"Food glorious food...."

I can't believe there can be a single adult in the UK with half a brain, that doesn't realise that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys - or horses in this case. Media chefs & diet programmes have been telling us for years that we should eat freshly cooked food using raw ingredients and a have balanced diet. There is a whole multi million pound book & TV programme industry based on it.

We are as culpable as the food processing industry in some ways, with our demand for ever more cheap food. Seemingly we don't care what we put into our mouths, so long as it isn't expensive & it cooks quickly with no effort on our part. We are time poor & a lot of us have given up preparing and eating good food with our families. We don't care how that food is produced as long as we get instant gratification.

I bought some cooked, sliced, chicken pieces for my lunch from Tesco. Not the thin sliced re-constituted, rubbish you get in the deli counter. Something that did actually look like chicken breast. It was so nondescript it could have been anything. There was no taste or "bite" whatsoever. I wouldn't have been able to identify it blindfold. It was watery & bland, even with a liberal helping of mayo.

 I cook for one, which can be quite difficult. I do buy "cook chill" foods for convenience. But I still cook from scratch & really enjoy the results with a nice glass of dry white wine. Cooking pasta for example is almost as fast as a ready meal. There really is no excuse when you can get good nutritious recipes from cookbooks or the internet. We should value our health & bodies more & know exactly what is going into our mouths. Even more important - the mouths of our children.

So I have little sympathy with all the coverage of the latest food scandal. If we aren't prepared to pay reasonable prices for good, tasty food we deserve everything we get. Even if it is unmentionable, mechanically scraped, meat from God knows where. Criminals go for the jugular. They see moneymaking opportunitite & don't give a damn about any consequenses.

We are complicit - we allow it to happen. It will continue to happen untill we all do something about it & vote with our purchasing power.