For a Frenchman, it might sound wrong for me to be extolling the importance of buying local British food. Honestly, when I first came to England, I was frightened. The butchers here weren’t simply butchering the food— they were really murdering it twice. There was no interest whatsoever and we had completely lost our food culture. It had become irrelevant and, as a result, we saw the likes of foot-and-mouth and mad-cow disease: it was all caused by malpractice.
Britain was, for a long time, disconnected in this way because we had embraced an American system based on intensive farming and the heavy use of chemical pesticide. Of course, it was hailed a triumph because you could produce three or six times more volume per acre, but it became our shame when we began to understand the consequences: the erosion of soil, the chemicals going into the rivers and the sea.
Our food was full of these chemicals because it was all about looks and the marketer understood that. We have been buying all food, all things—a scarf, perhaps— without asking: ‘What colourings have been used? Is it biodegradable?’ We merely looked at the beautiful scarf, the colours and textures. It became all about appearance— nobody cared about the inside.
After intensive farming, heavy processing and marketing, you wrap it up beautifully and you reduce food to a mere commodity, the only virtue of which is cheapness. We embraced this culture—or anti-culture—but, at last, the consumer is starting to really understand what we’re creating: the effect it has on society, the ill health and misery that bad food can cause. There’s a revival of interest and an understanding that food links everything.
Denne historien er fra August 19, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 19, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.