As I was saying
On a recent Dispatches, the Channel 4 investigatve journalism strand, Sun and Times journalist and chick-lit novelist Jane Moore put the supermarkets of Great Britain under close scrutiny.
I'm no fan of supermarkets as previous posts to this blog attest; however there were hugely questionable moments during the show. A particularly pointless part of the proceedings involved restaurant chef Raymond Blanc cooking up lamb chops (or lamp chops as the onscreen graphics stated) provided by his own butcher and the local Sainsbury's, feeding them to some testers, and discovering with no little surprise that his butcher provided better meat than the supermarket. This is akin to all those equally pointless documentaries where breadwinner men swap places with their wives only to discover that neither can do each others roles very well after a full day or two of trying[1]. The prices of the meat weren't bandied about, probably more down to commercial sensitivity for Blanc than any conscious decision to remove what is perhaps the second, if not the most, important factor in picking out meat.
Bad spelling and logic aside, the show had a great deal going for it. I don't believe in vegetarianism, because I don't think it's ecologically viable, but I am concerned by the welfare of the animal prior to its arrival in my plate. The footage of duck and chicken farms were unsettling, and the advice on hockburn hunting, and other ways of telling if a chicken was well raised or not have been put into good use. I enjoyed the finger wagging over incorrectly named cuts of meat, too.
Now I personally am trying to stop getting meat and veg from Sainsbury's. We've a very reasonable greengrocers and butchers, and both have the benefit of not giving you an experience equivalent to nails down a cliche every time you walk in. The greengrocers is, as Moore found out with her own local one, cheaper. What I find interesting, and again this wasn't really picked up on in the show, was that supermarkets pressurise their customers into bulkbuying - meaning that although you feel you're paying less for your 0-rotten in sixty seconds bags of carrots, the fact that you end up throwing half of it away does rather cancel out the saving. And whereas Moore focused on the waste being produced by supermarket contracted farmers (without explaining why vegetables rejected on aesthetic reasons couldn't be sold elsewhere[2]), no mention was made of the billions of pounds of produce thrown away by the consumer.
And here's the real nub of the problem. The supermarkets, when commenting on why they do things the way they do, regularly stated that the reason they do it is because they're complying with customer wants and needs. Moore touched briefly on the notion that we don't know how to shop any more, but failed to really embrace how this has come about. Choice is dictated by the supermarkets. Availability is dictated by the supermarkets. The supermarkets, through their research, have received a mandate to develop certain lines and products at the total expense of other lines and products (quite serious when some of those lines are species of animal). We ultimately will want what is put in front of us. If we judge what is put in front of us, we do so within that set, not by looking beyond the set - the what ifs are not close at hand, nor are they easily quantifiable. So from within the set we again begin rejecting things, with the supermarkets ever watchful, attempting to adapt what is available, and what is acceptable becomes narrower and narrower, and it becomes harder and harder to meet the demand. It's a feedback loop with diminishing returns.
A large part of the blame can be laid at the supermarkets' doors, but at the end of the day it is our own easily cowed behaviour that is to blame for the situation continuing. We are too happy to go with what is presented to us. For all my talk of buying meat and veg from the greengrocers, I still find myself crawling back to Sainsbury's for forgotten items. I still can't manage to buy a week's food all in one go, at a time that I can actually get to the small local shops[3]. That's why, as I make my way through the horrendously unthought-out queue at Herne Hill I do so with a sense of failure.
But in there on Wednesday I happened to espy and purchase a copy of their magazine[4], which had as one of the cover stories an item wherein secrets of bad behaviour in restaurants are exposed by top chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, Anthony Warrell Thompson and... Raymond Blanc? Yup. They speak to Raymond who imparts almost identical criticism of badly reared chickens in cheap restaurants that he did on Dispatches when discussing supermarket poultry. The magazine seems to be interested in a bit of damage repair (several of the other articles seem to be pushing the "we're not Satan, Ms. Moore" approach) but the inclusion of Blanc's comments makes it appear they are intent on messing with our heads. Whose side is Blanc on again? I suspect, in fact, that it is Blanc who's the real smarty here. Having dissed Sainsbury's to the nation, he then uses their own publication to diss other restaurateur's establishments. Will he not be satisfied until we all have to eat at Chez Blanc?
[1] And rather than standing up for women's rights, and girl power, the subtext of these shows seem instead to suggest that a woman's place is in the home, looking after her hapless hubby.
[2] I suspect there is a dodgy exclusivity clause in the contract somewhere, but this needed to be declared openly.
[3] Oh, and don't get me started on the way the supermarkets opened huge shops out of town, driving the smaller local shops out of business, only to open crap versions of the same a few years later once everyone had forgotten.
[4] Magazine of the year! the cover proudly proclaims. Inside we learn it was voted Customer magazine of the year by PPA. Who? The Periodical Publishers Association - an industry award for a consumer title? This from the PPA website: 'In the competitive M-real Customer magazine of the year category, Sainsbury’s walked away with the top honour. Said the judges: “The magazine not only enhanced the brand but also encouraged loyalty and spend.”' Mmm... Now I've nothing against making money, but using the fact that your in-store magazine has won an award for enhancing the brand and successfully charming your customers out of their taschengelt as a selling point to the very people you're charming is just beyond cheeky, isn't it? It's like using the fact that Eats, Shoots & Leaves won Best Book at the publishing industry awards to sell more copies of it, when it won the award primarily for selling loads of copies in the first place. It is not an index of quality.
