Self-Sufficiency in Style
Avoiding food additives
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Self-Sufficiency in Style Avoiding food additives |
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Self-sufficiency offers a splendid opportunity to avoid one increasingly worrying modern problem - food additives and contaminants. |
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| There have been a series of worrying
developments in recent weeks. The United States managed to import wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate from China that contained melamine and melamine-related compounds. Within days, this had reached pig, poultry and fish feed. |
Basic Items can become contaminated. |
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Food factories increasingly resemble chemical factories. Trusted brands have not been immune from scandal. |
The UK has had repeated food scares, with some formerly prestigious food
manufacturers managing to show a wild disregard for the safety of their
products. Food poisoning resulted. In another recent case, one of the top manufacturers of confectionary simply changed their formula to utilise animal rennet instead of the vegetable substitute. Protests from vegetarians and vegans quickly forced a climb down and apology. The list of problems with manufactured food is endless and stretches around the globe. In one case a blackcurrant drink, from a big brand, containing no blackcurrants. In others, top manufacturers of breakfast cereals and soups have steadily increased salt and sugar over the past few years. |
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If that was not bad enough, we also have the control freaks, anxious to mass
medicate the population, for our own benefit. They want to treat the drinking water with fluoride to protect children's teeth and our bread with folic acid to prevent birth defects, despite the fact, that the latter for example, is known to be detrimental to older people. Bottled water hardly has an unblemished reputation as a substitute for the water company supply that reaches our faucets and taps. As so often, the cause of freedom and of individual responsibility, let alone commonsense, is lost in the desire to do good by domination. |
Manipulative people always think they know what is best for everyone else. |
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You need a magnifying glass when shopping for the essentials of life. |
Our food and drink is under
assault from all angles. We all know it. Stand in any supermarket and you will see the consumers inspecting the packets, not for price, but in some forlorn attempt to select the wholesome from the dubious. Alas, that does not work either. In Britain recently is was discovered that vast numbers, and we are into billions, of eggs, were imported from battery farms on the Continent and resold in our top supermarkets as "Free Range." It went on for years and nobody spotted the scam. |
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Many, swear by the farmers' market and roadside stall as a safe source for
food. Alas the prices are high and little of the food has seen a local farm. Bottles and jars contain products that can't even be grown in the region, let alone the country - and others that are obviously out of season. Some stallholders, perhaps most, are honest, but there is no way for the customer to judge, except by using their eyes and commonsense. There have been many prosecutions in Britain. |
It may be genuine, it may not. |
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Traditional skills are finding a new role and relevance in the modern world. |
It is not easy to protect oneself and
one's family from the charlatans, greedy and reckless people that provide
and seek to tamper with the bulk of our food. But if you confine your purchases, as far as possible, to just simple ingredients and source those carefully, in season, you should avoid most of the additives. Grow as much of your own as you can. Bake, freeze, preserve, dry and pickle, and above all , cook. You will be able to stand aside from some of the worst problems of factory made food and factory farms. |
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You may find The Dustbin Challenge and similar articles offer some practical ideas for improving the quality of the food on your table. |
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Resisting food control freaks - from Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
