the food rant thread

[Kim]

That's true.  While I know many people who are compelled by dietary circumstances to buy things most easily found in Holland & Barrett, it's always been in the style of a quick in-and-out raid, with hanging around kept to an absolute minimum.

[geraldc]

Holland and Barrett isn't a real healthfood store, it's national multiple chain, disguising itself behind a thin veneer of healthiness. I grew up being dragged to a healthfood store called Arjuna in Cambridge, now that's a real healthfood store. It has a distinctive smell that gives me nightmares to this day. It's all tie dyes, lentils and pulses, with badly photocopied leaflets on a wide range of crackpot ideas.

[Kim]

See also: Canterbury Wholefoods.

That smell.  Mysterious grains.  Newspaper clippings about bees and homoeopathy.  Re-using carrier bags before it was cool.  Staff who look like they're going to be round your house with pitchforks and flaming torches if they discover you eat meat.  Somehow I survived a lynching, probably because of my lesbian shoes.

They moved to new premises at one point and lost the 'shopfitting by freecycle' aesthetic, but gained a cafe that doesn't serve anything I'd class as food.

[SteveC]

Holland and Barrett isn't a real healthfood store, it's national multiple chain, disguising itself behind a thin veneer of healthiness. I grew up being dragged to a healthfood store called Arjuna in Cambridge, now that's a real healthfood store. It has a distinctive smell that gives me nightmares to this day. It's all tie dyes, lentils and pulses, with badly photocopied leaflets on a wide range of crackpot ideas.

I have their cookbook somewhere. Had some decent recipes for a broke no longer a student type.
And while we're on a nostalgic proper whole food shop thing, anyone else remember Danaan's in Southampton?

[Jurek]

I give you Baldwins in Walworth Road.
I used to score a particular brand of multi-vitamin from them.
Until they stopped stocking it (as well as the rest of the range) on account of the manufacturer having become unethical 

[fuzzy]

Holland and Barrett isn't a real healthfood store, it's national multiple chain, disguising itself behind a thin veneer of healthiness. I grew up being dragged to a healthfood store called Arjuna in Cambridge, now that's a real healthfood store. It has a distinctive smell that gives me nightmares to this day. It's all tie dyes, lentils and pulses, with badly photocopied leaflets on a wide range of crackpot ideas.

I once purchased something from H&B to aid with sore joints. My requirement was something suitable for an asprin allergy sufferer.

On checking the product upon my return home- 'Not suitable if allergic to asprin'

[L CC]

Mandala in Jesmond. Closed now, of course. Loving that website.

Centre of the known universe. I think gluten is banned in Jesmond, now.

[Jakob W]

The lecturer for my management modules at uni had done consultancy for H&B's parent company; apparently there H&B was known as 'the maximum profit division'.

[Mrs Pingu]

I see that frozen avocados are a thing now.....

[CrinklyLion]

Single Step in Lancaster was where I used to buy hippy wholefoods,  And bread flour, some of which I turned into beer (not quite by magic - it was via the intermediate step of bread, which I gave to the the bar stewards who ran two of the college bars on campus).  It was also where I found the ad for the nicest house I ever rented - the one that came with a resident cat (Patch) and the secret lodger in the attic.

Anyway, I think that the tricky or complex food needs of obnoxious people are a pain in the arse, whether they are 'genuine' or 'faddy' or whatever.  This is because the person is obnoxious, not because their dietary requirements are.

For everyone else... well, I don't think it is up to me to judge or police what other people eat.  There can be a billion and one different reasons that someone does or doesn't eat a particular food stuff and it makes no difference to me what those reasons are, I still aim to respect 'em.  Apart from my kids, natch.  It's my Job to oblige them to eat vits and mins and stuff.  But otherwise I reckon that the Underpants Rule applies.

[contango]

Sure, if someone has a genuine requirement and they're worth inviting to dinner then they're worth making an effort to make sure they can actually eat dinner.

