of the things I saw were shocking. I must stress that there was no problem at all with the 'proper meat' - steaks, chops, etc. However, the processed meat was frightening. All the left over cuts of fat and the carcasses were thrown into a massive machine that crushed the carcasses and ground the fat. There were two nozzles - the front nozzle outputted the 'meat', the second outputted the chunks of bone. Kebab meat was either 50% fat or 80% fat. Given that no actual 'meat' was added, and the carcasses had already been scraped clean, I'm guessing the 'meat content' was actually bone marrow and the connective tissue between the bones. They did the same with chicken. The chickens weren't fit for human consumption (whole chickens left to defrost in the summer sun all morning/early afternoon - hot on the outside, frosty in the middle). They were thrown whole into a smaller version of the grinder (skin, giblets, the lot) and the resultant disgusting paste was boxed up and shipped out.

I never, ever eat this kind of processed, ground meat any more. I suggest you don't either.

These days I always cook from scratch and if I do buy processed meat - e.g. mince, sausages, etc then I only buy good quality products where you can see the texture of the meat.

Rob

PS: Please do bear in mind what I wrote earlier - there was no problem with the 'standard non-ground' meat. That was treated with respect. Occasionally, the odd 50kg hunk of beef might fall on the spotlessly clean floor (it was actually clean, don't worry!) for three seconds and then get picked back up again, but so what?

MrsE_2

Vibrant wrote: »

The chap seemed rather obsessed with meat and the families seemed to eat it at every meal, which cant be very good for you and isn't eco friendly.
Rather than complaining about the meat content in the cheaper items, perhaps he should be applauding that they have cut their meat consumption.

The presenter was also very naive, when he kept saying, it's only an extra 0.5p per item. I used to work in the packing industry and 0.5p is a lot per item at the manufacturing end.
Also the supermarkets will never absorb any extra costs, anyone who has dealt with them, will know that they continually pressure suppliers to cut the cost of the products.

In a week I eat meat/poultry with at least 5 meals, fish with 1 & try & have 1 veggie one (but often don't).

I know we all should cut our meat meals, but I suspect most people have meat (or poultry) in nearly every dinner.

I confess I spend £100+ on our weekly shop (for 3), but I buy mostly preimum meat/poultry/fish. I can't understand how you can get nice meat & a low food budget, because I don't buy much made or processed food & I can't get my shopping below £100. If you want organic/free-range/low-fat/low-salt/etc you pay well for it!

maltesers_2

This programme is also being discussed in the discussion forum - if anyone is interested.

Larumbelle

Your friend who prefers processed food - well, he's not alone. Fat and salt make food taste nice, and if you grow up with processed food that's what your palate is geared up towards. what really makes me mad is the way food is taught in some schools - in my school we focussed on the 'technology' part of food, so we learned more about processing and how to create a ready meal than we ever did about cooking healthy nutritious food in our own homes! Lots of our literature was sponsered by processing firms. It was never explicitly said that cooking from scratch was backwards and unsafe, but it was implied. There was also a lot of cod-sociology about how the food processers single-handedly made it possible for women to work. As a result, one of my friends is convinced that having the time to wash your own spuds is a sign of failure and that the only reason OH and myself aren't constantly battling food poisoning is because we've become immune to it.