Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Food & Drink => Topic started by: ferret on 03 February, 2015, 07:01:51 pm
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I know this is a bit late but you know how it is!! here's a new one, along with hormone implanted beef the yanks now want to dump chlorinated chicken on us,
here's a link http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/chlorine-chicken-hormone-beef-european-fears-over-american-frankenfood-imports-9906889.html
It's quite mild compared to some reports I've read, also if you go on to http://action.sumofus.org/a/ttip-consumer-rights/?sub=tw
you can sign a petition against the TTIP trade deal.
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And at the same time, we can't import haggis over here. There is no justice.
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I think that a chlorinated rinse is their method for reduction of campolybactor, which seems to be the new salmonella. You know, something that's easily destroyed by cooking and of which the spread is readily controlled by safe food handling. In the UK one method employed is a -90C Nitrogen "shower" before packaging - enough to destroy surface bacteria but not actually freeze the flesh (which is a no-no for "fresh" chicken).
Actually, the increasingly common practice in the UK of washing ones fresh chicken under the tap at home before cooking is of course a chlorinated rinse - at around 3ppm concentration. Unfortunately it does more harm than good, spreading the bacteria locally in the splashes from the washing.
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I'm rather surprised we don't have chlorinated food here too. But I think the article is right to say the difference is not food safety but attitude to food - what is it for? In that respect, you might say we're already there.
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The differing approaches to food I thought were well described in this article about eggs I read a few weeks back: -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/english-eggs-vs-american-eggs_n_5403941.html
(I would quote but my work web browser is crap, and the Huff Post site (like many others, including the Indy article above) seems to be causing IE to crash and swallow more and more computer RAM ::-))
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I bought a chicken from some supermarket or other and it actually had a "do not wash" sticker on it, as for chemicals in your water supply, we don't have any being on a bore hole, the draw back to this is that tea taste pretty rank every where else, but back to the chicken, as ratfletcher says all it takes is to cook it properly in the first place not rocket science really.
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I am too lazy and crippled to do anything other than remove chicken from wrapper, put into dish, place in oven (cold natch) turn oven on and leave until cooked, when Man can remove chicken and serve it.
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I am too lazy and crippled to do anything other than remove chicken from wrapper, put into dish, place in oven (cold natch) turn oven on and leave until cooked, when Man can remove chicken and serve it.
Don't worry Hellymeds - that's all it needs. No need for any other faffing about.
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I am too lazy and crippled to do anything other than remove chicken from wrapper, put into dish, place in oven (cold natch) turn oven on and leave until cooked, when Man can remove chicken and serve it.
Don't worry Hellymeds - that's all it needs. No need for any other faffing about.
Indeed.
Man would complain if chicken failed to please, as is his wont with multiple other issues.
(He fretted and worried last week as I had served him strawberries from Morocco, where he'd had a tummy bug in his ancient past. Berries were delicious and he did not ail.)
He doesn't moan, so it must be OK.
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Never mind Chlorinated Chicken, what we need is Bicarbonate of Chicken (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxh_46BSGUQ).
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The antibiotics/growth-hormone thing was fought out bitterly here over 30 years ago, and at the end of it thousands of animals became unsaleable overnight. Now, basically because of the US agribusiness lobby, what was gained then at great cost - food that didn't undermine the effectiveness of antibiotics or cause strange diseases in consumers - is to be thrown away in the interests of inequality. Bugger that.
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I bought a chicken from some supermarket or other and it actually had a "do not wash" sticker on it, as for chemicals in your water supply, we don't have any being on a bore hole, the draw back to this is that tea taste pretty rank every where else, but back to the chicken, as ratfletcher says all it takes is to cook it properly in the first place not rocket science really.
No chemicals in your water? ;D
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No chemicals in your water? ;D
Not even hydroxic acid?
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I bought a chicken from some supermarket or other and it actually had a "do not wash" sticker on it, as for chemicals in your water supply, we don't have any being on a bore hole, the draw back to this is that tea taste pretty rank every where else, but back to the chicken, as ratfletcher says all it takes is to cook it properly in the first place not rocket science really.
The 'Do not wash' advice is not about getting the chicken any cleaner (it won't) but about not doing anything to the chicken that will spread contamination around the kitchen, in particular around the sink/draining board area.
