Baking/cooking from scratch far superior

Gundy

I’m back again after reading all posts - and reading the original post by AussieGran.

It was a little judgemental… but what bothered me more was this wasn’t some fun contest - it was aimed to put the kids in the middle. That’s bothersome to me. You don’t do that to a daughter/mother, do you?

It was an experiment 🤔

I have just read in the paper today how very bad additives in foods are for us. It gave an example of a Waitrose jar of apple sauce. So to me, it was a good post. Alas. I am too ill to bake and was never good at it. I eat shop bought cakes which are very, very bad. I should not eat cakes or try to bake very occasionally if I can. But as someone said maybe the flour is not good. The soil is depleted of nutrients. Chemicals and artificial fertilisers are used on crops. Meat is from animals fed on chemicals, dosed with antibiotics and so on. There was none of this when I was a child. Our food has been completely contaminated and it is hard to see how as an individual one can escape. It must be affecting those who are children now so much

Betty Crocker does a coffee cake mix? Ooh, off to Tesco in the morning....

Chaitriona The answer is to read the list of ingredients - and to find out why each additive is there and exactly what that additive is.

Not so long ago, it was common for millers to put alum in flour. That no longer happens. There was never a golden time when food was guaranteed to be pure and uncontaminated, unless it was when we all kept our own pigs and chickens and grew our own vegetables (though then we probably fertilized the land with the contents of our own earth closets, containing the family's own excreted germs), or foraged in the wild for whatever we could find.

There have always been people who will try to make maximum profit from their customers while giving minimum value, but if they use ingredients that will poison their customers, they come up against the law. There are official standards for food producers. Additives must be declared and permissable.

The Food Standards Agency regulates this in the UK. They say "A food additive is only approved if; it has been tested and proved to be safe for its intended use; there is a justifiable technological need to use it; and its use does not mislead the consumer." and they have information on their website www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/food-additives and a list of permitted additives, with their E-numbers.

I remember when the system of labelling additives with E-numbers was relatively new and scepticism was widespread, some joker started a scam scare about the dangers of all these additives, including a "very bad" one in E300. This, they said, was in a great number of products and should be avoided. In truth, E300 is vitamin C.

I dug out my 1984 copy of Maurice Hanssen's "E for Additives" book, and wondered whether it was still in print and possibly updated.

It is! "E for Additives (Completely Revised Bestselling Number Guide) " published in 2016, is on Amazon as a Kindle E-book to download for £3.99

www.amazon.co.uk/Additives-Completely-Revised-Bestselling-Number-ebook?tag=gransnetforum-21

Callistemon21 That’s a good word- experiment! (thank you!) - rather than contest. No harm done overall, I’m sure. But words matter whether intended for Daughter or here. People do interpret in different ways.

Always interesting and mostly delightful to read GransNet! I LEARN something all the time. Have a g’day!

Gundy

I’m back again after reading all posts - and reading the original post by AussieGran.

It was a little judgemental… but what bothered me more was this wasn’t some fun contest - it was aimed to put the kids in the middle. That’s bothersome to me. You don’t do that to a daughter/mother, do you?

But I thought it was a fun contest. It put packet mix right next to baking from scratch, it showed the grandchildren how to fairly compare two alternatives and while they preferred one batch to the other, I am sure the results from the packet mix were perfectly edible and acceptable, which provided TWO lots of cakes for everyone to finish up.

Fair competition is not a crime. We don't go through our lives getting gold medals for everything we do, even if we do nowt, and the medals would be worthless if we did. Children are well aware of this

And in addition, mother and grandmother were not competing - the baking methods were the things being tested.

Thanks Elegran, that explains it well and is how I understood it.

Here we go again is right. For goodness sake. No wonder people think twice about posting on here, apart from the 'regulars'.

In Sainsbury's today, there was no SR flour, no eggs and no sultanas.
Perhaps they are trying to promote packet mixes!

Yellowmellow

Here we go again is right. For goodness sake. No wonder people think twice about posting on here, apart from the 'regulars'.

I am curious, to know who the regulars are and what the criteria is.

Marydoll May I respectfully point out that the singular of criteria is criterion. Sorry to be a pedant.

I respectably wish to point out, I should have used are instead of is. I am sure there is more than one criterion.
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Furthermore, this is not Pedants' Corner and it is bad form on GN, to point out grammatical errors.
I certainly wouldn't consider doing so

Nice one Marydoll. 👍

25Avalon

Nice one Marydoll. 👍

Thank you Avalon

I have no excuse, as my first degree is an MA in English Language and Lit.
However, not long out of hospital and feeling pretty grim, means I'm not on the ball at all and feeling quite sensitive at the moment.

We never know what is going on in posters' lives.

I can never understand why people feel the need to point out others' errors. Smug or wanting us to know how well educated they are?

Quokka

Marydoll May I respectfully point out that the singular of criteria is criterion. Sorry to be a pedant.

No you’re not sorry. If you were you wouldn’t have posters that remark.

I wish I’d written was instead of were just to see the hackles rise even higher 😄

MerylStreep

I wish I’d written was instead of were just to see the hackles rise even higher 😄

🤣🤣🤣

But you did type posters instead of posted, MerylStreep 😲

Don't use autocorrect or fat finger as an excuse, neither.

I didn’t take the original post as a lecture just her opinion. I don’t like packet mixes or pre cooked meals as I can whip up spaghetti carbonara, omelette or similar fast meal in the time it takes to reheat a ready one. However for lots of people those instant meals and packet mixes saves them shopping around for lots of different ingredients, preparation, standing etc.so they are invaluable. A lot of people do just as well, additives or not.

Aussiegran (though I know you've flounced off) it was the unfortunate choice of wording wot done it. 'Far Superior' just sounds sniffy. The premise of the OP is fine.

The much bigger issue is the effect that Ultra Highly Processed foods are having on the health of people today, which is a huge concern. I sometimes stand still in the supermarket and look at the proportion of shelf space taken up by 'foods' that have little or no nutritional value.

I think a packet mix might have been better than the pudding I made yesterday 😀

It tasted ok but had gone wrong.

I wasn’t offended, much too strong an emotion, but the ‘far superior’ comment irritated and as someone who uses packet mixes when I want to it gave a bit of a put down to those of us that do … and then the ‘yuk can’t you taste the chemicals’ that’s laughable because the packet mix probably uses the same flour you superior cooks are using 😂

Just to change the subject slightly and a bit off topic but I found a punnet of strawberries at the back of the fridge yesterday that would have been there about 2 weeks. Fresh as the day they were bought which made me think what on earth had they added to them ? Fresh picked ones usually go off in a couple of days here. Our bodies must be full of chemicals. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could spray something on to stop you going off and ageing?