Dirty veg

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fabindia
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Dirty veg

Post by fabindia »

Out here in Thailand, there are just a two or three supermarkets where you can buy the sort of produce we are used to in the west.

However, if we do ever shop at one of these, Makro for example, the veg comes pre-washed and wrapped in plastic. As a result, we mainly shop at our local market and if we take our own bags, we avoid using yet more plastic bags. After all, whether we buy pre-washed and pre-packed or the slightly muckier produce from the market, we wash it ourselves when we get it home.

And that has got me thinking, certainly when we first got married over forty years ago, we had a fantastic green grocers at the top of our street. But all the veg was sold as it came out of the ground, the potatoes and carrots still had soil on them and the girls who worked in the shop always had dirty black hands.

Is it really necessary that our supermarkets in UK only sell veg that looks as if it has just come from the local county show? Surely the amount water used does not justify the waste.

(Another thing, the veg in those days was put into brown paper bags and the girls used to weigh each item and write the price in pencil down on a spare bag - then finally add up the cost in their head. I wonder if shop assistants today would be daunted by having to do that)
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Mo
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Re: Dirty veg

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fabindia wrote: 26 Mar 2023, 09:08 (Another thing, the veg in those days was put into brown paper bags and the girls used to weigh each item and write the price in pencil down on a spare bag - then finally add up the cost in their head. I wonder if shop assistants today would be daunted by having to do that)
And I would add up as I went along, to check their total. Not sure that i could now.
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lancashire lass
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Re: Dirty veg

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fabindia wrote: 26 Mar 2023, 09:08 But all the veg was sold as it came out of the ground, the potatoes and carrots still had soil on them and the girls who worked in the shop always had dirty black hands.

Is it really necessary that our supermarkets in UK only sell veg that looks as if it has just come from the local county show? Surely the amount water used does not justify the waste.

Another thing, the veg in those days was put into brown paper bags
How we ended up to the current situation is down to several factors

First, veg + soil + plastic wrapping are not a good combination (all veg lose water over time but if wrapped in plastic, the moisture has nowhere to go but in the soil. Soil contains microbes, that is bacteria, yeasts + fungus, most of which are harmless but not so Clostridia (a common soil microbe), for example Cl. botulinum which thrive in those ideal "anaerobic" conditions) So paper bags for "dirty veg" were probably the best thing at the time back then, but now have to be cleaned before wrapped in plastic.

Secondly - again, back then, the supermarkets were probably small and in town where you bought mainly tin or dried foods (with a very limited range of frozen stuff in a small "chest" freezer sited in the corner) as well as the usual soaps and detergents, with people (usually women) going to either the greengrocers or the open market, the fishmonger and butcher for the rest of the fresh food. But then a supermarket revolution happened - in order to expand, they needed to attract customers. Supermarket psychology was employed to get people to switch from the "traditional" shopping to go to their stores instead - in particular, make it easier, simpler, lots more products to choose from (and the expansion of ready meals in the late 1980s and 1990s), pre-packed (as in, a bag of vegetables rather than having to spend time selecting vegetables, or even bother peel and chop it!), cheaper, more convenient (opening and closing hours) and so on. I remember when Tescos opened a (back in the early 1980s) massive supermarket and the convenience of going by car and being able to load it up instead of being limited to carrying heavy bags and having to catch the bus. And everything you needed was all under one roof and more.

Third - hygiene. Now, the importance of cleanliness goes way back to before the Victorian period but was embraced by them to control diseases which spread in towns and cities as a result of overcrowding and poor sanitation. During the 20th century and the advent of media (in cinemas and television) came advertising and with it, a generation grew up being persuaded that their house were filled with germs and to buy products to protect themselves and their families, to the point that we have people who have been shielded so much and not been exposed to microbes at an early age, they now have allergies (and we won't even mention what happened during the pandemic / handwashing advice and people then preferring pre-packaged food over loose)

Fourth - food scares (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) aka mad cow's disease, botulism, listeria, salmonella, campylobacter to name a few, most usually through improper food preparation or bad farming) and intentional contamination of food to harm people (especially aimed at babies and young children) became quite common in the 1970s and 1980s (well, I recall it being on the media a lot more back then) so came counter measures such as having food safety (if you see a container had been opened, don't use it)

