It's the supermarkets to blame

twizzel said:

This is sadly true. I’m mid 30s and enjoy cooking, though been living off microwave meals for the last month due to kitchen renovations. Yes they are easy, 3 mins and you’ve got dinner. I can see why people won’t cook. But I can’t wait to get my kitchen back and cook dinner every evening, and eat it at a table. I think one of the first meals we will have is roast lamb

Click to expand...

my favourite lamb dish is Cawl

It’s the farmers fault for allowing the supermarkets to do the business they do enough levy’s are paid to employe the people the supermarkets employed to do better business for the farmers

borderterribles said:

I agree with most of the above. Nothing will change until Cooking/Home Economics/Family Life Skills are routinely taught in Schools, to ALL children, without exception.

Click to expand...

Thing is, I dread to think what food they‘d be taught to cook and what woke agenda would be forced onto them. It’d be all low fat, anti-animal, wheat-based obesity-diabetes guaranteed crap.

DaveGrohl said:

Thing is, I dread to think what food they‘d be taught to cook and what woke agenda would be forced onto them. It’d be all low fat, anti-animal, wheat-based obesity-diabetes guaranteed crap.

Click to expand...

and then, I am sure, anyone who "identified" as a Vegan would be allowed to not be in the same room as meat or fish (I think it would be classed as a micro aggression). I have even read, that putting a full stop at the end of a text is a micro aggression!!!

Highland Mule said:

Or maybe until marketing and merchandising skills are taught to all butchers and greengrocers?

Click to expand...

Some of the Yorkshire independent grocers and dairies did that - now called ASDA and Morrisons

Ffermer Bach said:

and then, I am sure, anyone who "identified" as a Vegan would be allowed to not be in the same room as meat or fish (I think it would be classed as a micro aggression). I have even read, that putting a full stop at the end of a text is a micro aggression!!!

Click to expand...

I'm feeling aggrieved at your exclamation marks. I need a safe space to recover.

Supermarkets will always win, why did they come about? Because people wanted cheap food all under 1 roof. I remember thinking as a kid our Supermarkets are a bit crap compared to the hyper marchés in France.

There are 2 big problems with food in this country...3 if you count vegans. 1 people are so far removed from their food they don't understand where it comes from, when it's in season and what to do with it. We're as guilty as anyone else, our youngest loves strawberries and eats them like sweets. Costs us a bloody fortune to buy imported Spanish strawberries all winter but fruit is better than sweets and chocolate! And the eldest would live on cheesy pasta and salty noodles if we let her in-between hormonal mood swings and teenage angst

2 food poverty. Who were the ones eating the rotten cheap lasagne when the horse meat scandal kicked off? People that were on a budget and couldn't afford to eat anything else. If they'd been discounted to 50% off or more they'd have sold out faster than they could restock the shelves! 2 for the price of one they wouldn't care if it was dog they were getting!

I honestly don't know what the answer is. Farm shops are expensive. I wouldn't shop in one because we couldn't afford it. People growing their own stuff? Most people can't look after a pot plant and shouldn't be allowed a gerbil never mind some sort of animal destined to be eaten. Or maybe it is. Maybe make schools have a vegetable plot and rear some meat chickens or something. We produce thousands of tonnes of wild game each year that gets exported because people don't know or are frightened to use it and it's sold at a premium and as such we produce more than we can use. There's no easy answer.

We're lucky here at home, I kill our own lambs and I can do pigs if I really have to but they're a lot of work and better sent to the abattoir! We don't have cattle but I do shoot deer so we substitute beef with venison and we rear chickens and turkeys seasonally so we never really buy any meat and we've got a decent sized veg patch this year.

Shann_mann said:

I think it’s the education of people towards meat and products that is to blame. To many people think you only get steak off a cow and they don’t know what to do with a big joint of rib or a few lb of stew steak. The supermarket is the easy option walk grab a 15 minute gas mark 6 Cottage pie bag of 12 minutes chips and tea is sorted. They don’t want the hassle of making from scratch. It’s the times we live in that are to blame not fully supermarkets.

Click to expand...

Shoppers choose these options even though it's the most expensive way to eat, without going to a fast food outlet or restaurant.

You have to remember a great deal of millennials with families were not taught how to cook, have no clue or even less inclination to do so. We do not buy or eat much processed food here, the majority of microwave meals taste like carp anyway and the kids just won't eat them. A lot of young families don't even own saucepans because they've blown their monthly budget on 3 iphone 25s or whatever. They have no idea what a piece of flank or skirt is much less how to cook it. The reality is that if you know what you are doing you can eat quite well for very little money, but the second you start loading up with processed or convenience foods the margin retailers make on it ramps up enormously and your take home calories plummet.

ollie989898 said:

You have to remember a great deal of millennials with families were not taught how to cook, have no clue or even less inclination to do so. We do not buy or eat much processed food here, the majority of microwave meals taste like carp anyway and the kids just won't eat them. A lot of young families don't even own saucepans because they've blown their monthly budget on 3 iphone 25s or whatever. They have no idea what a piece of flank or skirt is much less how to cook it. The reality is that if you know what you are doing you can eat quite well for very little money, but the second you start loading up with processed or convenience foods the margin retailers make on it ramps up enormously and your take home calories plummet.