If someone just feels like being excessively picky this week I don't necessarily feel like making a special journey or placing a special order and paying delivery charges just to humour them.

How do you tell the difference, thobut?

The first time it's hard to tell so you'd have to assume it wasn't just a fad. But if their dietary requirements shifted with what was trendy at the moment then I'd be inclined to ask some questions.

Ultimately I suppose if someone is really going to be so picky that they can only be fed by going to ever-increasing lengths to source unicorn tears and organically grown magic beans then sooner or later it becomes easier to meet them for lunch somewhere, and pass the problem onto someone else.

[contango]

See also: Canterbury Wholefoods.

That smell.  Mysterious grains.  Newspaper clippings about bees and homoeopathy.  Re-using carrier bags before it was cool.  Staff who look like they're going to be round your house with pitchforks and flaming torches if they discover you eat meat.  Somehow I survived a lynching, probably because of my lesbian shoes.

They moved to new premises at one point and lost the 'shopfitting by freecycle' aesthetic, but gained a cafe that doesn't serve anything I'd class as food.

You can usually tell health foods easily, on the basis they generally have less taste than the packaging they came in.

[ian]

I confess that I buy industrial sized bags of pecans from H&B, I'm completely addicted and eat about a half kilo a day. We all have a vice. For some it's cocaine and prostitutes, for me it's shelled pecan nuts. Supermarkets only do puny bags, and I need a serious score. Anyway, H&B was the only 'health food' store I could think of, not being particularly enticed by products that feature flax and carob my experience is limited.

[Efrogwr]

The customers in health food shops often look a bit ill.

[benborp]

My aunt whose interests include embroidery, kittens and drinking Earl Grey contaminated milk popped round to offer some support when I was struggling to get a diagnosis for my malabsorption issues. It went down hill quite quickly. "You're not ill! You just need to fucking eat! Eat it! Eat the fucking pizza!" That's food intolerance intolerance.
Thinking back, once we knew what was going on my family treated me appallingly. Family events with no provision for me, sneering remarks if I brought my own food, turning up en mass at my home while my wife and I were working, clearing the cupboards for a slap up meal and allowing me to return past ten to be told 'I don't think there's anything for you, we don't know what you eat anymore.' It's one of the things that alienated them from my wife, who tried so much to keep food (one of our shared simple pleasures) interesting for us both. Eventually it all proved to taste and look too brown for her to bear anymore.

[Cudzoziemiec]

See also: Canterbury Wholefoods.

That smell.  Mysterious grains.  Newspaper clippings about bees and homoeopathy.  Re-using carrier bags before it was cool.  Staff who look like they're going to be round your house with pitchforks and flaming torches if they discover you eat meat.  Somehow I survived a lynching, probably because of my lesbian shoes.

They moved to new premises at one point and lost the 'shopfitting by freecycle' aesthetic, but gained a cafe that doesn't serve anything I'd class as food.

A propos of which, I had occasion today to introduce a world-famous published author and distinguished university professor* to the phrase 'lesbian tea'. Unfortunately we never got as far as lesbian biscuits.

*Some of these adjectives might be lies. Apart from 'published'. Whether read is another matter.

[Tigerrr]

See also: Canterbury Wholefoods.

That smell.  Mysterious grains.  Newspaper clippings about bees and homoeopathy.  Re-using carrier bags before it was cool.  Staff who look like they're going to be round your house with pitchforks and flaming torches if they discover you eat meat.  Somehow I survived a lynching, probably because of my lesbian shoes.

They moved to new premises at one point and lost the 'shopfitting by freecycle' aesthetic, but gained a cafe that doesn't serve anything I'd class as food.

Back in the 70s I was a squatter in central London - as one was in this days. A whole foods shop opened selling pulses from recycled tea chests and barrels so I visited to get some red kidney beans. I still remember the look on the guys face as he asked what I was intending t do with the large sack of beans. I said 'Oh they are great with a load of mince and onion and chile'. I think he would have refused to sell me the beans if only he had known in advance.

