Joanna Blythman has written a book: 'Swallow this: serving up the food industry's darkest secrets.' It is a book I would encourage anyone who relies on convenience food to read, post haste!
In an article adapted from the book Blythman gives us an insight into the horrors of processed food, yet even for a food journalist with 25 years' experience in the industry, Blythman still finds it hard to infiltrate the ready-meal world. The companies that make ready-meals operate from vast anonymous warehouses on industrial estates, out of the public eye where workers are told to guard the secret recipes for good reason. The ready-meal industry is highly organised and intensely secretive.
A ready-meal factory can churn out 250,000 portions a day and such is the demand for processed food that we are eating upwards of three billion ready-meals per year in the UK.
The smells in the factories producing these meals is nauseating; a stench of fat and the pungent reek of flesh makes for a very undesirable place to work. The thousands of employees work long, demanding shifts in these windowless, factory production lines, there is no place for camaraderie as the employees have to protect their hearing by wearing earplugs. Not a lot of love is going into these meals!
Taking a look at some of the products, bagged salad for example, did you know that the greenery can be as much as 10 days old and have been submerged in tap water heavy with chlorine, to inhibit bacteria. Citric, tartaric and other acids are then painted on to the leaves to keep them looking fresh.
Take a M&S jam doughnut, the ready-mixed dough is deep fried in vegetable oil and injected with a jam filling, it arrives frozen at the store and can be stored up to 9 months before staff reheat them. The ingredients list is very unappetising, whereas homemade jam has only two ingredients: raspberries and sugar, the filling injected into the dough is an amalgamation of sugar syrup, the gelling agent pectin, citric acid, raspberry puree and calcium chloride. The doughnuts, once cooked, are placed in rustic wicker baskets and displayed in the 'bakery' to create an illusion of freshly made cakes and breads, the marketing team call this 'creating theatre' and 'driving purchases.'
Most of the meat, vegetables and fish in our convenience food has been transported and stored at sub-zero temperatures for months, even years, but when it is thawed and cooked it can be marketed as 'fresh.'
As Michael Pollan has quoted: 'You are what what you eat eats.' Due to the mass production involved in convenience foods artificially doctored enzymes are used in chicken feed and at fish farms, salmon and trout are given food containing processed feathers for goodness sake!
As I say, it really is worth reading Blythman's book and educating yourself about what you are eating and feeding your families.
I posted a recipe for basic tomato sauce recently which is the base for this delicious chilli. When a friend asked (having visited her on a day when I left my chilli cooking in a slow cooker) if I were going to post the recipe, I told her 'no, everyone knows how to make chilli con carne!' However, the more research I do into ready-meals, the more I realise that simple dishes like this one are being produced in factories by the tons each day........and we are eating them!
A good chilli should have delicious flavours and consistency, I can't count the number of times I've eaten sloppy, soupy sauce with grainy bits of mince floating around in it. It should be dense and unctuous and the key is slow cooking. For flavour nothing beats using homemade chicken stock and grass fed organic beef (of which you need very little.)
Slow cooked chilli
Recipe
500g mince
600g homemade chicken stock
800g homemade tomato sauce
1 x 400g tin of chilli kidney beans
2 teaspoons of crushed chillies (optional)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Simply place mince, stock and tomato sauce (and dried chillies if using) in slow cooker, season and cook on low for 6 hours
Add kidney beans and cook for a further hour
Serve with tortillas and grated cheese (I also add a side of crumbled salted crackers) sour cream is good also
This really is so delicious and is made with love rather than chemicals!
'At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind.'
- Michael Pollan.
Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx
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