to think that the amounymt of junk food in the supermarkets is f*cking RIDICULOUS

[sallyseton]

whole AISLES dedicated to sweets, chocolate, crisps, cakes, biscuits etc!!! is sthere something wrong here or is it just me?

no wonder half the country's fat if every time we go shopping we're bombarded with all this. packaging is often designed to be most appealing to children, too.

there's an argument that supermarkets promote this food as unlike say, a potato, these foods do not go off quickly. so it is more profitable for them.

i am not a food nazi, i like chocolate etc as much as anyone else, i just think the choice on display is ridiculous and we all as a country probably eat too much of it.

there's a very good argument that says that if you want cake or something, you should make it yourself. that way you can see what goes into it (and no additives or preservatives) but because of the hassle involved it really will be a treat. i might try it.

oh, and nefore anyone flames me over using the word "junk" food, yes i do believe that the kind of preservative filled crisps etc you find at the supermarket are junk food, almost no nutritional value, unlikely to fill even the smallest
child up, abd the packaging will be thrown away and fester away in the earth, certainly not biodegradable.

i do feed my child crisps btw, but the
slightly healthier "baked" ones, and i am certainly not
judging anyone, feed your child anything you damn well please i just dont think we should have such a surfeit of crap in the supermarket!

ps i bought some light mayonnaise yesterday, it had a little sticker on it saying it was a good source of omega 3 and 6. MAYONNAISE!!! you have to be f*cking kidding me. these food companies are all damn immoral liars.

I read it, read what I'd posted earlier and confess I was slightly

Sorry

'tis ok - I'm easily confused

kissangel

We started to get bulky things (loo roll, kitchen roll) and heavy things (tinned foods, flour, sugar, dried beans, etc) delivered once a month with Tesco when I was pregnant and starting to find shopping more of a chore.

We go to a Farmer's market twice a month - the first weekend of the month it is in our town so we walk there and back, and take our backpacks. Then a fortnight later we go to a town about 20 minutes' drive away, and again take all our own bags. We buy everything we can there, but although they sell cheese and butter they do not sell milk for example. So I have to do little top-up shops for things we cannot get at the farmer's market (mostly fruit, milk, yogurt - although I make that as well). I walk to either Tesco, Nisa, Morrison or Aldis, and take all my own bags. In fact, when my car did not pass its MOT recently, we downsized to one car and I have not missed it at all.

A friend of ours set up a co-op that purchases things in bulk from an organic supply source. So we occasionally get things with them in the co-op. My DP cannot eat nuts, but has fallen in love with toasted sunflower seeds (sprinkle a bit of soy sauce on them after they've cooked for 12 minutes at 190 - heaven)... we buy 10kg of sunflower seeds for £20 and it works out cheaper than I've seen them anywhere. He can have a snack that's better than crisps or salted nuts, and they contain only 2 ingredients.

You can eat pretty healthily within a reasonable budget, but it takes time, effort and planning. I know when I was working 2 jobs and doing a full-time course, my cooking took all my "free" time in the evening. I would often make an enormous vegetarian stir fry on a Sunday night to be my dinners during the week - and cabbage, carrots, onions, mushrooms and beansprouts don't really cost that much. It's the time element that many people don't have, or don't want to invest, or maybe they just don't know how to cook. I'm lucky - my mother cooked and baked everything from scratch, and I took an interest and watched! We spent endless hours in the summer preparing fruit and vegetables for canning, preserving, jams and preserves because we were poor and we knew how to preserve foods for the winter. Who does that now?

I used to be one of those people in Tesco that went round and did the shopping for other people, and I cycled to work, and many others got the bus in. So don't assume those workers all drove there....

so, in your case, it is better, BUT i'd still love to know. where i last lived in the uk, there was 1 small waitrose & 1 small budgens, both 5 miles away - or a huge tesco extra 10 miles away. there were lots of farms that sold from a stall by the road, but to get a selection of fruit/veg you had to drive round to each diff farm as they tended to carry only 1 or 2 things.

i worked, and although i pretty much cook everything from scratch (when dd was young, she reacted to every kind of packet/jar food made, so there was no choice, but i have always cooked anyway), i STILL ended up using a supermarket, as the other options were too limited in choice/hours etc.

had i been able to get to the various farms & markets, i would have easily clocked up about 100 miles to get in a week's shopping.

so how 'good' it is really depends on where you live - ironically, it seems better to live in town than in the country. i would just love some real facts about it - someone like AllenPoe to pop up & give us 'the truth' rather than the advertising spiel/personal experience angle.

whenever advertisers tell me something, i immediately think 'really? are you sure?' and want to KNOW the truth. i suspect in this case, that there's v little actually known about how much families travel to get food & whether home delivery etc is better.

My shopping choices are as follows:
veg + dry goods - local shop that gets stuff from farmers co-op
meat - butcher in borough market who has high welfare standards
tins etc - Sainsos - we go there on the train.

It doesn't take long and is actually fun, to go to small shops and give them your money.

Nice to read your post empty shell good ole Jamie eh! He does mean well doesn't he. Re Waitrose - I don't shop there myself as don't have one close and is quite dear, but my reason for supporting them would be that they are also a bit of a 'co-op' and all of the partners get a share of the profits at the end of the year. I love that.

Very interesting article the other day about 'local' produce.

Apparently apples from kent are NOT always better than apples from spain. If you are getting them out of season then they are last years apples from the cold storage and worse for the environment than the air miles ones.