Bad Food Britain: How A Nation Ruined Its Appetite. Joanna Blythman

aux herbes, suprème de poulet fermier au basilica, and bombe glacée Copelia, which was French both in language and concept. Dining at Downing Street with Tony Blair, eating a menu created by Nigella Lawson, the American President was treated to roast pumpkin, radicchio and Welsh feta salad, braised ham with honey and mustard glaze, creamed potatoes and seasonal vegetables, followed by double-baked apple pie with cheddar crust and vanilla ice cream. The Guardian’s Matthew Fort, for one, was unimpressed:

      ‘You might have thought that the occasion of the state visit of an American president would herald a little tub-thumping of our own, for the culinary fireworks which we have been so busy claiming for ourselves … It sounds quite tasty and homely … but I can’t help feeling that Queen Nigella may have gone a bit far in the hand of friendship direction in an effort to make Citizen Bush feel at home. Pumpkin has a greater following in America than it does here … and what is more American than apple pie, with or without the cheddar crust? … Come to that, when has radicchio been a British vegetable of choice? And why feta cheese, Welsh or not? What’s wrong with Caerphilly?’

      When ambassadors for Britain are so half-hearted about serving British food, it is no surprise that ordinary people feel the same way. By 2004, only 63 per cent of the food eaten in Britain was home-produced, down from 75 per cent in 1994. We seem to be eating less native produce, not more. This situation is in part a reflection of the preference of British supermarkets for global sourcing which leads to diminishing amounts of British food on British shelves. In 2005, a survey by Friends of the Earth found that two-thirds of the apples sold in the height of the UK apple season came from overseas. Some of the apple varieties being offered had travelled more than 12,000 miles. The reliance of supermarkets on cheap imported foods means that Britons who do want to buy British food find it difficult to do so.

      For decades, British consumers have been exhorted by numerous food industry marketing bodies such as the Meat and Livestock Commission and the National Farmers Union to support British farmers, but this has fallen mainly on deaf ears. In countries with a thriving food culture, consumers feel connected to those who produce food, not least because many of them have a producer in their extended family or circle of friends. In Britain, on the other hand, few consumers have any connection with farming or primary food production, largely because it has now become so intensive, industrial and factory-based, that fewer and fewer people are engaged in it. The vast majority of Britons are divorced from the countryside and know little or nothing about what it can produce. Indeed, the urban masses tend to see farmers in an unsympathetic light as potential chisellers and fiddlers of European Union subsidies, people who are not to be trusted. Consequently, they do not get a sympathetic hearing.

      In recent years, a slight but significant resurgence of interest in smaller-scale, less industrialized food amongst opinion formers has opened up a more positive dialogue between producers and consumers. In 2002, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Richard Burge, launched an initiative called British Food Fort-night and took the opportunity to appeal to consumers, using the term ‘producers’ rather than ‘farmers’, and emphasizing pleasure rather than patriotic duty: ‘The time has come to stand up for British food and its producers! We have to remind consumers of the great pleasure which comes from eating locally-grown, high-quality foods, and just how important it is to the British countryside at this time that we eat its produce.’

      Now an annual event each October, British Food Fortnight aims to make everyone in the UK more aware of the diversity and quality of home-grown, locally-sourced British produce. Consumers are urged to seek out seasonal produce, cook a British meal for friends and explore British regional cooking. This may be a surprisingly tall order: according to a survey carried out by the Institute of Grocery Distribution just before British Food Fortnight 2005, only one in five Britons will go out of their way to buy British food if it means paying more for it, while over half of all shoppers polled said that they didn’t care where their food came from. The Institute pointed out that while 87 per cent of respondents considered farming to be an important part of British heritage, the challenge was to translate this patriotism into purchasing British food because Britons did not generally ‘see the connection with food production and the countryside’.

      By 2005, British Food Fortnight was still being run as a cottage industry. Despite pressure on the government from both Houses of Parliament, the media at large and the farming press, the government’s contribution was actually reduced in 2005 from some £46,000 to £45,000. The event went ahead on a paltry budget of £108,000, cobbled together from sponsorship from the Nationwide building society, retailers Booths and Budgens, and other supportive organizations. ‘The sad reality,’ commented organizer Alexia Robinson, ‘is that there is no overall body representing British food producers and, therefore, there is no consensus, no unified marketing and no easy mechanism for raising funding on behalf of the industry as a whole … Asking the public to buy British food because they feel sorry for farmers will not cut it.’

      As always in Britain, any attempt to have small food businesses – or anything that smacks of the artisan – taken seriously turns out to be a lonely battle. The relevant government departments in successive government administrations have put their efforts into pleasing the captains of the processed food industry, and have continued to dismiss small-scale food producers as marginal – and therefore irrelevant – to the country’s food effort. There is a persistent strand in British regulatory thinking that views the existence of anything akin to peasant farming as retrograde because it might be taken as an indicator of economic backwardness.

      More recently, small food projects have begun to attract a little support from government and local authority departments charged with regeneration and tourism. Some city centre management teams are beginning to wake up to the fact that independent shops and farmers’ markets can increase the number of people who use the town centre by making them more interesting and lively places to visit. In British cities dominated by supermarket monoculture, a thriving business has sprung up in ‘Continental markets’ – imported, highly stereotyped, usually French-themed markets – because they appear to inject some gastronomic life. Tourism authorities have latched on to the idea of culinary tourism and have begun to promote small food operations, such as farm shops, that help create a new, more favourable image of Britain in the visitor’s mind. But, again, this new-found enthusiasm does not stem from a belief in good food for good food’s own sake, but derives from the realization that it can bring other social and economic benefits.

      Indeed, small-scale British food is in danger of turning into a heritage industry. Stately homes, garden centres, museum and farm shops are filling their shelves with edible souvenirs made to an antique recipe – real or imagined – loading their shelves with jars of jams, jellies, chutneys, sweets and endless cakes and biscuits, masquerading as something you might pick up at a Women’s Institute market. Most such enterprises are run by well-intentioned people who are naive enough to believe that by buying local and British, this is automatically some guarantee of quality. In fact, there is a danger that purchasing home-produced food is being transformed into a quaint, nostalgic Sunday afternoon leisure activity instead of a viable everyday alternative to the tedium and uniformity of the supermarket. The local food shops that actually improve shopping choice are the small minority that take risks with really fresh meat, fish, and seasonal fruit and vegetables; these are places where you can buy the raw ingredients for a meal, not just a jar of redcurrant and rose petal jelly for your elderly auntie.

      Medium-sized food companies, struggling to make ends meet because of the crippling low returns they receive from their supermarket masters, are keen as English mustard to come up with new ‘British’ products that cash in on the vogue for British food. Large industrial creameries are inventing more profitable ‘speciality’ cheeses, basically the same old push-button cheese, tarted up in gimmicky forms with stripes and swirls of colour. Take your pick from white Stilton with a raspberry and strawberry ripple, added ‘orange crumble’, apricots or cranberries,