It's been a long running debate with my MIL who insisted on washing chicken and chicken parts to move bacteria etc. Regardless of my 25years experience in the food/meat processing industry, she never believed me that it was a fruitless and possibly harmful waster of time until somebody said it on R4 when it became truth all of a sudden .... ::-)
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I'd always been in the habit of washing (albeit gently) whole chicken, not because I wanted to get the outside any cleaner but simply to sluice away any blood or loose bits that had collected in the cavity. I'd never heard the 'do not wash' advice until it started appearing on packaging a little while ago, and I don't think I'd heard any reasoning for it until this thread.
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I'd always been in the habit of washing (albeit gently) whole chicken, not because I wanted to get the outside any cleaner but simply to sluice away any blood or loose bits that had collected in the cavity.
Why? All adds to the gravy. :thumbsup:
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Never mind Chlorinated Chicken, what we need is Bicarbonate of Chicken (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxh_46BSGUQ).
Excellent :)
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There was a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.
It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?
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I'd always been in the habit of washing (albeit gently) whole chicken, not because I wanted to get the outside any cleaner but simply to sluice away any blood or loose bits that had collected in the cavity.
Why? All adds to the gravy. :thumbsup:
I'm the sort of wuss that buys poultry with the giblets because he's read something somewhere that you can use them in the gravy, or in stock, or in soup - in something anyway - then realises he doesn't know what to do with them, so leaves them all nicely wrapped up in the fridge until they drag themselves off to the bin without further intervention.
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There was a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.
It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?
Washing food in tap-water is pretty ineffectual.
Chlorine is very unstable in the presence of organic matter so there will be bugger-all left anyhow unless the dosage is reaaaally big.
Bacteria are not sat on their sun-loungers waiting to be washed-off by a wave of water, they're well dug in ....
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There was a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.
It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?
Salad was this week's killer way back in the 1980s and probably much earlier. Usually because it was washed, in dirty Spanish water in dirty Spanish restaurants. It was amazing how all those Spaniards survived all that untreated water.
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There was a piece on R4 this morning about how you MUST wash salad or you will be killed to death by the OMG EIGHT HOUR OLD water it was washed in, and the Chlorine.
It turned out this was actually from the daily mail, and apparently no-one else knows that salad is this week's killer. When we all have to pay for the BBC just because we live here, will we be able to stop them quoting the daily mail as fact ?
The fun and games is that bacterial contamination of salad isn't trivial - you can't wash it off as it actively invades the leaves.
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Washing off the mud is usually a good idea though, at least for the taste.
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actually the point I was making in the OP was that if the yanks get their way, their big massive multi million dollar food companies who don't give a fuck about food safety will be able to dictate to europe and therefore the uk what food they can supply to us, we stopped growth implants years ago yet the yanks continue and pretty soon that will be on our plates, now it's how chicken carcasses are treated what's next? now some of you on here may think it's a big joke but personally I'd rather know or at least have a rough idea what's in my food rather than rely on some large corporate business who only cares about profit, check out the feed lots in the usa that's how they raise their beef, feed full of anti biotics, as a country we should be self sufficient in food and not relying on other countries to be supplying up to 40% of our food, yes it's nice to have fancy fruit flown from the other side of the planet or strawberries at christmas etc but it's about time we took food supply a bit more seriously,
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Well, they do care about food safety, because they don't like being sued. Nor are all these companies American.
Growth hormone and antibiotic dosing aren't good ideas (I doubt GH beef will ever be palatable to European consumers, it's getting less so for Americans). We already use far too much veterinary antibiotics (often as feed additives) and it's poorly tracked.
To be honest, it's not practicable to grow all our food or buy direct from the farm, so there reasonably has to be industrialisation of food processes.
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To be honest, it's not practicable to grow all our food or buy direct from the farm, so there reasonably has to be industrialisation of food processes.
I'm really not sure about that.
I'm pretty sure it isn't realistically possible to ensure that the shops are full of fresh red peppers and plum tomatoes year round. I'm pretty sure it isn't realistic to grow large quantities of wheat on fields that are boggy and flood.
I'm also pretty sure that there are vast acreages in the UK that aren't efficiently farmed (not through fault of the farmers). We would do a lot better to grow oats in much of the Vale of York, for example; but the consumers want wheat for their croissants.
The Yorkshire wolds is good sheep farming country but we have lost an appetite for mutton. Consequently there are areas simply left fallow because it isn't practical to make a profit on what can be produced on that land.
