Grow Your Own Magazine

Have just finished watching the above programme and found it scary what supermarkets do with our food. Never again will I buy meat or fish from my local Tesco. Our local butcher will now be getting my custom.

what makes you think they are better

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ntg

Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark.
A large group of professionals built the Titanic

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I don't Nick; but for what it's worth they source their meat from their own farm and have been in business in Skeg for over 60 years. At least their sausage doesn't come in inedible plastic tubing, but real intestine

A butcher round our way was just done for selling 'home grown' beef at a farmers market! The meat came from Argentina!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

A similar thing happened round here too. I don't eat meat, only fish but was even put off using our local fishmonger when they started selling more stuff like Talapia. Last time I ate that I was in Jamaica.

I have been happy my milkman sells scottish milk though!

C

I started to watch this programme, but after about 15 minutes, I got the impression that it was all contrived (like on you've been framed, all done for the camera).

I am not a fan of supermarket meat, but at least they give you the 'country of origin' on the label, so if you don't want to buy Argentinian, Brazilian, Dutch, Danish, etc meat you have the choice.

With regard to the local butchers I use, it is a matter of trust, admittedly, but when you see the carcases being unloaded they do not look as if they have been frozen and travelled thousands of miles. I may be wrong, but from the tatse, I don't think so!

This Saturday is Bakewell Farmers' Market. I would trust all the meat stores there to be selling local produce, simply because they are passionate about their product. They have a reputation to maintain, and go to great lengths to maintain it. Their produce has 'taste' which most supermarket meat lacks.

I think (hopefully) there will be a local asparagus/strawberry farm selling their produce. There is the most fantastic Derbyshire mushroom stall. There is also a free range egg stall, which claims that they have been collected that morning. The eggs I bought at the last market at the end of April, are still fresher than anything I would have bought in a supermarket

There is not a fantastic variety of stalls there, but there is enough to lighten the load of my purse considerably.

From there we do a slight detour to the Chatsworth Farm Shop. The meat there is accredited to come from the farms on the estate. Nothing is too much trouble for the butchers in the shop, and we have never bought any tasteless/tough meat from there. Admittedly it is not the cheapest place to buy meat, but at least you know it has been humanely reared and slaughtered, unlike the crap they sell in Tesco.

I have a Joan of Arc zeal against meat from Tesco. Next time you go in to one of their stores, just look at the meat. Does any of it look appetising? When you look at a leg of lamb there - you see that ruddly great chunk of bone and gristle, that should have been chopped off, being sold to you as prime meat. The vacuum packs of offal, which when you get home have dissolved into the water they have been packed in. Yeuk!!

Oh dear, you know, I really could get on my high horse here, but I shall try to resist!!

I think the message about buying meat is to go for quality rather than quantity. Go to your local butcher, he may be more expensive than your local supermarket, but what you buy will have taste, and not be as tough as if it had dragged the plough round the field a few times.

valmarg

Well, my tastebuds, my jawmuscles and the fact that i'd rather be supporting local traders than adding to the obscene profits of the larger supermarkets.

As for food hygeine, I can normally tell a responsible vendor and it certainly seems small organisations care more for your custom. A deal too much is made of it all anyway. Whilst sensible precautions are desirable; we end up with his Nanny state, homogenised, pasturised, preservative rich, taste free, plastic- wrapped rubbish that we are now told is obligatory.

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Paul

I don't think it's all that bad.
I prefer the controls on supermarket food to whatever my local butcher thinks is safe. It is after all, hard for environmental health officers to keep tabs on the flux of local produce because it's not in manageable quantities.

I also have no problems with preservatives or other additives because they are relatively safe and add to food quality.

Fresh vegetables spread 80% of the bugs responsible for food poisoning and I am quite happy with the job the supermarkets do in washing them.

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Jan A novice gardener - first year of growing

Valmarg and Paulottie; I fully agree with you. The meat in my local butcher's looks a darn sight more appetising than the rubbish in Tesco's and it tastes better; their beef tastes like it should and their pork is moist thanks to the layer of fat on it. When will supermarkets learn that the fat is important.

Didn't see the programme, but a couple of years ago I read two books; Not on the Label by Felicity Lawrence, and Shopped by Joanna Blythman, which was enough to shock me into no longer using supermarkets. Not for one particular reason, but the whole feeling of stepping away from that 'Worship at the church of Tesco' feeling you get when you drive into the car park on a Sunday morning (or anytime come to that).

My OH still uses a supermarket for some stuff, but for the last couple of years I have tended to use the village shop, farmers market, butchers etc where at all possible. You will laugh, but recently I did need to cross the threshold into the local supermarket, which has recently been expanded hugely to include an upstairs too - I hadn't got a clue where anything might be, and actually felt panicky about the size of the place, the number of people wandering around with glazed looks, and the sheer amount of stuff on offer. I had to leave without getting what I went in for

Not using the supermarkets is not the most convenient option, it's true, but you'd be amazed at how much money we have saved on 'impulse buys' by changing the way we shop.

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And time just slips away
Bonnie Rait

I try and use our local butcher for all our meat.

All of the produce is local, and each week information is displayed on a blackboard about where the beef/lamb/pork/chicken/eggs are from.

They are all local farms, in fact, I pass several of them on my way to work each morning.

The butchers are happy to advise customers, order special items, prepare meat in a certain way.

If requested, one can go "behind the scenes" and have a look at the back rooms/prep rooms.

I'd rather buy my meat there than Tesco/Sainsburys/Asda/Morrisons!

Muckdiva - isn't it amazing how much stuff you don't buy when you don't go to a supermarket!

