How much fonio does your family get through in a week and how much will the reduction in price help you?

[noblegiraffe]

The govt have released a list of 125 "everyday essentials" that they plan to cut tax on to help families with the cost of living.

It's a bit of a weird list. Beans, biscuits and chocolate yes, a bit more baffled by the fresh figs, gherkins and plantains. And I had to google fonio.

Aubergines
Avocados
Baked beans
Bananas (fresh and dried)
Biscuits
Boiled sweets
Bread
Buckwheat
Candied fruit
Chewing gum
Chocolate (bulk and retail)
Chocolate bars
Chocolate drink preparations
Chocolate spreads
Chocolate with fruit, nuts or cereal
Citrus fruits (various)
Cocoa paste
Cocoa powder
Couscous
Crispbread
Crisps
Dried apples
Dried apricots
Dried figs
Dried papaya
Dried peaches/nectarines
Dried pears
Fonio
Fresh figs
Frozen fruits
Garlic
Gherkins
Gingerbread
Green tea
Jams and marmalades
Limes
Liquorice products
Margarine
Marzipan and pastes
Mixed dried fruit
Mixed fats and oils
Mixed fruit and nuts
Mixed nuts
Mixed preserved fruit and nuts
Non-alcoholic beverages
Olive oil (extra virgin)
Olive oil (other)
Olive oil (virgin)
Olives (for oil production)
Olives (fresh/chilled)
Olives (frozen)
Other fresh fruits
Other peppers (capsicum/pimenta)
Pickled peppers
Pizzas and quiches
Plant-based drinks
Plantains (fresh and dried)
Prepared vegetables
Preserved beans
Preserved citrus fruits
Preserved tropical fruit
Preserved vegetables
Processed potatoes
Quinoa
Rusks
Soups and broths
Sugar confectionery
Sugar tablets
Sweet peppers
Throat pastilles
Toasted bread products
Toffees and caramels
Tomato ketchup
Tomato sauces
Vegetable oils
Waffles and wafers

Whatever they do you will have less money in your pocket.
Guaranteed.

It is like a stocktake of school Harvest Festival when your mum had chucked some random thing from the back of the cupboard at you as you were dashing out of the house.

For me it was a giant tin of Ma Made Seville Oranges to make marmalade with.
(my brain thinks that is a useful bit of info to hold for 40+ years)

Why dont they take tax off sugar so we can make homemade jams/jellies/pickles more economically again????

Where sells Frozen Olives?

Why were Liquorice products taxed in the 1st place?

what on earth are:
‘Mixed preserved fruit & nuts’ &,
‘Plant based Drinks’, remembering that sugar is made from plants, so does that mean all expensive cordials/squashes, without sweetener will be cheaper?

Not really many staples on there. I cant see it making much impact on an average shopping basket

I know that Caribbean communities eat plantain but it is odd to describe something as an ‘everyday essential’ when Sainsbury’s and Asda don’t stock it.

They are everyday essentials for those communities though, right?

My understanding is that they are cutting "tariffs" which are duties applied at import and which the government keeps to spend on all sorts of useful things.

When [in the 1970s] I had to deal with them they were quite low [5.4% on carrots after May15th for example] so any reduction will be small. Milk being UK produced would be tariff free

Most bizarre list of “everyday essentials”!
Never heard of fonio.
And we’ve got the sugar tax, but then a lot of sugar on this list of reduced tax. Coke is a “plant-based drink”!

Yes, that sounds likely. I wonder if fonio is also used in food manufacturing? Possibly by a different name in ingredient lists.

what's wrong with it ? If you look into the definitions - it's covering most things tinned, frozen like types of beans pulses tomatoes ... could cook lots of healthy meals quinoa etc.
Am guessing all fresh vegetables and fresh meat are more unpredictable- so they're giving tinned and preserved options with beans as protein source?

Chewing gum is the most bizarre one to me. I don't see on what planet it's an everyday essential.

The way chocolate is going with all its palm oil and waxy taste, you couldn’t give it away.

This reads like a shopping list from the 1930s or something.

Anything that saves people money I’m all for, but unless you’re 70+ then half of these things people rarely buy.

I eat about 50 of those 75 listed.

Sainsbury's and Asda here do sell plantain here (London).

Liquorice tends to be grown from Turkey to China. (You can buy sliced root in Chinese supermarkets, it's nice as a herbal tea.)

Plant based drinks are milk imitations. They not allowed to call them milk in the EU after Big Cow Milk went to court over it 🙄 Oat milk won't be affected as it's mostly from the UK or Europe, but almond, soy, rice and coconut milk is.

Who form a tiny minority of the population being addressed by the govt?

When the govt say that they are lowering the price of everyday essentials for hardworking British families, I don’t think people get the impression that they mean for small ethnic minorities.

I’m not sure this is meant to be an everyday essential list though, it may be getting conflated with the Scottish plan to reduce the price of the average shopping basket which includes less niche foods like bread and milk.

It’s not even a food!

I eat a lot of those regularly, including figs, love them.i don’t buy chocolate, biscuits or sweets regularly though

I imagine they are used in industrial food preparation? e.g. on supermarket pizzas etc.

Not really your average family shopping basket is it!

@FusionChefGeoff maybe they are trying to push for a Mediterranean diet??

These names seem a bit odd but I believe they come from the official descriptions for customs purposes. There are literally thousands of categories of good and each have an ID number and name. Quite a lot of these foods (e.g. cocoa paste, frozen olives) are not end-consumer goods - they are bought by food manufacturers.

what's "Cocoa paste"? Nutella?

I hadn't heard of fonio but it sounds quite nice. I might get some.

Everything else on that list bar the chocolatey things, frozen olives and chewing gum is something I eat fairly often so this works for me! I'm particularly excited by the gherkin news as I think I may be a gherkin addict.

Liquorice products?

It’s a good thing. Stop making it a negative.