Now I know this is a wicked blasphemy in this topic

[OrmIrian]

but it is even remotely possible, that sometimes, very rarely, the obession with artisan foods might just possibly, maybe, put the teeniest bit of the smallest portion of it's toe over the line into the world of pretentious wank?

Sorry. Listening to the Food Programme on R4. It does sometimes annoy me a tad.

Agree totallly with both Cam and OrmIrian.

If you look into global food production it's truly horrific. Unless we do something it's all going to implode like the stock market. If you read what we're doing to the crops, seas, animals etc it's shocking.

However, there is plenty of scope for people to be utterly, utterly pretentious about it. No point being wanky about your cheese being from a small cave in Tunisia hand prepared by troglodytes in the same fashion since 200BC and then getting it flown in, or giving all the money to a middle man and none to the troglodytes. Or if they're not looking after the goats properly. You should be getting local cheese for local people or you'll be destroying the planet anyhoo.

Thing is, you can really only eat 'artisan' food if you are a middle-class ponce. If you are on the minimum wage and don't have a car, most of your food shopping is going to be done at Costcutter or the corner shop and it's going to be based on what is cheapest and most filling. And that your DC will actually eat.
I would love to shop at the farmers' markets more often ( I can cook and mostly do for myself and DS) - I shop at the street market for veg which is not organic, not local, but affordable, and buy meat from the reduced cabinet at the supermarkets, but simply haven't got the resources to pay £3 for a loaf of bread, no matter how exquisitely hand-kneaded.

SGB - bit harsh there - agree you need a certainlevel of income but don't agree that you have to be a ponce, however middleclass you are (or is the assumption that all MC people are ponces?)

I do like to get stuff at farmer's market once a month for a treat and some of it is viciously expensive (more like once a year then!) but a lot of it isn't. I like the fact that people try to keep local traditions of food-making alive, like they try to ensure that special British breeds of farm animals don't die out, and will try to support them in that endeavour whilst not bankrupting myself.

What Carmenere said. And Arfishy.

Eating well isn't restricted to people with money by the way. You can make your own cheese and bread for less than you'd pay in the shops. Even the most basic stuff will taste really good because it's not crammed full of preservatives.

You could grow your own tomatoes - so they'll actually taste of tomato and not of water - and your own fresh basil.

With bread, cheese, tomato and basil you've a lunch fit for a king, that costs pennies yet is better than what you'd get in many expensive restaurants.

Obviously these things take time and we're all busy parents with not much time - so it's not going to be practical for everyone to eat llike that all the time. But we could.

We are being completely and utterly shafted by the big food producers in every possible way - taste, quality, nutrition value, price, impact on the environment.

Me, I'm happy to put up with a LOT of pretentiousness about artisan food.

The thing is, much as people get all poncy abd cross about cheap food, the point of cheap food is to stop poor people going hungry. Yes there has been a lot wrong about industrialised food production, but the initial idea was to make affordable food available.

Making your own cheese and bread takes space as well as time: it's not exactly feasible in a bedsit, is it?

I do think that street markets and encouraging people to grow food is all to the good (more allotments!) but some mechanisation is necessary to keep everyone fed.

I have another question after reading what welliemum said (sorry if it's irritating but I am just learning & find this thread interesting)

Right, if artisan food is about it actually being produced by people & them being paid for producing it, rather than relying on mass-produced stuff . . . does that mean that growing your own or making your own is seen in a similar way?

I hope that makes sense because it didn't come out quite how it sounded in my head

Looking at it from the other perspective though - if you really like and appreciate an ingredient (Maldon Sea Salt was an example given earlier) and someone who doesn't appreciate or like it tells you it's poncey and Saxa table salt is just as good - is hugely irritating.

Like being offered dried parmesan instead of freshly grated, or a vinaigrette made with a bland oil and malt vinegar!

Yes, these things are expensive. They aren't always available (or indeed appropriate) but if you are interested in food and know something about it you do tend to develop your awareness and repertoire of foods, to include what others might call poncey!

And it's actually the supermarkets who have driven out many of these foods and associated methods of production, so that they are no longer available for the mass market, with the consequent rises in prices.