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"Its not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you" - Bruce Wayne

Where I used to live in Maidenhead population of about 55k there wasn't a single butchers or veg shop and only 1 baker. Where I now live the local town population about 12k had 2 butchers sourcing a lot of local meat, one of them (vouched by the game keeper) gets in seasonal local caught wild boar and its angels dancing on your tongue, also lots off the local towns will have 2 or three butchers, bakers and veg shops - unheard of where I come from. Cannot help but think we only have ourselves to blame.

Are you really sure about this? The fact you use the term "relatively" would indicate that you're not 100% Whilst some preservatives / additives are absolutley fine, there are many that we should be avoiding as much as possible and anyway, I don't want unecessary additives adding to my meat and veg, they should be produced simply without anybody mucking about with them. Is an honest product too much to ask for?

Food is one of the most important issues, you are what you eat and therefore what you eat has a direct impact on your overall health. Read some of the books mentioned on this thread (Not on the Label etc) and you'll understand a lot of what has been said here.

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Some of us live in the past, always talking about back then. Some of us live in the future, always planning what we are going to do. And, then there are those, who neither look behind or ahead, but just enjoy the moment of right now.

Which one are you and is it how you want to be?

I'm like you MuckDiva. I can't handle the supermarket. If I go in I just see the madness of it all - all the stuff we don't need brought from places it never needed to come from and thronged with shoppers stressed out of their wits. I end up leaving with nothing. But my husband does do some shopping for us there.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

I buy all my meat from a local farmer and trust him, I can see the animals in the fields enjoying their life, then he prepares the carcasses himself so I feel I'm getting what I pay for. I use Tesco for 'sundries' like washing powder and the like but am increasingly thinking even that should be bought locally. Oh, and why is it that whenever I go abroad on holiday the meat always, but always, looks so much more apetising, healthier, cheaper, than the crap we are offered in this country>?

We have a really excellent fortnightly veg box delivery (just in case there's famine in the garden ) from Flights Orchard, and they are now able to add more things to the boxes by special order such as meats, washing powder, cooking sauces and condiments, wines, juices and cider etc. I think the more demand there is for companies like this, the more they will be able to offer, which makes the weekly shop very convenient indeed IMO.

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All at once I hear your voice
And time just slips away
Bonnie Rait

Oh dear you have been misled Simon.
When a group of farmers from Northern Ireland tried to visit Argentina to see the conditions that the beef that was being exported to the UK were being kept in Tescos told the Argentines to deny them a visa to visit the country or they would cancell the order.They didn't get in.
Enviromental officers cant keep up with the supermarkets because they work on a "just in time delivery " . In otherwords the product is booked to arrive at say 9.00 in the morning and as soon as its unloaded its split up and sorted for delivery to the shops. Its in a trailer and gone 2 hours later.Those big distrubution centres have nowhere to store anything .Produce comes in one side , travells across the floor and out the other side.
Supermarkets wash the veg. No they don't .The pack house does and the veg sits in a plastic bag wet from its washed untill you eat it which is at best 3 days later.Ask anyone and they will tell you its the best way of multiplying bacteria.

witch1 - are you actually saying that you dont know and dont care what you put down your and your famillys throat.
Iv'e been a lorry driver for over ten years (now semi-retired from it but still do a bit at weekends) and what I saw during those 10 years was enough to scare the s**t out of me and thats not an easy thing to do.Heres a post from an older thread as I cant be bothered to type it all again --

Got a farming background my self and we kill an animal evry year to put in the freezer for ourselves. We rear the animal from birth to slaughter and grow the food that goes down its throat in our fields.
As I have said elsewhere in this forum we can trace the animal from birth to slaughter and know exactly what it has been fed and how it has been looked after - thats my idea of quality assurance.

I feel pity for people who dont know where their food comes from -but after spending 10 years delivering the raw ingredients to the food industry its probably better that most people dont know what they are eating.If you really want to know what goes into your sausages,burgers ,kebabs read on -if you dont look away now.

SAUSAGES- Pigs heads are put on spikes and the "meat" is steamed off and minced up for sausages .When the factory is finished there is nothing left on the skull but the bone.

BURGERS- As above but they also use pigs feet as well - same process with the steam.

KEBABS - Old mutton sheep that are no use for anything else are slaugtered an the carcases hung in a stainless steel room.On the floor stainless steel trays compleatly cover the floor.Close the doors and turn up the heat - as the meat cooks it falls off the bone into the tray below .A bone could fall in to but its all ground up and formed into what you see spinning round in the kebab shop window .


Enjoy your meal .

Kebab anyone ?

Heres a link to the thread so you can read it all and get the context of what was being said -Kill it, Cook it, Eat it

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Et tū, quis es?

what makes people think farmers markets are any better than supermarkets i know you are going to say it is fresher and we know were it comes from i occasionally go into birmingham wholesale market early morning and you would be surprised how many farmers market vans are in there loading up you can only say it as you see it is it fraud or what

going to give my opinion too if u don't mind. i have been veggie for most of my life, no meat, chicken or fish, although my family are not i cook it (which tastes lovely as many people tell me) but have got to admit that i try to use some local suppliers if i can, think it is the same for most products really, veg included, always tastes so much better when u grow your own. i've got to admit that when u shop in a supermarket u do buy things u don't need, if u ain't got it u make do, well i do anyway. on the other hand i think each to their own and respect that, how can i really say anything about being veggie and wear leather shoes? hope u know what i'm trying to say.

I hear what you are saying JM; 'organic' and 'local food' seem to be growth areas at the moment, and there will be those who try and rip people off, but the consumer has the power to vote with their wallet/purse. Personally I buy less meat and ask to visit the farm where the meat I do buy is produced - producers will be happy to show you around if they have nothing to hide. Lots of the stallholders on our local farmers market produce meat on farms within a few miles of the marketplace and actively encourage people to visit with open days etc.