Supermarket Secrets revealed?

Loadsabob

Badgergal wrote:

I do drink milk - how can we avoid buying the milk from cows who are milked to death? Is buying organic supermarket milk enough?

I have only bought organic milk for about eight months now. Unfortunately I'm still buying it in Tesco, but it is Soil Association approved, so I am hoping there's some sort of safeguard for the animal welfare and that they don't calf til they drop in the same way as the ones we're sure to see on tonight's programme. I have found the price difference miniscule. 37p for a single unit (pint? whatever it is these days!). However, I've just found local organic milk for 48p for the same size. I'm tempted, though it's full cream Jersey cow milk! I also tried "Rice dream" this weekend, an alternative to milk. It's made using brown rice, and I chose the one with soya milk in it, too. I don't like soya milk on its own, but this stuff was gorgeous, and worked really well in my cereal. It was pricey - £1.29 per litre. But very healthy, and as much calcium as milk. Yum!

Loadsabob

squiggles wrote:

I have several times baught organic veg and found it tastes vile and binned it immedietly,i have also tried it from several shops and i dont like any of them.

What do you mean by "tastes vile"? An organic vegetable tastes the same as non-organic, surely? (Though in my epxerience usually more flavoursome). I don't understand how organic vegetables can give you a bad taste experience? They may not look cosmetically gorgeous, and I know a lot of shops keep their organic veg on sale til the bitter end, when the potatoes are spongey and the carrots bendy. I've eaten organic from supermarkets, farmers' market and a box scheme, and grown my own, and have yet to have a bad experience. All the gunk the non-organic producers use doesn't make the stuff TASTE any different, it just makes it not sprout, or not be eaten, or go off etc etc...

Sorry for the cross-examination, but I don't understand how this can be the case?...

Edit: Squiggles, I hope this post doesn't sound like an attack, i didn't mean to jump on you...I really am just interested in an expansion of your original point.

Loadsabob

gritts wrote:

I should point out that organic veg may not look better than non organic veg. For one reason it is not covered in fungicides, pesticides, chlorines etc etc. Organic will go off quicker.

Great post, gritts. But on the last point, my experience varies wildly. I have had a great deal of organic produce that has lasted a lot longer than the non-organic, which has made me really wonder about the point of the chemicals used to preserve them.

Perhaps the difference is when you buy organic locally, you may be getting it a lot nearer to the time it was harvested than with the supermarket veg. Perhaps they just need the preservatives because there's so much longer between harvesting and being ready to sell. If I buy Cornish produce, from a Supermarket (finding it is a rare occurance!), I know it will have probably been around the country for washing, packing and labelling, before being re-distributed around the country. So needs to last longer than the picked-yesterday stuff of the supermarket...

Although even the supermarket organic veg doesn't seem to go off very quickly for me...the main difference I've found is that the onions sprout more readily. Which makes me shudder at what must get sprayed on the non-organic stuff to make it not sprout! :eek:

gritts

Hi Loadsabob,

If you did buy Cornish local produce from a Cornish tescos, it would very likely have been sent via the supermarkets 'hub' on the M25. It would have been picked unripe (ie when the full flavour has not developed) to cope with the potential 11 day turnover from picking to 'use by'. Madness.

I often hear some strange things said about organic produce, 'vile' being one of them and I would agree that you can have organic produce that last a very long time. It's just another factor in some organic taste good, some not so good, so stays fresh longer, some not so fresh etc. I think I'm against casting a blanket term over ALL organic produce.

The funniest anti organic comment I've heard was from someone who argued that the chemicals used in crop spraying will help to keep away illnesses like colds and flu. Brilliant!

MSE is all about money saving and it's a fab site. I save money so I can spend more on other areas of my families life. I.e. try to eat produce that is not covered in chemicals, that could be bad for us and the enviroment, that is hopefully not exploiting farmers or employees or putting people out of business. I'd also sooner not eat a chicken as seen in last weeks programme.

It's very hard to do. But we can but try (I say again - organic doesn't have to be expensive! DYOR).

The best money saving tip must be to stop eating. No food bills! But ultimately that would be stupid, surely ;-)

Lyndsay_21

just found what looks to be a good place to buy my chicken from. I will visit on saturday to have a look and probably buy some whole and chicken breasts. https://www.parkfarmorganics.com w will probably just buy the free range as although its not organic it is free roaming which is good enough for me!

gritts

Free range is good enough for me too!

chrislee765

Lyndsay_21 wrote:

just found what looks to be a good place to buy my chicken from. I will visit on saturday to have a look and probably buy some whole and chicken breasts. www.parkfarmorganics.com w will probably just buy the free range as although its not organic it is free roaming which is good enough for me!

Im about an hr drive from there, if you could report back it might be worth a visit.
Thanks

gritts

Don't forget part two tonight at 9pm Channel 4

http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/S/supermarket_secrets/index.html

N9eav

gritts wrote:

Hi Loadsabob,

If you did buy Cornish local produce from a Cornish tescos, it would very likely have been sent via the supermarkets 'hub' on the M25. It would have been picked unripe (ie when the full flavour has not developed) to cope with the potential 11 day turnover from picking to 'use by'. Madness.

;-)

UNRIPE, They are not peaches. A potato is always ripe, one just lets the tubers get larger the longer they are in the ground. The small sweet new CORNISH potatoes are the best in the world, just try some. Unfortunately the supply network means they do travel halfway around teh country and come back again. Tesco a long time ago used to source locally, but those days are gone.. Trouble is Cornwall is so nice and mild climate wise, we can harvest our potatoes months before the rest of the UK, so that's why CORNISH spuds are in the shops first.
Try some with a lashings of Cornish butter and a nice juicy steak
:beer:

Madmum_2

gritts wrote:

Don't forget part two tonight at 9pm Channel 4

http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/S/supermarket_secrets/index.html

Unusually channel 4 have now scheduled for 8 pm - don't miss it or set the video