– 68 per cent knew what they were talking about – but they were eclipsed by 51–70-year-olds, who knew not only which was which but how to cook them. These results are not surprising when you consider that most younger people’s shopping experience is confined to supermarkets, where meat shelves are lined with a narrow selection of mainly prime cuts, and meat counters are often staffed by people who lack the training or experience that the traditional butcher had to explain various meat cuts and their uses.
Safeway carried out a similar exercise in July 2002. It surveyed 1,000 people across the UK to find out how much the nation knew about when foods are in season. A yawning knowledge deficit was revealed: 88 per cent of respondents did not know when certain British favourites were in season. Safeway concluded that ‘the vast majority demonstrated a serious lack of knowledge about British food seasonality’. There was no mention that our supermarkets’ policy of stocking the same lines 365 days of the year might have been a contributory factor. Predictably, Safeway’s research found that 81 per cent of respondents ‘look to supermarkets for more education about seasonality’. However, this survey did not nudge Safeway into rethinking its own, self-styled ‘uni-seasonal’ stocking policy by cancelling standing orders for out-of-season exotica such as Kenyan green beans, Thai baby corn and Peruvian asparagus and then filling its shelves with seasonal British produce. Instead it used the survey to promote sales of its premium The Best range. This, it was at pains to point out, featured not only seasonal fruits and vegetables but also ‘prepared products such as recipe dishes’. ‘Hero products’ in this range included chocolate chip cookies, butter pains au chocolat, prawn selection with Thai dip and ready meals such as potato gratin with roasted garlic and chilli caramelised pork hock whose seasonality was less than apparent.
When supermarkets aren’t implying that shoppers are ignorant, they are keen to make them out as stubbornly conservative, almost stupidly inflexible. On a 2002 Radio 4 Food Programme about grapes, Tesco’s lead technical manager for fruit was at pains to point out that Tesco and its suppliers had a very clear idea of what its shoppers expected in a grape which meant that Tesco stocked no more than six to eight varieties in a year, selected from some twenty commercial varieties available out of a total of 8,000 varieties. Asked why Tesco insisted on selling such a small number of varieties of grapes, which had been picked green and hence had less flavour and sweetness, its expert acknowledged that in grape-growing countries people knew that the yellower the grape, the sweeter. ‘But if we put yellow grapes on our shelves, our consumers would think those grapes were over-mature and leave them behind,’ he explained. You could almost hear listeners up and down the land murmuring, ‘How do you know that? Did you ever ask us?’ Might Tesco’s choice of grape variety and colour not have more to do with its own need for bulk supply, ease of sourcing and extended shelf life?
A highly experienced fruit wholesaler gave me examples of how supermarkets do not give consumers a qualitative choice but just what they want to stock. ‘A prime example is French Golden Delicious apples. Because UK supermarket policy is to sell green Goldens, they mainly source their supplies from the Loire Valley, which is the worst area for full flavour, but they stay green in stores. These apples are virtually unsaleable elsewhere in Europe as the best Goldens are golden and come from higher altitudes, such as Quercy. Another example is salads. Now nearly all the salad produce sold in supermarkets for the greater part of the year is sourced in Holland even though it has no flavour. But it looks perfect and that’s what the supermarkets want.’
In 2003, there was another instance of the supermarket assertion that consumers are besotted with appearance to the exclusion of all other considerations. When the House of Commons International Development Committee grilled supermarket representatives about filling their produce shelves with only cosmetically perfect produce, one MP challenged the supermarket contention that consumers would only buy mangetouts, Cox’s Orange Pippins or other produce if it were all a uniform size and shade. Senior supermarket figures assured the committee that this was indeed the case. Sainsbury’s senior manager for sustainability and product safety refuted any suggestion of blame, identifying the consumer as the problem. ‘The UK customer is known to be the foremost in Europe for being fussy about appearance. You can’t deny that.’ Substitute the words ‘UK supermarket chains are’ for ‘The UK customer is’, and you have a sentence that more accurately reflects who calls the shots.
One farmer told me how he goes to Women’s Institutes and other community groups talking about supporting local agriculture. He argues that supermarkets are trying to brainwash the public into doing what the supermarkets want. ‘I hold up examples of naturally misshapen but perfectly wholesome vegetables and say, “Look, the supermarkets say you don’t want these.” In every case, they tell me otherwise.’ I asked an experienced fruit and vegetable wholesaler if it was true that British shoppers are interested only in looks. He said, ‘Mrs Average shopper is now a younger person who only shops in supermarkets and has never known the joys of full-flavoured fruit and vegetables. If her attitude is “If it looks good, it will do,” it’s not her fault. Supermarkets sell us what they want to sell us.’
It’s embarrassing, isn’t it, to come from a country with a bad food culture? But that’s how other countries see us: as a nation hooked on junk food. It’s part of our national stereotype. Au pairs return home to regale their astounded families with tales of what British households eat. Visitors remark on the absence of food shops; their jaws drop at the sight of legions of office workers bolting down their lunchtime sandwiches or schoolchildren breakfasting on packets of crisps and cans of coke.
Theories about the roots of Britain’s gastronomic cluelessness stretch back to the enclosures and the Industrial Revolution – the dislocation of food-producing peasants from the countryside to make an industrial workforce and so on. But increasingly, historical explanations seem inadequate to explain fully our current predicament. One contemporary factor is staring us in the face. No country in Europe is so reliant on supermarkets for its food shopping. These days, many British consumers simply see no alternative to shopping in supermarkets. In countries where people eat better, they still do.
The food writer Matthew Fort illustrated this point amply when he described the shopping possibilities in the kilometre-long Via Tribunali in Naples:
In it were nine bars or cafés, one rosticceria, three wine shops, three fruit and veg shops (plus several more round various corners), sixteen grocers/delis, four fishmongers, five butchers, a cheese shop … three pizza shops, one tavola calda restaurant, one trattoria and two bakers. And that was besides the hairdressers, electrical shops, tobacconists, shoe shops and clothes shops.
Each was quite small and differed in character from the next … an independent entity, a source of occupation and income for the family that ran it. It was as far removed from the homogeneity of the average British shopping experience as it was possible to imagine. In terms of life, social exchange, sense of community, competitiveness, service abundance, variety and sheer energy, it made me realise what we have lost, what our spineless acquiescence to the culture of supermarkets and retail chains has cost us.
Our supermarkets – and the bodies that lobby on their behalf – like to argue that they are the most comprehensive and sophisticated in the world. They can put every food experience to be had on the planet into the British consumer’s trolley, setting a standard for safety and quality that no foreign chain can match. ‘Food democracy is consumers having access to an unprecedented range of safe food, all year round and at all price points, regardless of where they live. Through economies of scale, innovation and investment, food retailing has helped to deliver a level of food democracy in the UK unimagined before
