Eat (only) British

[Chris]

How easy do we think it’d be to only eat 100% British grown food these days? Whilst a lot of local greengrocers and the like have long been lost, with farm shops and the advent of the internet with next-day delivery, it seems to me that it should be quite doable, as long as you can live without avocado and oranges.

I’m tempted to try it for a few months and see how it goes. I think I’d perhaps allow myself herbs and spices from abroad, but no actual ‘food’ food.

Can anyone think of anything obvious that would make this a challenge?

 

[Toddy]

I can manage almost all of it from late Spring through to late Autumn, but spices are hard to grow here.
Nutmeg, mace, peppercorns, cinnamon, vanilla......we can do without, but they add so much to our food.
Fruit wise bananas come to mind, citrus fruits, etc., don't grow here. Olive oil ? we have really good British grown rapeseed oil these days though.
My family eats a lot of nuts. Almonds, brazils, pistachio, pine, cashew....British grown walnuts and hazelnuts (cobs) are possible though...if you can beat the squirrels to them

I think it's do-able, but you'd need to think about it.

 

[Pattree]

Coffee!!!!!!!!!!!!

Other things I’d miss would be rice
As @Toddy :bananas and olive oil.

……and mangoes. I estimate that I can reduce my rat poison dose by anything up to 50%.

(pee ess. mangoes affect folk very differently. I wouldn’t risk it as an anticoagulant unless you are being closely monitored.)

 

[Glow_worm]

Entirely doable, but for some parts of the year choice of many things is obviously going to be limited. With all the options open to us these days, online, delivery services etc, you'd still get plenty of variety at all times of the year.

I have similar slight restrictions as I only eat organic food (or from places I know and trust to be as good as-or better than-organic, but which are not certified).

To me, minimal toxin application on the food and soil, the resulting richer soils providing food with a greater nutrient content, and the genuine and longstanding positive effect on wildlife are far more important than eating British. I'd rather import organic Kale from south eastern Europe than buy the tasteless pesticide laden rubbish grown locally.

Olive oil ? we have really good British grown rapeseed oil these days though.

Hemp oil is the future! We grow plenty in the UK. Fantastic omega 3-6 ratio, less sat fat than olive oil, and a world apart from inflammatory rapeseed/sunflower oil. Mmmm. I buy it in wholesale amounts.

 

[oldtimer]

We did it during ww2 and I knew nothing else growing up with war time and post war rationing and shortages. I didn't eat a banana or an orange until I was eight years old. We ate what was in season unless it came from tins or had been home preserved. Frozen food was unknown and we had neither freezer nor refrigerator. I don't remember seeing, let alone eating an avocado until my late twenties. But these were the days when olive oil was bought in small bottles from the chemist to used as.a remedy for earache.

I don't remember ever being hungry, but I learned to eat whatever was served up. Food faddiness was unknown. We still waste nothing in our house. Our wartime and postwar habits are coming in useful since we can't afford to buy some foods. I really miss roast leg of lamb!

 

[Broch]

Our farmers produce only a little over half the food we consume so, whereas on an individual basis it's doable, on a nation wide basis, not. Also, 70% of our land is put over to agriculture of one form or another, so we cannot sensibly increase how much land we farm or how intensively it's farmed.

 

[MartinK9]

I'd like to think we could also "Dig for Victory" but back gardens nowadays are non existent or full of house rubble the builders placed there to save on soil,

 

[Chris]

Our farmers produce only a little over half the food we consume so, whereas on an individual basis it's doable, on a nation wide basis, not. Also, 70% of our land is put over to agriculture of one form or another, so we cannot sensibly increase how much land we farm or how intensively it's farmed.

We export a lot though. If the internal demand shifted, surely internal production would shift to match it?

 

[Chris]

We did it during ww2 and I knew nothing else growing up with war time and post war rationing and shortages. I didn't eat a banana or an orange until I was eight years old. We ate what was in season unless it came from tins or had been home preserved. Frozen food was unknown and we had neither freezer nor refrigerator. I don't remember seeing, let alone eating an avocado until my late twenties. But these were the days when olive oil was bought in small bottles from the chemist to used as.a remedy for earache.

I don't remember ever being hungry, but I learned to eat whatever was served up. Food faddiness was unknown. We still waste nothing in our house. Our wartime and postwar habits are coming in useful since we can't afford to buy some foods. I really miss roast leg of lamb!

