Is food better or worse than it used to be?

I could tell which day of the week it was by what ate . That sounds boring .It wasn't.
The food was traditional and delicious.
Much of the fruit ,salad and vegetables were home grown and if not,bought from the market .

Life was less complicated.

These days my diet is more varied and I love spicy foods . I wonder if I prefer a spiced diet ,because the quality isn't as good or my taste buds have dulled .
Perhaps,I've over spiced them !

petra

ROMILO

Lathyrus3 if food imports are all down to population and available acreage why have so many of our traditional producers gone out of business, Kent orchard fruit, Blackpool tomatoes and many more
could it be that a lot of imported food is produced in factory conditions no soil in sight by people paid less than a decent wage.

It’s down to house building. Land is selling at a premium because of the demand for housing.

www.countryside-alliance.org/news-content-type/farmers-to-be-forced-to-sell-land-at-fraction-of-the-value

Housebuilding makes very little difference the area is very small, solar farms are making a bigger impact, the real restriction is environmental controls. Together with low prices it is reducing the ability to produce food in the UK.

It's not just France that has advantages the whole of the EU has a food security policy, driving through Europe, Germany, Italy, Poland, Holland, Denmark, the rural infrastructure is much stronger. In comparison UK is becoming really scruffy and neglected, the recent Labour campaign against rural Britain is going to make it worse.

Farmer are protesting but until food production is valued in the UK nothing is ongoing to change.

We always had good, homemade meals back in the day.
Wimpy was a birthday treat once a year.

Now people seem to be so time limited, that, they eat way more processed foods.
Way more takeaways. Eat at fast food outlets often.
Even foods that state that they are healthy, are usually processed rubbish.

It's nice to have the choice of more exotic foods from other cuisines that we never used to be able to get.
However I think food is NOTHING like it used to be.It's quite worrying but if you are on a certain budget you can't always afford organic unprocessed stuff.It's depressing to think that the stuff you eat is not pure any more.
However my big problem is fresh fruit..or so called fresh. Two weeks before Christmas I bought some lovely looking crisp red apples.With all the other treat food you have in at Christmas, the fruit tends to get left a while. After Christmas, probably towards the end of January my husband tried an apple , he said it tasted earthy and not nice even though it looked ok. I said to throw them out whole because birds and other creatures would like them being as it's cold and wet weather. We threw the remaining two apples into the garden and NOTHING has touched them, but my point is, those two apples are still as lovely and shiny and red as they were in Mid December. They were probably weeks old when the supermarket got them but HOW can they remain pristine with not a touch of badness when they have been outside in all weathers , exposed to predators etc ? They must be choc full /injected with chemicals and preservatives.yuck !

We have a much better choice of food today. We have an allotment and we grow our own tomatoes, raspberries, lettuce, cauliflower and onions.

In winter this isn't possible so we have to buy all these, but they are all lacking in flavour.

We can choose from food from all over the world, which certainly wasn't the case when I was young. Fish and chips every Friday was the nearest we got to a takeaway.

I prefer today's food. In my childhood we had never heard of garlic, for instance.

But what you do not have you do not miss. I am sure I could uickly get used to staing regulalry in 5* hotels if I did so and would miss it if I was reduced to 3*

My memories of childhood, when in this country was not of a limited range of foods and little choice, but of plenty to eat and lots of food that came in seasonal treats. I have always enjoyed food and different recipes,.

One thing I miss from the past, is that life was so full of small treats, the weekly sweet ration, the occasions in summer when one ate (expensive) strawberries, even ice cream was a treat. There were always little things coming into season, and going out, things to piue ones appetite and lfit ones heart.

None of that now, everything can be bought all year round. My only seasonal treat is righ now, roughly from December - March, a tropical fruit, pomelo, eaten widely in East Asia, and very rarely and intermittently available in the UK. Currently my local Lidl stocks them

I still love our “traditional” food and not much beats a good Sunday Roast, however I love that fact that so much choice is here in the UK. I also love the many fresh stores around selling fresh produce not from this country, ie Indian and Asian.

I agree it’s much better to eat local seasonal food and we certainly have a myriad of cheaper shops for food, even if some of it is deemed “rubbish” by some people.

The important thing is EVERYONE should have access to food to cook and eat for them and their families.

I refuse to use the words “good” and “healthy” as we all have our own definition of what this means.

As a child I remember waiting eagerly for the first new potatoes from Lincoln or Jersey and the first hothouse tomatoes.
They tasted so good after the winter..
Now I can buy “new” potatoes all years round but they have little or no taste.
As for tomatoes,,, fortunately we grow our own every summer along with a few other goodies but the season is short as it used to be.
As someone up thread said, I think today’s younger people can’t appreciate good tasty food as their palate has been spoiled by increased use of chillies , curries and other spices.

But the same cuisines that introduced so many of us to herbs and spices, also make the most delectable delicacies.

Herbs and spices are mainy in meat and fish dishes because the cuisine's homes are hot countries where meat/fish goes off very uickly and hebs and spices help preserve it/ hide the rancid flavour.

Variety is certainly better, in terms of access to recipes for international cuisines. Not so keen on tomatoes/peppers/strawberries etc. available all year. They often taste of nothing very much.

David49

Food has never been better or cheaper in relation to income, farmers have never been poorer because so many cheap imports replace the traceable, regulated products in the UK

Really? Where do you shop David?

When I shop, I see the younger generation trollies stacked to the brim with all the crap of the day.
Do schools not teach how to cook anymore?

Nope. Cooking went out when “Food Technology” entered the curriculum.

I don’t think it would be viable now. A lot of parents wouldn’t send in the ingredients. I remembered taking that tin of stuff to school and coming home with finished product. (That my mother had taught me to cook years before 😬)

Lathyrus3

Nope. Cooking went out when “Food Technology” entered the curriculum.

