Let's think more about our food

Lorryloads of pre-packaged food arrive at our shops in the UK and we simply buy it and throw it in the microwave with little or no thought to the nutrition, flavour, quality or seasonality. It seems taste and flavour have been sacrificed in pursuit of modern production methods with the result our fruit, vegetables and meat are full of presevatives, pesticides, growth hormones and antibiotics. It seems a far cry from my days growing up in Bavaria when the family ate regular meals together that were freshly prepared from seasonal and local produce. There was not much choice, we only had meat twice a week and as a growing boy I thought the amount only 'just enough. Nowadays we would call it a very healthy diet! These days we constantly seem to be on the verge of the next big food trend and we have so much choice when we eat out with cuisines from around the world available. But trends are just marketing tools brought in by the supermarkets. They are often old ideas dressed up a bit differently and are rarely authentic. But the media love to report on trends, so there is always lots of publicity. In Bavaria we also had trends, but they were ideas that were slowly assimilated from the cooking styles of the migrant workers in an altogether slower, more organic process. The result of the ready availability of food these days is that we waste more of it than ever, which is a terrible thing. And we don't educate our children to understand the food chain so they don't know what happens to their food up to the point they put it in their mouths. All of which means there is a huge need today for more education and training about food - how to grow it, prepare it and cook it. There's hardly anything done in school about this, and when you go beyond that to catering college the NVQ's are so shallow I think they're hardly worth bothering with. The Government hopes that Jamie Oliver will solve the problem with a few TV programmes and then everyone can relax again and forget about it. And what of the future? There is already in existence a machine called an extruder which, when you put a carrot in, kills all the taste and flavour and removes the colour. You can then reconstitute it in different shapes with different textures and a flavour company can add whatever flavour you like. It can take mechanically recovered meat and make sausages, or even a steak, and you couldn't tell the difference. The bean counters love it. They want to sell you a dream: Food will taste better, be healthier and make you look better. There will be a personal nutritional profile for all of us. The question is: Will we accept this or will we return to the old flavours? That's something to think about.