It seems a bit like we’ve had a swing in circumstances. Whilst during the war it was likely common for each town or village to have a greengrocer, butcher and all those amenities, certainly since I remember in the 1990s these all started to close down in favour of supermarkets which of course are dependent on global supply.

In recent years, and with the internet/chilled postal options, it’s seemed much more viable to shop ‘local’ to the UK again at least, moreso than it did from say 1995-2015.

That said, my granny passed down her wartime cooking ingenuity to my Mum, who is able to make full, hearty meals out of what others might discard as scraps. I’m very thankful to have had some of this passed on to me as well. It necessitates a level of creativity which I find rather fulfilling, to feed nourishing and delicious food to people which others may have just binned.

 

[demented dale]

I think it can be done very simply especially by a lot of the folk on this forum. It just takes a bit of planning and sourcing stuff else where. A couple of weeks into anything like this has me wondering what I even. did before. I went on a special diet which changed pretty much everything and strangely enough most of what I now eat is local produce. I cant even remember what I used to eat. dd x

 

[Falstaff]

At an individual level it's probably possible, but would get awfully boring/limited in the winter months. Better of course, if you can grow your own winter crops of types that usually don't make it to market. Plus have the ability to dry store seasonal crops. I'm not a fan of frozen veg.
I'm not fully organic but wary of a lot of UK produce, and agree with Glowworm's sentiments.

 

[stonepark]

The problem is not a shortage of arable or farmable land for production of food, the problem is the use it is put to.

 

[Chris]

I'd like to think we could also "Dig for Victory" but back gardens nowadays are non existent or full of house rubble the builders placed there to save on soil,

We had to have 21 tonnes of soil put in our newbuild garden to 1) level it out and 2) let anything grow in it due to this very reason.

 

[slowworm]

I would rather encourage those that can eat more local food to do so. So I'm less bothered about eating a banana in say February rather than September when you can get local apples, plums etc.

I also wonder if is better to import fresh food from say Spain or the workers from Spain to grow and pick it in the UK.

 

[Pattree]

It WAS boring in fifties and even sixties. Cabbage and Swede featured for much of the year in one form or another. New potatoes and peas were actually exciting. I didn’t eat chicken until I was ten.

Successive recent governments have minimised the importance of agriculture in the British economy. They are suggesting that we adopt the Singaporean model. In doing so they are completely overlooking/ignoring the fact that the Singaporean work ethic and Singaporean productivity per capita for many reasons, do not compare with the British equivalent.

Since ww2 the UK population has increased by 70+%.
Agricultural land has decreased by nearly 30% in the same time..

We would have starved without the Americans then. I don’t think we’d last very long now.

 

[Crac]

Space salad? The salad has seven ingredients (soybeans, poppy seeds, barley, kale, peanuts, sunflower seeds, and sweet potatoes.

https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/a-scientific-salad-for-astronauts-in-deep-space/

Chris, your mission if you choose to accept it is: To grow the seven ingredients and report back with your success and favorite recipes.

Good luck and happy cooking.

 

[TeeDee]

How easy do we think it’d be to only eat 100% British grown food these days? Whilst a lot of local greengrocers and the like have long been lost, with farm shops and the advent of the internet with next-day delivery, it seems to me that it should be quite doable, as long as you can live without avocado and oranges.

I’m tempted to try it for a few months and see how it goes. I think I’d perhaps allow myself herbs and spices from abroad, but no actual ‘food’ food.

Can anyone think of anything obvious that would make this a challenge?

Excellent idea for an exercise. Be interesting to see how you get on.

I guess the main question is what is your typical days diet ( or week ) looking like now?

 

[Broch]

We export a lot though. If the internal demand shifted, surely internal production would shift to match it?

We only export between 20 to 25% of agricultural output and that includes Whisky!

 

[Chris]

We only export between 20 to 25% of agricultural output and that includes Whisky!

I can’t think of any agriculture more important than that!

 

[Chris]

Space salad? The salad has seven ingredients (soybeans, poppy seeds, barley, kale, peanuts, sunflower seeds, and sweet potatoes.

https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/a-scientific-salad-for-astronauts-in-deep-space/

Chris, your mission if you choose to accept it is: To grow the seven ingredients and report back with your success and favorite recipes.

Good luck and happy cooking.

Starting my own poppy field might raise eyebrows…