I don’t think it would be viable now. A lot of parents wouldn’t send in the ingredients. I remembered taking that tin of stuff to school and coming home with finished product. (That my mother had taught me to cook years before 😬)

Yes & those cookery baskets with the covers ☺️
It’s a real shame that they don’t teach basic cookery anymore

WithNobsOnIt

No one has mentioned UPF?

ULTRA PROCESSED FOOD.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Yes they have, on the very first page!
( I only remember because it was yet another abbreviation I had to look up. And PYO is Pick Your Own)

Tizliz

NotSpaghetti

Well farmed salmon is nothing like wild.. that's for sure.
And seasonal soft fruits, Scottish raspberries spring to mind.

Yesterday however I had an apple that tasted like the apples of my childhood. It was the most appley apple I've had for ages - and it was a newer variety. I can't remember what it was but will ask my husband later. It was really delicious. Fragrant, on the slightly tart side... what a delight!

Please ask your husband. Here in Scotland I can't buy a decent tasting apple. Even when I found some Coxes in Morrisons they were not nice.

I can’t find a decent tomato. In our village we had the ‘egg man’, who brought farm eggs every Saturday, and for a few weeks in summer he also sold delicious tomatoes. I always remember my mother sniffing the leaves, to make sure the ‘minty smell’ she liked was there. The occasional duck eggs were a great treat.

I believe the quality is far poorer nowadays, but we have a far greater variety available. I don’t remember a big store cupboard when I was a child, compared to what I have now. We had maybe a tin of Heinz tomato soup, one of Ambrosia Creamed Rice ( treats for an invalid!) and maybe tinned peas, beans, and corned beef.

I also see people saying people nowadays are ‘so busy’, but are we really? Certainly my mother was kept very busy, between shopping every day, washing and cleaning (without the aid of machinery), and all the other household chores which had to be done. She still cooked every day, probably having soup, stew, or pie filling on the cooker all day.

One thing that is better is brown bread is eaten far more often and there are several varieties of it available. Going back to the seventies, I can remember the stodgy white loaves like Mother's Pride and Wonderloaf that were so popular because they were cheap.

Cumbrianmale56

One thing that is better is brown bread is eaten far more often and there are several varieties of it available. Going back to the seventies, I can remember the stodgy white loaves like Mother's Pride and Wonderloaf that were so popular because they were cheap.

Do not deceive yourself. if you go into a supermarket and pick up a brown sliced loaf in a plastic wrapper, it will be no better for you that a similar white loaf. It may have a bit more fibre but it will be as full of of UPF's as its white companion.

M0nica

Cumbrianmale56

One thing that is better is brown bread is eaten far more often and there are several varieties of it available. Going back to the seventies, I can remember the stodgy white loaves like Mother's Pride and Wonderloaf that were so popular because they were cheap.

Do not deceive yourself. if you go into a supermarket and pick up a brown sliced loaf in a plastic wrapper, it will be no better for you that a similar white loaf. It may have a bit more fibre but it will be as full of of UPF's as its white companion.

Possibly, but the cheaper white loaves are stodgy and taste awful.

Cumbrianmale56

M0nica

Cumbrianmale56

One thing that is better is brown bread is eaten far more often and there are several varieties of it available. Going back to the seventies, I can remember the stodgy white loaves like Mother's Pride and Wonderloaf that were so popular because they were cheap.

Do not deceive yourself. if you go into a supermarket and pick up a brown sliced loaf in a plastic wrapper, it will be no better for you that a similar white loaf. It may have a bit more fibre but it will be as full of of UPF's as its white companion.

Possibly, but the cheaper white loaves are stodgy and taste awful.

I totally agree. The thing to do, ideally, is find a good local traditional baker, or alternatively buy fresh bread - the kind which comes with out any wrapper on in the baskets and you serve yourself with tongs in an up market supermarket like Waitrose.

We moved about 6 months ago from an area with almost a superfluity of artisan bakers to an are where there does not seem to be one within 20 miles, and the unwrapped bread from Waitrose is the best I can do. I otherwise shop in Lidl.

I’ve just read an article about how much healthier it is to eat pasta, potatoes and bread that has either been frozen or left in the fridge overnight ( something that I’ve been doing for a while). I’ll try to copy it.

Yes, pasta and rice certainly have more 'resistant calories' if they are allowed to get cold and are then reheated. I did not know it applied to bread as well because that has cooled down from the ooking process, so should not need extra cooling
hopkinsdiabetesinfo.org/what-is-resistant-starch/

'Rice pudding? Horrible with skin on top.'

Lovely, just how I like it!

shysal

'Rice pudding? Horrible with skin on top.'

Lovely, just how I like it!

and plenty of nutmeg and made including cream.

M0nica

Cumbrianmale56

One thing that is better is brown bread is eaten far more often and there are several varieties of it available. Going back to the seventies, I can remember the stodgy white loaves like Mother's Pride and Wonderloaf that were so popular because they were cheap.

Do not deceive yourself. if you go into a supermarket and pick up a brown sliced loaf in a plastic wrapper, it will be no better for you that a similar white loaf. It may have a bit more fibre but it will be as full of of UPF's as its white companion.

The ZOE guy checked the ingredients in a few loaves and Kingsmill wholemeal had fewer additives that eg Hovis. I’ve got a couple of loaves in my freezer that I haven’t been eating since I switched to sourdough but I’m going to use them up as eggy bread for my breakfast. The article about resistant calories rather annoyingly said it was better to eat reheated rice but you had to read the whole article to find out how important it was to cool it quickly and reheat it thoroughly. I think that should have been stressed at the beginning.