Support your local Dulwich butcher day

[Thomas Micklewright]

here here djkilla

[peterstorm1985]

DaveR Wrote:

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> What factory farming has done is to feed a very

> large number of people more cheaply than was ever

> thought possible. Most people buy cheap food

> because that's what they can afford.

I'm afraid that most people who buy cheap food do so because they think they need huge quantities of protein but prefer to prioritise other things in their family budget. If I had to choose between buying free-range eggs or having a mobile phone*, the phone would go. But I realise that I am unusual.

*For mobile phone you can also read: television, ipod, new clothes. Although, if it came to giving up my laptop, I'd just stop eating eggs.

When I was a child most households ate a fraction of the meat that they do today but what they did eat was of much better quality. Half the portion size but of better quality (so equal overall cost) leads to a much healthier lifestyle for everyone, and is affordable to most people.

And quality doesn't mean prime fillet; simply better farmed. I'm shocked at how few people buy offal, or cuts that need slow cooking, although my own family's budget benefits as it keeps the prices so low for those of us who do.

[Sue]

peterstorm1985 Wrote:

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> When I was a child most households ate a fraction

> of the meat that they do today

xxxxxxx

Really? Do you have evidence for that?

When I was a child (in the fifties) we hardly ever had a meal without meat, and now I hardly ever have a meal WITH meat (I'm not a vegetarian) unless I'm eating out.

There were very few options for meals without meat in those days - all I can remember is things like Cauliflower Cheese.

[civilservant]

Not having been brought up in Britain, I couldn't vouch for British eating habits myself, but check this out - it's a link to British Library materials about changes in British eating habits - http://www.bl.uk/learning/citizenship/foodstories/Accessible/eatinghabits/changesineatinghabits.html.

It says "The British have long been notorious for having 'boring' food and conservative tastes. For many British families up until the last few decades, household eating patterns varied little from week to week. A Sunday roast would be followed by a few days of recycled leftovers - cold meat would be crafted into shepherd's pie or rissoles. Fish was traditionally served on Friday, at the point that the leftover meat had run out."

BTW I agree with what a number of other posters have said, about over-reliance on factory farmed meat. I'm not a vegetarian, but I think of (properly sourced) meat as a treat rather than as a staple.

And as peterstorm and other point out, where is all the offal? A lot of the slaughtered animal is wasted - when did anyone last see a chicken gizzard sold for human consumption in Britain?

[DJKillaQueen]

Most of the offal is used to make slabs of something called 'meat filler' which is then used in the majority of processed burgers - so when you buy that fast food burger, or that frozen cut price chain store burger....it is mostly offal and other bits with very little actual beef or ham in it. And it is also bleached during processing....yes I did just write 'bleach' - to kill any bacteria.

[civilservant]

it's an oxygen-based food-safe bleaching process, which is standard for preparing tripe

the tastiest tripe I've ever eaten - and I've tried it in Rome and other places - was in London's Chinatown, where it was the meat ingredient in a highly spiced soup noodle dish. The waiter felt obliged to double-check that I'd actually ordered the tripe dish...

[civilservant]

A further slice of history http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/0.html - this is where I first heard about British tripe :-S

"Inside there was a slab upon which lay the great white folds of tripe, and the grey flocculent stuff known as 'black tripe', and the ghostly translucent feet of pigs, ready boiled. It was the ordinary 'tripe and pea' shop, and not much else was stocked except bread, cigarettes, and tinned stuff.

[Help-Ma-Boab]

The only reason i know its Wednesday is that im having Gammon Steak tonight. Always have gammon Steak on a Wednesday, have done for the last 20 years. Monday is Pork Chop and Tuesday a pizza. Thursday is sports night so bit late in so its beans on toast. Friday i go off piste and leave it till the last minute - who knows what i will have. Apart from that not really changed much in the last 20 or so years, and who says the brits have a boring diet!

[helena handbasket]

I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure there was a recent thread about the merits of Iceland and people were lining up to sing the praises of ?1 boxes of fish fingers and sausages.

All I could think was how nasty meat that cheap must be and how surprised I was by who was buying it.

I know the excuse is that people need to feed families and money only goes so far, and I absolutely get that. But off-cuts of good meat are cheap from the butcher and with a handful of root veg (also cheap) can make a lovely stew that WILL last the week, just like the good old days.

I always look in the "clearance" section of the supermarket because they often have premium meats about with a best by date of today, so marked down 50%. They go straight to the freezer, which means we're eating the best meats for less than the revolting cheap stuff. There's really not much excuse for eating garbage.

[peterstorm1985]

Sue Wrote:

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> peterstorm1985 Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

>

> > When I was a child most households ate a

> fraction

> > of the meat that they do today

>

> xxxxxxx

>

> Really? Do you have evidence for that?