Nothing wrong with value baked beans on value white bread if it serves a purpose, but that doesn't mean to say that we should write off other foods as poncey.

Try going to Middle America. There you can buy three types of cheese: orange ("Monterey Jack"), yellow ("American") and white ("Swiss"), which all taste the same (i.e. of nothing). There's also presumably "blue" cheese, as you can get blue cheese dressing, but it's never glimpsed in its natural state. And you can get mozzarella on pizza. That's what you get if you go too far down the road of disdain for food ponciness.

Making bread anywhere you have an oven is perfectly feasible.

solidgoldbrass, I sort of partly agree and partly disagree with what you're saying!

For example, I completely agree that people must not go hungry, that obviously takes priority over any amount of poncey cheese.

But there's no need for anyone to go hungry. The world already produces enough food for everyone on this planet. The difficulty is that the food is being produced on a massive scale and never getting to people who need it.

In wealthy countries like the USA and the UK, the amount of food wastage is sickening. Mountains of produce just left to rot on the ground. Supermarket skips overflowing with perfectly edible, safe food. Restaurants chucking out perfect rump steak at the end of the evening while 2 doors down, families are struggling to put a basic meal on the table.

The system is not working, and producing more and more food isn't the answer.

The other question is what "cheap food" really means. Basic supermarket chicken for example, is lots cheaper to buy than wanky organic free range raised-on-Mozart corn fed chicken.

But but but. The cheap chicken is full of water, antibiotics and who knows what. There's less protein in it, it's more likely to have salmonella bugs on it, and you know that it lived a hideous, short life. It has no taste at all. It could have come from anywhere - using up huge amounts of fuel before it arrived on the supermarket shelf.

So it's cheap at the checkout, but there's a big price to pay elsewhere.

Good point about needing space - not necessarily to make bread, although in a bedsit you might not have an oven which would make it tricky - but obviously if you want to grow your own food in a serious way you need access to quite a lot of land, and that's just not going to happen for everyone in a densely populated country. So yes, there will always have to be commercial food production of some sort. My point is that the current model isn't working for anyone except the fat cats at the top.

I'm ranting, and not at you, sgb, don't worry! I've painted a simplistic picture here, but when you look at how our food is produced, the system is seriously sick.

Am still PMSL-ing at arfishy's cheese-making troglodytes producing local cheese for local people by the way

this is one of the most interesting and fluent debates on MN for a while.

one reason why lower-income families have less choice is because the rise of the big supermarkets has pushed out the smaller local shops and markets. So it is Costcutter, or the big tesco on the edge of town. No greengrocer, butcher, baker you can walk to any more.

IHD: yes, the problem of 'food deserts' still exist, and though it;s maddening that the supermarket chains are now setting up their 'local' branches to drive out even more independents, at least this means some access to fresh food for people who live in poor areas and don't have their own transport, because a lot of the Costcutters and 7-11s and so on don't stock fruit and veg or fresh meat, or if they do it's extremely limited and dubious.

I think it is possible to separate 'food ponciness wankery' from 'good ingredients, well produced' - and that the difference is in the commentry.

Food has become a social construct, something tobe self-conciously fey about, something toidentify with.

Up until 10 years ago everyone in my Mum's village (rich, poor,old, young)ate the kind of food now brayed about in borough market. They shopped at the high st butcher, who made his own sausages and pies (well, to be v accurate, my Mum made the pies!), the tiny fish shop sol local fish, home-made fish cakes etc, the bread and cakes in the small independent supermaket came from a small independent bakery 5 miles away. Local named-farm milk, veg etc etc. NOBODY comented on any of this.

Fast forward and the whole subject is a colour supplement commentary. I kid you not, people who have driven a HUGE Range Rovers all the way from London stand in the 'deli' (one the 'grocer' and question the provenance of the potatoes, disapproving of anything with a carbon footprint of more than a 5 mile journey (cabon footprint of potato - minial, Carbon footprint of RR driving consumer - enormous!!).

