This week's subject is closely related to my previous pieces on being too clean. Looking back at our diet seventy years ago and comparing it with what is on offer today. Remember that during WW2, despite the shortages, the government managed our food rations so well that the nation that emerged in 1945 was better fed than in 1939.
In those days there were no big food processors (apart from flour mills and canneries) or supermarkets, It was a world of corner shops which sold natural ingredients and some canned vegetables and meat. Bread was from local bakeries and food packaging was limited to blue bags for the sugar and greaseproof paper for the fats. Biscuits were loose in tins and these and any dry goods went into paper bags. Plastic packaging hadn't been invented. You took a shopping basket or bag, potatoes with the dirt still on them and vegetables went in first, bags and packets on top and unwrapped bread last of all. There were no 'sell by' dates. You looked at what you were buying, if necessary had a sniff at it and if you were satisfied, into the basket and off home for thorough cooking. Our mothers weren't microbiologists but they knew from what their mothers had taught them that all food was safe if it was cooked well enough. Fruit and vegetables weren't grown using chemical sprays so you didn't have any fear if you ate them raw.
Contrast that with what happens today. I'll start by naming three elements of diet; saturated fat, sugar and salt. I'll take a small bet that the common reaction is “Those are bad for us”. The truth is that they are essential to life! The only time they are bad for us is if we eat more than we need or burn off through exercise. The reason why we have been brainwashed into this position is that in the search for profit, non-saturated fats are used because they lengthen shelf life and salt and sugar have been overused by the food processors because they found that this increased sales.
There is another problem in the search for profit. The cheapest ingredients are used and short cuts taken. For instance, bread made simply with flour, yeast a bit of sugar and fat isn't made by the big bakers, they use the Chorley Wood process which uses additives instead of yeast and cuts the raising time down. Funny thing is I'd never heard of 'gluten allergy' before this started. Chicken and meats for ready meals are sourced from all over the world. We import about 500,000 tons of chicken annually, deep frozen and on container ships. The cheapest cooking oils are used.
My message is, ignore the scare stories and eat what we used to, the Industrial Revolution was built on bacon fat and we survived! The difference is that we were working much harder and burned it off. So have that bacon butty but have a good walk afterwards!
Home fed dry cure bacon ready for the butties!
