Toggle sidebar

Eat (only) British

  • Come along to the amazing Summer Moot (21st July - 2nd August), a festival of bushcrafting and camping in a beautiful woodland PLEASE CLICK HERE for more information.
The modern grocery system, combined with the living circumstances for a lot of people, seem destined to produce food waste. When you can only buy things in packets of a certain weight, you have no room for long term food storage (pantries and cellars aren't a thing anymore and lots of people have limited freezer space), it seems like a recipe for food waste. I know that I found myself wasting food when I was single and only able to access/afford supermarket food. Single Person portions of some things just didn't seem to exist when I was having to shop just for myself in my younger adult years, other than ready meals. Certainly not within my very limited budget at the time.

Thankfully there do seem to be more places popping up where you just buy ingredients by weight, which I think should be encouraged.

I fully agree with the shared concerns above regarding food waste, and it pains me to know just how much food goes to waste whilst people are going hungry and/or malnourished. I'm fortunate to be in a position currently where I can pay more for food and can afford to be picky about the sorts of food production I will support with my money, so that's what I try to do and would like to get even better at.

One thing I will say though, with my wife being from the US and knowing/seeing how things happen over there, we are absolutely leagues ahead in terms of waste reduction in the UK. It actually made me feel angry seeing just how much food, single use plastic and other waste there is over there. It's genuinely staggering, I don't think you'd appreciate it without seeing it.
 
Falstaff said:
I've always been agin' GM , largely on gut feel rather than science, but having been given the "marketting promo" day by one of ther biggest, I think a lot of their claims about filling the production gap and doom warnings are false. Not that there isn't a current/future food production risk, there is, but that GM is the answer, no.
Click to expand...


And GM food is one of the biggest scams in the UK food industry.

It's currently illegal to sell GM food in the UK.

But farmers can buy import GM feed, feed it to livestock, and sell the livestock. That's likely what you're eating unless you buy organic or Pasture for Life.

Most of British chicken, eggs, beef, pork and dairy is produced with imported GM soy providing the protein supply. And farmed fish (with or without ASC logo on packet).

There are exceptions, but they need seeking out and careful research. A 'corn fed' chicken, for example, will not have been fed GM feed, but the high-grain diet means significantly more inflammatory omega-6 for your body to deal with. And all the injections/antibiotics of intensive poultry farming... yum.
 
Right now, new potato's, asparagus, new season lambchops, followed with very juicy cheddar strawberries with fresh cream.( was going to be Eton mess, but my ( local egg) meringue failed spectacularly!)
All fresh, British and fairly local, ie within the county.
My welcome home dinner for my friend who's been in NZ for the last few months.
Seasonal eating can be so much more delicious, as things are much fresher, and havnt spent hours in cold storage or wrapped in plastic.
 
Broch said:
20% of all food produced in the UK for UK consumption is wasted.
Click to expand...
I agree this figure and nearly 70% is domestic food waste but It’sa distorted figure.
I throw away (compost) one third of the bananas that I buy, nearly half the mangoes and avocados, around a quarter to a third of orange and apples. Spuds vary from zero to about a fifth. Carrots and sweeds fall below the 20% peas are well above.

(The national figure of 20 - 30% quoted includes skins, peel and pits/stones) and bones.
 
Falstaff said:
Well I was avoiding oil seed rape on medical grounds but that definitely puts it in the NoNo category.
I've always been agin' GM
Click to expand...
"Canola" rape seed oil is not necessarily GM, the original work on reducing erucic acid content was done with traditional plant breeding techniques. That does not mean that later GM strains probably exist.
 
Chris said:
Often it’s pretty high protein with a lot of beef and chicken, lamb probably at least once a month. That said, I’d actually like to reduce my meat intake and balance it so that I am eating the best meat I can get (quality and ethics wise), but less of it each day.
Click to expand...

From previous posts about online meat suppliers you've obviously clocked what goes over the heads of many.

The majority of British animal products- meat, dairy, eggs et al- are produced with a substantial percentage of imported feed.

You usually need to carefully look beyond supermarkets to find an alternative, and beware of terminology.

'Grass fed' lamb? A weasel phrase, meat can still legally be described as 'grass fed' when it is finished off on imported GM soy and glyphosated British grain.

'Pasture raised' eggs- again, the bulk of the diet is low grade sprayed grain and GM soy for protein. Often with synthetic colourants added to the feed for a 'nice' yellow yolk.


gra_farmer said:
the world reached it productive food growing capacity for the relative population in 1979.... GM foods have since filled in the gap. The end message was that we are on borrowed time.
Click to expand...