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And people want to buy two chicken breasts for £1.99 (or whatever). Food at that sort of price does have an alternative cost. And even those health-conscious, air-miles avoiding, organic consumers, still want their authentic-style hummus and tahini. I doubt we grow many chickpeas or sesame seeds. Yep, I have strawberries and raspberries in the fridge too, so I'm as guilty. Turnip is one of my least favourite fruits.
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There seem to be two currents there, which are contradictory. Firstly, we want the things we want, now, cheaply. So strawberries for Christmas and KFC Happy Basket for 99p. Secondly, we have to eat the things we don't want because of their dominance of the market. So growth hormone meat and antibiotic milk. I don't think these are really contradictory.
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yes a great line from Sir Henry "I don't know what I want, but I want it NOW!! this does appear to be a problem with modern living along with the £1.99 chicken breast (skinless of course) HFW proved that when he tried to force organic chicken on us.
and of course don't forget the supermarkets we all use them because it makes life easier and because of their size they can control the price of food, from farm to shelf, if the farmers can't produce what supermarkets want at the price they are prepared to buy at the supermarkets just go else where, the initial loser is the farmer but at the end of the day it will be the consumer who loses out because food will not be produced in the home country it will come from where ever, quite possibly with very low standards of production very few controls on environmental damage and little control on drug input, just look at the giant pig farms in Poland owned and controlled by a giant us company, so it won't just be chemically enhanced chicken we get from the us, europe will be swamped with dodgy pork from the us via poland. Oh! another problem, far too many people can't be bothered or don't know how to cook, which I find quite disgusting, but thats another story. And I'm not one of those hairy jumper types although I do like the smell of patchouli oil, I just have a healthy interest in what I eat.
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I don't really understand why people buy chicken breasts when you can but a whole bird for the price of its breasts.
A Skinflint.
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I don't really understand why people buy chicken breasts when you can but a whole bird for the price of its breasts.
I don't really understand why people get their bikes serviced at bike shops.
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Because at 10pm I can't be bothered performing a chicken autopsy, I just want to chop them and throw them in a pan. (And my wife, because she's odd and picky about food, doesn't like bones.)
We always blame supermarkets but we are in love with cheap and convenient food. Little thought goes into where it comes from and I don't think people want to know much more than the price. See the recent thread about people discovering chicken in their KFC. They probably think a live chicken has batter rather than feathers. But then most people these days don't have the opportunity to pop to their local butcher and baker. There's a butcher here, but he shuts up shop at about 4pm. And I'll be honest, it's a bit daunting for many people (myself included) – I've no idea what bit of an animal is what I'm a little scared about being interrogated on the subject by a large man in bloodstained clothing brandishing a giant knife.
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but that's exactly it, supermarkets are their own worse enemy, but I'm not getting in to that argument, supermarkets are the work of stan
they and we are part of the same vicious circle, thanks to our laziness and supermarkets need for profit (see the vicious circle developing there) we are only too glad to use supermarkets unfortunately this does mean that most villages don't have a local baker, butcher or green grocer and a lot but not all British farmers are under the supermarkets thumb, they do have too much control,
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I guess it's easier to get unprocessed/non-supermarket food in a city. We have within a quarter-hour walk 5 bakers, 3 greengrocers, 2 butchers, 1 fish shop. And another shop where we get eggs and non-homogenised milk which Mrs Cudzo claims reminds her, a bit, of the milk she drank as a child, when they had a cow. Even - in fact especially - back there in the village, no one has a cow nowadays and the only milk you can get is UHT, the only meat would be frozen or tinned. Though a couple of people still have chickens, the veg are half as expensive again as in the city. Food goes where it is most in demand.
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yes ironically I live in what would be some peoples idea of heaven, however the realities are quite different, the village has lost it's shop and post office, the next village has a shop and post office and 2 petrol stations that sell food stuff, but to do a proper shop it means either going to Brecon or more recently I've started using the most evil of supermarkets Tesco and that's in Ystradgynlais both Brecon and Ystrad are a round trip of 30+ miles.
Also I find the most depressing of all is the fact that where we live it's very difficult to have a worth while veg patch due to soil and weather conditions, in fact back in the days of the ewe premium the area was classified as a severely disadvantaged area, so if the government calls it that you know it must be bad,
almost forgot nearest macdonalds roughly 50 mile round trip ;) there are some benifits
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almost forgot nearest macdonalds roughly 50 mile round trip ;) there are some benifits
but I bet you can still find the bloody wrappers blowing around the sides of the road! >:(