What's On Your Plate?
by Bonnie Alter, London 
on 08.24.06
Being a foodie in Britain is a glorious experience—there is a national obsession with food and eating—what to buy, where to buy it, how to cook it and where to eat it. For your delectation, the Food Monthly (one of many regular food-related newspaper supplements) has whipped up two different meals: the most ethical and the most unethical on earth. Start off dinner with a conscience quaffing Nyetimber wine (no air miles and locally grown vines). The Yeo Valley organic yoghurt comes in easily recycled pots, the farm uses wind and solar power and carries out extensive reforestation. The Dickinson & Morris pork pies (this is Britain, don’t forget) are made of uncured pork with no hydrogenated fats. The Fishermen’s Association has inserted tags in the gills of the line-caught Cornish sea bass to ensure that it has been fished using sustainable methods. For dessert: Fair Trade bananas from the Windward Isles. Of course all the fruit and vegetables come delivered in an organic vegetable box.
The unethical meal contains many of the usual suspects familiar to North Americans. Dole pineapple, margarine using palm oil (causing the destruction of the rain forest and organg-utans) and Nestle products are included. So are South African apples (terrible working conditions for the workers), farmed tiger prawns (so-called organic farming pollutes the soil and destroys mangrove forests), broiler chickens ( nasty farming methods) and bottled water shipped from Fiji. Whew! What are you serving for dinner tonight? :: The Observer Food Monthly
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How can you possibly use the label "most ethical meal on earth" for pig and fish meat? Unbelievable.
As a lover of good food, living in the UK has been a blessing! The number of great producers and stores is very large, but here are couple of my favs:
~ Sussex and the City - A great little store in The Laines of Brighton with a wonderful collection of local beers, wines, and condiments.
~ Montezuma Chocolate - A Sussex organic chocolate producer, who make wonderful hot chocolate mixes.
~ Hotel Chocolat - A great chain of chocolate stores in/around London.
~ Foxbury Farm - An Oxfordshire farm & farmshop that do free deliveries to the local area. They have all types of local products - meat, produce, & diary.
~ M. Feller Son & Daughter, Organic Butchers - The organic butcher in the Covered Market in the center of Oxford. They are a little expensive but also provide free delivery.
As I said, these are just some of my personal favorites and it does not even dip that far into the available pool!
There may be a "national obsession with food and eating" in the UK, but sadly that doesn't translate to good dietary habits or a refined palate, quite the opposite in fact. Britain consumes more ready meals than any other country in Europe.
And while there are significant small independent producers providing quality produce, the fact remains that most people obtain their food from supermarkets where the quality of fresh produce is very variable (particularly fruit and vegetables).
In my opinion most of the fruit and vegetables sold at supermarkets is of very poor quality. Fruit, for example is often picked before it's fully ripened in order to prolong its shelf life. The result is that when you bite into something that should be soft, juicy and sweet, it's actually hard and tasteless. It's no surprise so many people find fruit and vegetables unappetising when their only experience is of the tasteless variety they find at their local supermarket.
For a good book that convincingly deflates the idea that Britain's culinary habits have somehow been transformed, I'd recommend Bad Food Britain by Joanna Blythman.
Firoz,
I agree that many people in the UK (and in the rest of the First World) do not provide themselves with the best food available. On the other hand, there are a lot of movements that I see happening in the UK and Europe, more generally, that are only slowly (or not at all) happening in the USA. Those include allotments and better labeling (see the supermarket report card, plus a lot of TV time on major stations (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five) spent on trying to help people eat better (see shows by: Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey, Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall, et al).
Finally, I want to mention on web resource, BigBarn.co.uk , that will help locate organic producers around the UK.