Spot on. GM products and farming systems are incredibly vulnerable. Mess about with nature, you lose nature's defence mechanisms and ability to evolve.

Even conventially grown UK arable rubbish is incredible fragile, dead soils propped up by artificial fertilisers requiring huge amounts of energy to produce. A glitch in that supply chain- accidental or malicious- and it would be game over for mainstream farming in a very few years.

I often wonder if it will all fall apart in my lifetime. Buy Britsh? No thanks, not 97% of it. It needs to chage, or fail catastrophically.
 
TLM said:
That does not mean that later GM strains probably exist.
Click to expand...

The majority of US rapeseed is GM. Thankfully it's still not legal to grow it here.

The concern is that it is sprayed off with glyphosate as a dessicant prior to harvest, which means it has high levels of a chemical which an enormously wealthy corporation has spent years and vast amounts of money 'proving' it does not cause cancer or other health problems.

Glyphosate is deemed 'safe' as it does not affect animal cells. It does kill bacteria however, and given that we have 39 trillion microbes in our makeup, and only 36 trillion human cells, it's a bit of an issue it's in practically all food.
 
I seldom paid for food when I lived on a campsite in the summer; I just made sure people knew where to put it when they went home.

Many a day I came in from Uni to find a carrier tied to my doorhandle.

But, -that was situational.
 
Pattree said:
I agree this figure and nearly 70% is domestic food waste but It’sa distorted figure.
I throw away (compost) one third of the bananas that I buy, nearly half the mangoes and avocados, around a quarter to a third of orange and apples. Spuds vary from zero to about a fifth. Carrots and sweeds fall below the 20% peas are well above.

(The national figure of 20 - 30% quoted includes skins, peel and pits/stones) and bones.
Click to expand...

Ah, but when I was a kid, my grandmother would boil the bones at least twice to make broth :)

Actually, the figure I was quoted was 19% of 'edible' waste - there are always different ways of looking at things but I would argue, if it's going into compost, it is wasted food if it could have been eaten a few days before.
 
In an ideal world, we would all have a tub in the freezer.

In would go bones, trimmings of veg, leftovers. Ready for a good stew.

And we would all have enough freezer space for this tub.

Also, any chicken carcases would come my way...
 
If we are about to play a strange version of ' The Four Yorkshireman ' i shall have to break out my regular child hood memory of wondering exactly what part of an animal was Tripe and how the Onion and Milk marinade seemed to neither improve taste nor texture.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Chris
I can just see Blackie liking tripe....Not.

If there is one person in this household who wastes food...its him.

Has to be fresh fresh fresh and if hes not in the mood...

(Dont get onto me about my father and his aversion to mushroom stalks...but he now knows to leave them in the punnet for me.)
 
stonepark said:
The problem is not a shortage of arable or farmable land for production of food, the problem is the use it is put to.
Click to expand...
And the wastage of the products it produces. Post Christmas, Easter, Valentines or any of the ‘Days’, the wastage is horrific.

Eating only British, without using preservation, isn’t viable. Well, I don’t think it is. It’s all very well saying ‘during the war’ or ‘never did me any harm’ but there are unnoticeable effects to reduced nutrient intake that only show after time.

I’ve got a friend with high blood pressure and cholesterol issues who wistfully told me about bread and dripping in front of the fire every evening as a child while claiming “It never did me any harm”. Erm?

I’ll go as far as avoiding soft fruits out of season flown in from Egypt, Brazil or Peru. But I’ll keep squeezing Spanish lemons and limes. With Demerara sugar and BRITISH mint :bigok:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

TeeDee
Hello Fresh / Gousto - Menu subscription services
Replies
16
Views
618
Other Chatter
Van-Wild
Van-Wild
X
Hello
Replies
10
Views
329
Introductions & Welcomes
xcesx
X
H
Spent a warm night in snow mountains at 21 degrees with a single blanket without sleeping bag, tent, mat, fire.
Replies
5
Views
588
Bushcraft Chatter
Grebby
G
H
Help me get my pack weight down
Replies
24
Views
2K
Kit Chatter
Ozmundo
Ozmundo
F
Trip Report - Finland '25 with Wild Human & Boreal Forest Expeditions (Pic heavy)
Replies
21
Views
1K
Out and About
Tank
Tank

BCUK Shop

We have a a number of knives, T-Shirts and other items for sale.

SHOP HERE
Top Bottom