I'm no fan of supermarkets as previous posts to this blog attest; however there were hugely questionable moments during the show. A particularly pointless part of the proceedings involved restaurant chef Raymond Blanc cooking up lamb chops (or lamp chops as the onscreen graphics stated) provided by his own butcher and the local Sainsbury's, feeding them to some testers, and discovering with no little surprise that his butcher provided better meat than the supermarket. This is akin to all those equally pointless documentaries where breadwinner men swap places with their wives only to discover that neither can do each others roles very well after a full day or two of trying[1]. The prices of the meat weren't bandied about, probably more down to commercial sensitivity for Blanc than any conscious decision to remove what is perhaps the second, if not the most, important factor in picking out meat.
Bad spelling and logic aside, the show had a great deal going for it. I don't believe in vegetarianism, because I don't think it's ecologically viable, but I am concerned by the welfare of the animal prior to its arrival in my plate. The footage of duck and chicken farms were unsettling, and the advice on hockburn hunting, and other ways of telling if a chicken was well raised or not have been put into good use. I enjoyed the finger wagging over incorrectly named cuts of meat, too.
Now I personally am trying to stop getting meat and veg from Sainsbury's. We've a very reasonable greengrocers and butchers, and both have the benefit of not giving you an experience equivalent to nails down a cliche every time you walk in. The greengrocers is, as Moore found out with her own local one, cheaper. What I find interesting, and again this wasn't really picked up on in the show, was that supermarkets pressurise their customers into bulkbuying - meaning that although you feel you're paying less for your 0-rotten in sixty seconds bags of carrots, the fact that you end up throwing half of it away does rather cancel out the saving. And whereas Moore focused on the waste being produced by supermarket contracted farmers (without explaining why vegetables rejected on aesthetic reasons couldn't be sold elsewhere[2]), no mention was made of the billions of pounds of produce thrown away by the consumer.
And here's the real nub of the problem. The supermarkets, when commenting on why they do things the way they do, regularly stated that the reason they do it is because they're complying with customer wants and needs. Moore touched briefly on the notion that we don't know how to shop any more, but failed to really embrace how this has come about. Choice is dictated by the supermarkets. Availability is dictated by the supermarkets. The supermarkets, through their research, have received a mandate to develop certain lines and products at the total expense of other lines and products (quite serious when some of those lines are species of animal). We ultimately will want what is put in front of us. If we judge what is put in front of us, we do so within that set, not by looking beyond the set - the what ifs are not close at hand, nor are they easily quantifiable. So from within the set we again begin rejecting things, with the supermarkets ever watchful, attempting to adapt what is available, and what is acceptable becomes narrower and narrower, and it becomes harder and harder to meet the demand. It's a feedback loop with diminishing returns.
A large part of the blame can be laid at the supermarkets' doors, but at the end of the day it is our own easily cowed behaviour that is to blame for the situation continuing. We are too happy to go with what is presented to us. For all my talk of buying meat and veg from the greengrocers, I still find myself crawling back to Sainsbury's for forgotten items. I still can't manage to buy a week's food all in one go, at a time that I can actually get to the small local shops[3]. That's why, as I make my way through the horrendously unthought-out queue at Herne Hill I do so with a sense of failure.
But in there on Wednesday I happened to espy and purchase a copy of their magazine[4], which had as one of the cover stories an item wherein secrets of bad behaviour in restaurants are exposed by top chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, Anthony Warrell Thompson and... Raymond Blanc? Yup. They speak to Raymond who imparts almost identical criticism of badly reared chickens in cheap restaurants that he did on Dispatches when discussing supermarket poultry. The magazine seems to be interested in a bit of damage repair (several of the other articles seem to be pushing the "we're not Satan, Ms. Moore" approach) but the inclusion of Blanc's comments makes it appear they are intent on messing with our heads. Whose side is Blanc on again? I suspect, in fact, that it is Blanc who's the real smarty here. Having dissed Sainsbury's to the nation, he then uses their own publication to diss other restaurateur's establishments. Will he not be satisfied until we all have to eat at Chez Blanc?
[1] And rather than standing up for women's rights, and girl power, the subtext of these shows seem instead to suggest that a woman's place is in the home, looking after her hapless hubby.
[2] I suspect there is a dodgy exclusivity clause in the contract somewhere, but this needed to be declared openly.
[3] Oh, and don't get me started on the way the supermarkets opened huge shops out of town, driving the smaller local shops out of business, only to open crap versions of the same a few years later once everyone had forgotten.
[4] Magazine of the year! the cover proudly proclaims. Inside we learn it was voted Customer magazine of the year by PPA. Who? The Periodical Publishers Association - an industry award for a consumer title? This from the PPA website: 'In the competitive M-real Customer magazine of the year category, Sainsbury’s walked away with the top honour. Said the judges: “The magazine not only enhanced the brand but also encouraged loyalty and spend.”' Mmm... Now I've nothing against making money, but using the fact that your in-store magazine has won an award for enhancing the brand and successfully charming your customers out of their taschengelt as a selling point to the very people you're charming is just beyond cheeky, isn't it? It's like using the fact that Eats, Shoots & Leaves won Best Book at the publishing industry awards to sell more copies of it, when it won the award primarily for selling loads of copies in the first place. It is not an index of quality.
posted by Hamilton's Brain | 1:11 pm
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