Click to expand...

Lack of knowledge certainly, but never underestimate laziness. Sure, they don’t know how to cook, but now they don’t even have to go to the effort of going to a shop to buy a cook book, it’s all there at their fingertips. Or on the bloody telly they can’t tear themselves away from.

DaveGrohl said:

Lack of knowledge certainly, but never underestimate laziness. Sure, they don’t know how to cook, but now they don’t even have to go to the effort of going to a shop to buy a cook book, it’s all there at their fingertips. Or on the bloody telly they can’t tear themselves away from.

Click to expand...

Don't underestimate either, the ability to learn about food and cooking. Necessity is the mother of invention. Humans aren't stupid but we are lazy.

kiwi pom said:

You don't cook?

Click to expand...

He goes to the mart for his dinner

BAF said:

I honestly don't know what the answer is. Farm shops are expensive. I wouldn't shop in one because we couldn't afford it.

Click to expand...

Are they too expensive, or are supermarkets too cheap?
Can you not afford to shop there, or are you comsuming too much?

Tim G said:

Are they too expensive, or are supermarkets too cheap?
Can you not afford to shop there, or are you comsuming too much?

Click to expand...

there's a new café/farm shop, opened up locally, just by the A 303, the prices for 'stuff' in there, are eyewatering, always plenty of cars in the carpark though. Price is relative to your own earnings, and what you want to spend it on, if food, and quality, its reasonable, if its computer games, cigs etc, its to expensive. Or, like me, to tight to spend that money, when l know for cheaper supplies !

som farmer said:

there's a new café/farm shop, opened up locally, just by the A 303, the prices for 'stuff' in there, are eyewatering, always plenty of cars in the carpark though. Price is relative to your own earnings, and what you want to spend it on, if food, and quality, its reasonable, if its computer games, cigs etc, its to expensive. Or, like me, to tight to spend that money, when l know for cheaper supplies !

Click to expand...

Food purchases for some folk are more "Aspirational" than "Nutritional" ...

Courier said:

Some of the Yorkshire independent grocers and dairies did that - now called ASDA and Morrisons

Click to expand...

Since been sold on too.

Ffermer Bach said:

I don't know what type of food culture we have had in the UK in the past, however, I think we seem to have lost most of it now, which is now playing out in the obesity epidemic (and the accompanying health problems like metabolic syndrome etc). It come to something when you can even buy veggies that are pre cut up etc (or for that matter pre boiled eggs!).

Having said that, when I make a Lasagne, I buy a jar of white sauce (bit of a faff to make a roux sauce, however if I am cooking a fisherman's pie I will make a cheese sauce from scratch).

Click to expand...

Your're kidding.....? Really!!!

I am the same with pasta sauces, but will tweak them heavily for the full "Steve experience"! A good slosh of Red into any tom sauce makes a worls of difference..

Northeastfarmer said:

He goes to the mart for his dinner

Click to expand...

Northeastfarmer said:

He goes to the mart for his dinner

Click to expand...

Had a good roast dinner there today beef was beautiful

I think the reason a lot of people don't cook as much for the family is time and the fact that many people these days eat different meals at different times of the day as we're a 24/7 society.
Who's doing the grocery shopping and cooking in the TFF households?

I think supermarkets and the rest of the supply chain do a good job of feeding pretty much the whole population, especially during covid. Its just the rules around their business practices and bullying tactics that need sorting, so everyone gets a fair chunk of the pie.

bluebell said:

Look supermarkets dont force people to buy their food, they compete in a very compettitive market place? I dont like how the countrys gone and farming with that?, but how could it ever go back to the days of small farms, small growers, many supplying wholesale markets, where greengroucers and the like used to buy? The population growth for one has changed all that?

Click to expand...

There is a difference between , selling produce cheaply on tight margins and selling at below the cost of production to get foot fall through the door , thats the real issue , as they are expecting farmers to pay for it . Veg at 19p at christmas ? Easter lamb brought in from NZ etc sold at below cost , Tesco were driven out of france because the law there prevents selling at below production cost

andybk said:

There is a difference between , selling produce cheaply on tight margins and selling at below the cost of production to get foot fall through the door , thats the real issue , as they are expecting farmers to pay for it . Veg at 19p at christmas ? Easter lamb brought in from NZ etc sold at below cost , Tesco were driven out of france because the law there prevents selling at below production cost

Click to expand...

Sad thing is, all they need to do is adjust the different margins they make on all those different products. Some things they make a fortune on but our stuff gets loss leader status. It’s a frankly utterly bizarre state of affairs, but it’s been the way for decades. I suppose it made sense decades ago to sell milk as a loss leader, when the sole objective was to destroy the traditional milk round, but the days of that being a justifiable policy have long gone. The dodo was killed. So why are they still doing it? It’s madness.