Fifth - the plastic revolution. The biggest impact of all. It was supposed to "save the forests from being chopped down" and make life easier. Food hygiene was up there on the list of advantages of using plastic wrap and packaging along with preserving fresh food for longer. Of course, it wasn't just the shoppers who benefitted - transportation of fresh food and manufacturing saw a cheaper and more convenient way of doing things (and don't forget that supermarkets influenced how they wanted their goods delivered to their stores)

Finally. Both my parents worked when I was growing up but the attitude back then was very much a wife's role to look after the children, the housework and put food on the table. Throw in all of the above and the convenience it had to make life easier (and safer). Is it little wonder that people embraced a different way of shopping? Of course, the impact on the environment from plastic waste is making people rethink but it will take time. Have you ever watched the tv series "Shop well for less"? It is quite a revelation when you watch shopping habits of others - the participants in the show have to be re-educated which I find so sad.
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Re: Dirty veg

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fabindia wrote: 26 Mar 2023, 09:08 Another thing, the veg in those days was put into brown paper bags and the girls used to weigh each item and write the price in pencil down on a spare bag - then finally add up the cost in their head. I wonder if shop assistants today would be daunted by having to do that
Without their computerized till many of today's checkout operators would be lost. The look of bewilderment on their faces when you offer them extra change to cover the balance always amuses me.

We can still purchase fresh fruit and vegetables that people grow in their fields/gardens either at the small town market or from the table stalls that the sellers put up in front of their homes. No packaging, no bags, just pull up, say hello, negotiate a price, buy and carry away. Tastes better than anything from the supermarket.
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fabindia
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Re: Dirty veg

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lancashire lass wrote: 27 Mar 2023, 09:55 How we ended up to the current situation is down to several factors
Hi Lancashire Lass - you make some excellent points.

Compared with many other countries, in the UK our food chain is totally controlled by the big supermarkets not from the top, i.e. the producers. They are the ones that do the dictating not the producers who are often exploited to the point of going out of business by the supermarkets.

I am also aware of the problem of plastic. On the one hand, it is great for certain products. Here we get rice and flour in plastic but that to some extent saves it being eaten by rats and weevils. On the other hand, Asia is already drowning in plastic and the situation gets worse year on year.
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Re: Dirty veg

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fabindia wrote: 28 Mar 2023, 04:01 Compared with many other countries, in the UK our food chain is totally controlled by the big supermarkets not from the top, i.e. the producers. They are the ones that do the dictating not the producers who are often exploited to the point of going out of business by the supermarkets.
About twenty years ago we were taken round his commercial greenhouses by a tomato growing friend. Very interesting, acres of tomatoes etc. Then the packing lines, machines that could sort the toms by weight and colour. They supplied supermarkets (tesco I think) but had to pack into various boxes and never knew what the exact specifications would be. Sometimes had them all packed in one box and then had to put them through again to pack in a different one. They found it most frustrating.
Having got them all sorted by colour they found that market traders would often buy one box of ripe, one under ripe then mix them so that their customers could buy tomatoes that would be ready on different days.
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Re: Dirty veg

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fabindia wrote: 28 Mar 2023, 04:01 Compared with many other countries, in the UK our food chain is totally controlled by the big supermarkets not from the top, i.e. the producers. They are the ones that do the dictating not the producers who are often exploited to the point of going out of business by the supermarkets.
Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellog’s, Mars, Associated British Foods and Mondelez are the big 10 companies owning most of the food and beverage brands in the world. At the end of the day, nearly all the brands that you think are competing against each other, aren't.
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lancashire lass
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Re: Dirty veg

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Trev62 wrote: 28 Mar 2023, 12:59
fabindia wrote: 28 Mar 2023, 04:01 Compared with many other countries, in the UK our food chain is totally controlled by the big supermarkets not from the top, i.e. the producers. They are the ones that do the dictating not the producers who are often exploited to the point of going out of business by the supermarkets.
Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Danone, General Mills, Kellog’s, Mars, Associated British Foods and Mondelez are the big 10 companies owning most of the food and beverage brands in the world. At the end of the day, nearly all the brands that you think are competing against each other, aren't.
)t' AND, nearly all of the above named are unethical and have the worst practices (for example, deforestation and loss of habitats for animals now on the brink of extinction, child labour, unabated prolific plastic production than any other company and so on) or other similar atrocities
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