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

There are loads of useful basics not on the list. If I wrote a list of essentials it would look like this:

Apples
Bacon
Beans
Bread
Butter
Cabbage
Carrots
Celery
Cheddar cheese
Chicken
Cucumber
Eggs
Flour
Gammon
Ham
Lemons
Mayonnaise
Milk
Mince
Onions
Oranges
Peas
Sausages

Oh and o forgot potatoes and pasta.

Very good point @noblegiraffe!
Also liquorice is not good for you as it can raise blood pressure, an absolute blow for me when I found out mine was very high and I love liquorice and
can eat a bagful in a sitting!

I’ve just googled it and it looks like I should certainly be eating more of it than I currently do!

Why are you using language like addicted and smoking in conjunction with a list that includes a gluten free grain (and God knows, we could do with items safe for coeliacs to be cheaper) and jars of pickled cabbage and cauliflower?

which of those do you think you currently pay tariffs on?

To be fair some of those are on the list, maybe the ones that aren’t just don’t have tariffs imposed them so there’s nothing to remove?

True. And the list seeks to be foods that are currently subject to VAT. Of course, back in the 70s when VAT was first introduced it was only 8%. Now it’s 20% which is ludicrously high for food.

What a strange list! So many sweet things from a government apparently keen on a sugar tax. The simplest thing would have been not to include sweets and chocolate of various kinds.

No it’s not. There is no VAT on fruit & veg, bread, oil, grains, nuts etc. It is only about tariffs.

Regular food is not subject to VAT!

I had to look up fonio myself. I'm definitely going to try it. All those nutrients!! This is a healthy list 👍

I don't think the sweets and chocolate are healthy but you can buy fonio on Amazon if you can't find it in shops.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aduna-Organic-Super-Grain-Gluten-Free-African/dp/B095DLRPWC/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2JBIBT4Z9MYGU&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ky3UPIV_nJh8fgCyryNpdtZHFUZZzXrqVTjg3YYLTzdbOf1I2VF0XY-xt8qIGVD6DIsR5lRVHBXWnMFWG8eC9WnCMt6TK_E8Fqi8BxR8HnFpijcspMJkBPIUOGTS3NzmtqbmFXxB2XiJNwuMMM-cqdzSwhdf5bcpn6-x8rXwJAgOGB7oh60BCeBrPRIMsruivTrZPa6kkc8guNo0A0pPa91XnPBWH-YrUR-ZnfH9ut47gSXs38-HS29-PRgdUk9GzECgNZOKhQJ7ba9A32Jcw8v9xrbdlpwBFUWRc6ZhuXg.NiLvv7ojFryFG4xOPnJ_WG-IskSkggrrZrDrY06Upj4&dib_tag=se&keywords=Fonio&qid=1780047014&sprefix=fonio%2Caps%2C118&sr=8-1-spons&aref=iVxtqVgn0s&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1

This is such a weird thread. Fonio is usually known as acha. You could buy it in the corner shop where I lived in London. It’s a staple of the west African diet and there are a number of large west African communities in the UK. Plantain is even more widely eaten across African (and by extension Caribbean) diaspora communities.

And not everyone lives in London and has multicultural shops down the road. Shocking, right? 😬

I don’t live in London any more, but I reckon I could find plenty of children in my school next week who eat acha a few times a week and plantain most days. I’m pretty sure their parents don’t use Mumsnet, however.

I’m not mocking people who haven’t heard of acha / fonio. I am uncomfortable with MNers feigning bafflement that acha and plantain might be staple foods for a fairly significant minority of people living in the UK. If the subtext of the thread is to critique the government’s choice of foods to include or exclude for subsidy then I think there might be better ways to do it.

No subtext from me! I don’t think it’s just the fonio (which even as someone who loves trying new things and mainly cooks from scratch haven’t heard of) or plantain (which I have). It’s a list half full of ingredients that apparently aren’t directly for consumers but for importers and manufacturers, with loads of sugary stuff. Why not avoid giving preferential tax cuts for non sugary stuff. And throat pastilles - since when were they a food? And chewing gum - what sort of foods are manufactured with chewing gum? It’s not a food.

now I have been educated on fonio I think fair enough - a whole food that is healthy and is eaten a lot by certain groups of people, and perhaps could become popular for others. Though I do think that if the selected foods are meant to help people generally, the foods chosen could maybe focus on the things that could have the biggest benefit across all communities or as many people as possible. I would like to try fonio so might do off Amazon as it isn’t stocked at the Asda where I do my shopping these days.

But it all seems a bit pointless anyway as a previous poster commented that the manufacturers or importers aren’t going to be forced to pass on any resulting lower costs to the end consumer so I kind of wonder why bother.

Knowing fonio is usually known as acha doesn't help me at all. Plantain is much more commonly known in my experience.

@EgregiouslyOverdressed imagine the reaction if fufu were on the list 😁 ... though I suppose some fufu is plantain!

I would quite like taro & taro products to be added to the list, I love it as a bubble tea flavour and it's lovely in a bao bun. The frozen bao buns are getting quite expensive.

Apparently Aldi has tons of expensive dried fruit (apples Bananas mango and strawberry)

This is what happens when your politicians live in an echo chamber of trendy middle class yummy mummy's. It's a pathetic attempt to garner votes for the future. Almost nobody I know uses any of those items. It should read more like, bread, rice, potatoes, ketchup, squash, eggs, cleaning products, shower gel etc, etc

OP, your comment is a bit strange. A lot of the UK population is of varied backgrounds and it's nice to see some imported food stuffs that are quite expensive now. A tin of ackee is £10! Hopefully that comes under "preserved fruit/veg"

You still don't get it. The list is about foods with tariffs. The word "essential" is journalistic puff because they can't be arsed to explain what this is about, probably wisely having read this thread, the document you need to read is https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/call-for-input-on-goods-for-cost-of-living-tariff-suspensions although as could be expected the NFU are against despite none of these products being grown in the UK https://www.farminguk.com/news/british-farmers-exposed-by-food-tariff-cuts-nfu-warns_68575.html

Stereotypical middle class 'yummy mummy's' (the plural is 'mummies', by the way) are statistically less likely to be the market most likely to be positively affected by reductions on a grain native to West Africa, pickled/fermented/preserved vegetables and fruit than other groups.

Not sure why food items largely grown and produced in zero tariff areas need to have duty removed from them when a) they aren't subject to duty in the first place and b) don't carry VAT either.

Where the fuck is the steak?? Rubbish