>

> When I was a child (in the fifties) we hardly ever

> had a meal without meat, and now I hardly ever

> have a meal WITH meat (I'm not a vegetarian)

> unless I'm eating out.

>

> There were very few options for meals without meat

> in those days - all I can remember is things like

> Cauliflower Cheese.

I'm a little younger* but I don't think that's the difference. I wasn't suggesting that we had meatless meals, simply that the amount at each meal was less. Meat was 'bulked out' with other ingredients eg suet crust, pastry, stews full of vegetables. Look up recipe books of the sixties and seventies and see the quantities of meat per person. And meat always came with at least two veg, not just a plate of chips. If you ever went to a restaurant (which was very rare in our household) you'd always get a huge dish of veg whereas now it often seems like an afterthought - and you have to pay extra.

*Rationing didn't finish until 1954 but when it did those who could afford it may have gone a bit mad on anything previously denied to them, so perhaps your best memories are of a reactionary time.

[Sue]

peterstorm1985 Wrote:

> *Rationing didn't finish until 1954 but when it

> did those who could afford it may have gone a bit

> mad on anything previously denied to them, so

> perhaps your best memories are of a reactionary

> time.

xxxxxx

I remember ration books but not really meals before 1954, in fact I don't remember much at all before 1954, but I started school in 1955 and had school dinners and I remember large amounts of mince, stew etc even at those.

And at home we always had a roast on Sunday, and things like mince or chops during the week. That continued up until I went to uni in 1967.

It might be true that other families ate less meat, but we weren't at all well off and we seemed to eat loads of it.

Bloody hell, I've lived through history :))

[DJKillaQueen]

But how are those premium meats reared and killed Helena? Thre's nothing wrong with eating offal either...so that it goes into cheap burgers and sausages is not really the issue for me. Factory farming and cruelty by some workers at abbatoirs is. A prime piece of rump steak from a factory farmed cow for me is just as bad as the processed carcasses of chickens that go into some cheap chicken products, although the former is going to be better for you health wise.

Chickens though are a particular bug bear of mine because most chicken is now of the fast growing variety (3 months to rear)...which are higher in fat content than they are protein. So even if you think you are buying some nice quality and healthy chicken fillets, you are not, unless you buy free range chicken of the slower growing variety (6 months to rear), and you will pay twice as much for it too. When I was child though...that slower growing variety was the only one you'd find in a butcher. I did see Sainsburrys stocking it at one time though.

Someone mentioned stews.....that was our winter staple died as a child and I loved them. My mum used to make them in a pressure cooker with lots of potatoes, carrots and whatever else was in season too.

[Thomas Micklewright]

I love a good vegetable stew! Time to break out the slow cooker!

[helena handbasket]

I realize what you're saying DJ. But if people would chose better quality meat but less of it, the market changes and the conditions change. As it is there is a huge market for heaps and heaps of cheap gross meat and the only way to provide it in those volumes is the way they are doing it. All the bits of the animals ARE being used, how do you think Iceland can sell meat products so cheaply? Snouts and tails, that's how. But the British food industry is getting so much better with food labels that allow you to make informed choices. If I don't know what I'm buying it stays on the shelf.

I didn't say that conditions weren't important to me, my point was that people can eat and serve real food and not touch the mystery meats. You could not pay me to serve my son fish fingers from Iceland, trawled in Asia and flash frozen in Russia, then sent flown to whatever processing plant to be shaped. But to each his own I guess.

[DJKillaQueen]

Same here.....and I think you are right - labelling has to be part of the solution.

[helena handbasket]

Oops cross-post edit-y thing!

[civilservant]

Helena, you are right, most of the animal is being used. However, the problem is how it is used.

The problem is the huge efforts that the market makes to re-process relatively unpopular foodstuffs such as offal to render them palatable to the mass market, for example producing meat slurry out of them to shape into cheap burgers and chicken nuggets.

This doesn't actually appear on food industry labels, or if it does, it is labelled using euphemisms (not having a packet of cheap burgers to hand, I'm sorry I can't quote you any actual examples)

Palatability, texture etc is also improved by adding ingredients such as salt and sugar, very few of which have any intrinsic food value, and which contribute to rising obesity levels.

I'm afraid I don't have your trust in the market to act in its customers' best interests!

[helena handbasket]

But see that's my point, these cheap processed foods can only contain garbage that you wouldn't eat if you knew. But the market IS the customer, and if people didn't buy it they couldn't afford to keep peddling it.

I can't imagine how people delude themselves into thinking there's anything of quality in these items, and of course you are completely right about the ingredients. Is there any nutritional value in salt and sawdust? ;-) Which is why I won't buy it. But loads of people are serving it to their family as we speak. THAT is the market.