[fuzzy]

See also: Canterbury Wholefoods.

That smell.  Mysterious grains.  Newspaper clippings about bees and homoeopathy.  Re-using carrier bags before it was cool.  Staff who look like they're going to be round your house with pitchforks and flaming torches if they discover you eat meat.  Somehow I survived a lynching, probably because of my lesbian shoes.

They moved to new premises at one point and lost the 'shopfitting by freecycle' aesthetic, but gained a cafe that doesn't serve anything I'd class as food.

Back in the 70s I was a squatter in central London - as one was in this days. A whole foods shop opened selling pulses from recycled tea chests and barrels so I visited to get some red kidney beans. I still remember the look on the guys face as he asked what I was intending t do with the large sack of beans. I said 'Oh they are great with a load of mince and onion and chile'. I think he would have refused to sell me the beans if only he had known in advance.

I think the horror was the prospect of adding red kidney beans to a country before you ate it.

[fuzzy]

French Golden Delicious?

French Pale Green Bland more like

[hellymedic]

French Golden Delicious?

French Pale Green Bland more like

Do people still eat these?
It must be decades since one passed my lips. They're a 'Taste of the Seventies' IMHO...

[fuzzy]

French Golden Delicious?

French Pale Green Bland more like

Do people still eat these?
It must be decades since one passed my lips. They're a 'Taste of the Seventies' IMHO...

Sadly yes. It is one of two varieties offered by the canteen. The other being Red Delicious

[ian]

I'm sure I mentioned my grandparents' ability to mummify fruit. I don't think they ever contemplated eating it, a deviance too far for people bought up on a diet of coal and fumes, eating fruit was as imponderable as homosexuality or the French. Anyway, once upon a time this child, upon admiring the long-standing ornamental bowl of fruit, was possessed of the strange and peculiar notion to take a bite out of one of those apples. That little nuggling of sibilant temptation. Truly, for a moment, I was Eve of Eden's blessed garden reaching out and sinking my teeth into that lasciviously green skinned flesh. I may as well have taken a bite out of Tutankhamen's four-thousand year old arse cheek. I think that apple was older than the Garden of Eden. It was probably forgotten in God's lunch box from the busy first week of creation.

Anyway, I'm a bit dubious about apples, I gag if I get once of those mushy or dry textured one. It's always a swift whack on the head with a stale madeleine that sends me tumbling back to that moment in my grandparents' parlour when I sink my teeth into that apple.

Supermarket apples are naff in general, no matter what they claim. We were wandering around Kent the other year when we stumbled across a shop on an apple farm and they had several varieties that simply don't make it to the shops. I have never eaten so many apples and they were in a completely different league to anything I've ever bought off the high street.

[rafletcher]

French Golden Delicious?

French Pale Green Bland more like

The French ones have always been crap.  The ones from South Africa used to be fantastic.

[hellymedic]

French Golden Delicious?

French Pale Green Bland more like

The French ones have always been crap.  The ones from South Africa used to be fantastic.

I think you have a point.
I think I liked Golden Delicious when I was a teenager and they were OK then but it's such a long time ago...

[contango]

Supermarket apples are naff in general, no matter what they claim. We were wandering around Kent the other year when we stumbled across a shop on an apple farm and they had several varieties that simply don't make it to the shops. I have never eaten so many apples and they were in a completely different league to anything I've ever bought off the high street.

Here in Amish country summer is awash with fresh produce. The supermarkets sell generic rubbish that was fresh, once, a long long time ago in a land far far far away. If you want to know how fresh the produce is here, that morning it was probably still on the plant. That said I bought a bushel of peppers from an Amishman who was very apologetic that they were last week's harvest. Because they weren't fresh he only charged me $3 for the bushel.