Good food is fine. It IS better in many differnt ways, as people have said. Attaching it to a sense of self-importance in a 'look at me' way - wanky and poncy.

Some colour supplement did a feature on Jay Rayner and asked him totake the interviewer on a tour of 'the local places he buys his food from'. He walked them straight to Teso in Brixton! And explained that for many many basic goods that is exactley where he shops.

I must have read this years ago - I'm sure I didn't think it up myself - but there's a basic equation for food which is that you can't have food that's cheap, good quality and convenient, all at once.

I picture it as a sort of pie which you have to divide into 3 pieces. If you cut 1 piece bigger, then 1 or 2 of the other pieces must be smaller. You can't cut 3 bigger slices.

So:

• Fancy chicken dish in a smart restaurant will have great quality, it'll be v. convenient because someone else is cooking it - but it'll be very expensive.

• budget supermarket frozen chicken: v. cheap, v. convenient, but shite quality.

• poncey organic supermarket chicken: v. convenient, good quality, but costs ££.

• keep and eat your own chickens: great quality, v. cheap, but not convenient (in fact downright impossible for most people).

So you can't win in every way, and need to prioritise according to your circs.

But I think that as a society we've demanded too much cheap convenient food at the expense of quality - and the industry has been only too pleased to comply.

Maybe it's our expectations that need to change too?

X posted with Blu - I agree, there's a big difference between enjoying good quality food for itself, and playing daft one-upmanship games.

I get sad though, when I see people who are passionate about good food being dismissed as pretentious just because they appreciate good food. That kind of inverted snobbery is the potentially the death of good food.

Thanks blu - that is what I meant.

I'm a great user of local unpasteurised cheese, home-grown veg, free-range eggs from lady at work that keeps chucks, meat from local farms. I tend to avoid farmers markets as they are eye-wateringly expensive. I just beleive that all the flummery around good food can make it off-putting and more expensive. It doesn't need to be like that. Small producers need to add value to their produce in some way - I don't think that the 'packaging' it gets is a good way of doing it.

welliemum - there is no such thing a cheap food I agree. But there is such a thing as over-priced food.

Agree, Orm, about the over-pricing. I think there's been a lot of cashing in on organic labels for example.

Whilst supermarkets have their place, and offer good quality at decent prices, it is really, really important that they have competition. Very soon almost all the money we spend on food will go into 3-4 different companies. they then get to decide (and they DO consult each other) what prices to set. If there are no individual food retailers left on the high street our choices will be severely limited to whatever the big supermarkets can make the highest profit on.

So for example, I might want to buy some English green beans. But they might be too expensive for the supermarkets to make their mark up, so they buy them in from Peru. And pretty soon you can't get ANY English green beans anymore because people only want to pay 99p for a pk that are trimmed and washed and the producers have had to grow something else more economical or go out of business. Oh that has already happened

Take GM foods for example. The HUGE companies that want to propagate the production of GM crops argue that they can cheaply feed the poor of the world. Bollix. they have no intention of feeding the starving in africa, they only want to produce raw materials cheaply so they can increase profit for their shareholders. There is NO philanthropy in the world of intensive food production.

If at all possible we should support any green grocer, butcher, fishmonger or even corner shop we can find because the reality of what will happen without them is too scary. And you don't need to fetish-ise food or be a ponce to do that.

I agree it can often stray into wanky ponceyness.

BUT, wanking is nice.

I agree with Welliemum. It is all about priorities. I have my budget, and with that I can buy humanely reared local beef and chicken once a week, and use pulses and vegetables for the rest of the week. This is because I value provenance over quantity.

I also agree with Carmenere. The supermarkets power is scary. If we let them carry on in the same way unchecked, in a few years we won´t have any variety or choice.

better to obsess a bit about food than say handbags. though they're nice too

bundle . i am obsessed with food and handbags....

Don't give a sh*t about handbags.

err hoxty, I did think of you as I typed

xxx

I buy stuff that I think is good to eat - eg free range from our excellent local butcher (chicken thighs for dd's, belly pork for me and dh yesterday afternoon) but don't get tied up in knots re: organic status.

but I do like organic milk

and carrots