Edit: wanted to add, living back in Canada now and am finding the labels impossible. They are better for information about nutritional values, but absolutely nothing about food origins or even things like %of meat in a sausage. So I give credit where it's due, the labels there are pretty good I think compared to elsewhere.

[DJKillaQueen]

Whilst the food companies themselves won't do anything to put quality before profit, governments can legislate if they wanted to, to force them to do so. For example, trans fats have been banned in some countries and by some states in America/ canada. Sainsburrys have also banned them from their products. Why on earth don't governments ban the use of this substance?

Governments allow the food companies to stuff our foods with all kinds of ingredients that are nothing to do with nutrition or even shelf life. They are substances designed to 'bulk' food so that the producers can get away with putting as little actual food in the product as possible. Maize is another popular bulking ingredient.

And why do governments allow this to happen? The power of the multinational is at play again I'm afraid.

At the end of the day...the only way to know what's in your pie, or fish finger, or chicken nugget, or pizza, or ready meal.....is to make it yourself.

[DaveR]

"The poor just ate cheaper cuts of meat, or ate less meat. And they were healthier for it too"

I'd like to see some evidence for that - life expectancy has never been higher in the UK, and is substantially higher than in countries with significantly lower incomes. Some of that is due to advances in medical science, but not all. The truth is that until a couple of generations ago the genuinely poor often went hungry.

[maxxi]

In the dim distant past British boys and girls were reared on fine fresh/home cooked food. Egg & Chips. When there was not meat to be had... egg & chips. When dad lost his job... egg & chips. When the dog got at the brisket... egg & chips (and a free kick at the dog). On 'Meat Free Mondays'... egg & chips. A treat when you were sick... egg & chips. A nation bound together by simple pleasures and a chip pan.

All was swell until, sometime in the early 1970s, those fiends at Findus brought out their damnable Crispy Pancakes. Then everything went to Hell in a hand- Oh hello!

[peterstorm1985]

DaveR Wrote:

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> "The poor just ate cheaper cuts of meat, or ate

> less meat. And they were healthier for it too"

>

> I'd like to see some evidence for that - life

> expectancy has never been higher in the UK, and is

> substantially higher than in countries with

> significantly lower incomes. Some of that is due

> to advances in medical science, but not all. The

> truth is that until a couple of generations ago

> the genuinely poor often went hungry.

Post (2nd World) war Britain relied heavily on fats (mostly saturated) for calorific intake but the lifestyle compensated - ie highly active. Food culture slowly moved away from fats alongside a decrease in domestic drudgery (exercise) and manual labour employment. There was a heart stopping (literally) period in the 70/80s - depicted on health campaigns of the day - when the lack of exercise preceded changes in diet. But we now have the case that large swathes of society are getting even less exercise but eating a much higher percentage fat content than their post war counterparts. Some of that comes from fat laden meat eg quick grown chickens, but more perhaps in the oil laden batter that so often surrounds it. Obesity kills in so many ways, more than irregular hunger, but perhaps it's perceived as a more pleasant way to die.

I would suggest that better sanitation and general living standards (eg Decent homes) have contributed as much as medical advances to increased life expectancy, particularly amongst the poorest.

For detail of life expectancy elsewhere Life line

[Magpie]

The majority of fat in the diet comes from heavily processed food and diary products - rather than meat. The real baddies are crisps, processed cakes, biscuits and cheese (although I can't live without the latter). I also think processed food is far more expensive than fresh food. As someone mentioned above its easy to do a veg stew cheaply - or using cheap cuts such as brisket/shin, pork belly, lamb shoulder etc and slow cooking makes a far tastier roast/joint than the premium cuts in my opinion. I did a cottage pie using brisket which I had slow cooked for about 5 hours the other Sunday - it was amazing, and padded out with leeks, carrots, and onions it fed the family.

Better medical care, and greater awareness of hygeine were key contributors to life expectancies - but I think I'm right in saying that under rationing the population had a better diet than today on average, due to a scientific approach to designing the diet - ie it was balanced, healthy and relied on fresh fruit and vegetables.

I like the butchers near the plough - its very stripped back - not glammed up like W Rose's, but the meat is good, and shorter queues - although if get stuck behind someone who wants a leg of lamb deboned then it can take some time, as they are happy to prep everything for you.

[Loz]

Thomas Micklewright Wrote:

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> here here djkilla

Though it's worth remembering that it applies to veggies too, Thomas. Pesticides, fungicides, genetic modification...

[Thomas Micklewright]

Not to the same extent as factory farmed meat milk and eggs.

Do you have a date for your support a butcher?