Eat (only) British

[Chris]

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.

 

[Glow_worm]

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.

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.

 

[Woody girl]

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.

 

[Pattree]

20% of all food produced in the UK for UK consumption is wasted.

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.

 

[TLM]

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

"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.

 

[Glow_worm]

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Glow_worm]

That does not mean that later GM strains probably exist.

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.

 

[Tengu]

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.

 

[Broch]

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.

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.

 

[Tengu]

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...

 

[TeeDee]

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.

 

[Broch]

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.

Nor smell

 

[Chris]

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.

Luxury!

 

[Tengu]

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.)

 

[TeeDee]

Luxury!

Did work with Filipinos contractors for some time - lovely respectful guys - they did enjoy eating Balut however.

Balut (food) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

No Thank you Vicar.

 

[Chris]

Did work with Filipinos contractors for some time - lovely respectful guys - they did enjoy eating Balut however.

Balut (food) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

No Thank you Vicar.

It would take a lot more than it being made in Britain for me to give that a try. Hell freezing over, perhaps.

 

[Nice65]

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

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

 

[Tengu]

Did work with Filipinos contractors for some time - lovely respectful guys - they did enjoy eating Balut however.

Balut (food) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

No Thank you Vicar.

I cannot see Blackie liking that.

 

[Toddy]

GM food is just the latest in mankind's choice food picks. Humanity alters the world to best suit itself...define suit though, define who though....honestly, it doesn't worry me, because I know that we've been domesticating choice foods, and virtually every culture in the world does it, since someone decided to move something someplace handier, and chose the best one to do it.

Crab apples vs Golden Delicious, or Russets ? or any of the thousand varieties we have created ...or plums, grapes, oranges, olives.....and the thousands of other crops, from wheat and oats to corn and millet, humanity has changed "improved" them all.

I'd rather trust British Farmers, European farmers, than a lot of elsewhere with less oversight, where nightsoil is a common fertiliser.

I do like that we're aware of the damages caused by poor farming practices though. From fertiliser run off to the organophosphates, from the ones that kill bees and whole ecosystems.

Having said all that though; there must be enough food around going by the problems folks are having with rats in places like Birmingham.

 

[Falstaff]

The difference is that in the past varieties were created by cross fertilising similar products, apples with apples etc. GM however, cuts and inserts genes from something entirely different, salmon into tomatoes is one, and increases characteristics, e.g. natural poisons, e.g. some GM peas, without doing the necessary research and impacts on either the human/animal body or, the environment. In fact the developers go out of their way to prevent or divert any such research attempts to do so.
Unfortunately, Birmingham being an example, is an example of the sort of food waste and pickyness of the general public, even those on the dole/breadline. Rats are much less critical or choosy,
I don't know quite where to point the blame for the level of ignorance and waste displayed, schools/parents/marketeers ? but there it is. I had to explain to my stepdaughter, who I thought knew better, that a few black bits on a carrot could be cut out and the rest was perfectly ok, not chuck the whole bag.