Is it all in the mind

[wallie]

I am a widower and on a Sunday always dine at my daughters, her family is herself, husband and two daughters both in there 20s.
My daughter is an excellent cook and a couple of Sunday's ago as a special treat she bought a large free range chicken it cost twice the price of the local supermarket.
As there are no local free range suppliers inour area it came from the next best Waitrose.
Everyone as usual enjoyed there dinner but the universal decision after was:
They would not have known it was free range as it tasted no different than the supermarket
It's all right these guys (like HFW)on TV spouting about buying free range but
1:Plenty people cannot afford it.
2:As on our sunday dinner lots of people cannot taste the difference.
The same go's for organic veg.

wallie

[wheels]

I think it Rick Stein who did a taste test of intensive v free range turkey...

...and was the only one among his staff to prefer the intensively produce one!

[Patricia Thornton]

That one is not able to taste the difference between free-range and instensively farmed food must not be the only criterion when judging quality of what one eats surely? I'm reasonably certain that the cost to the supplier of the free-range chicken was not twice that of others available; retailers are taking advantage of the cachet attached to the label 'free-range' and consequently overcharge for such products.

I do believe that if we are to breed animals to provide our food, they should be raised and killed in the best and most humane circumstances possible - we owe that to ourselves as much as we owe it to the animals concerned. I also believe that if everyone insisted that all meat and dairy products sold in supermarkets in Britain met these high standards everyone would be able to afford them.

[wheels]

Patty

You've hit the nail on the head, I couldn't agree more.

However, my experience is not like Wallie's, my local free-range birds are certainly better tasting but much more expensive, even from the farm. Given that the farm takes all the profit, no middlemen, you would have thought they would be cheaper than the free-range birds from the supermarket, but they're not!

Phil

[Patricia Thornton]

Phil. I'd be inclined to ask your local farm (in the nicest way of course) why their chickens are more expensive. There may be a very reasonable answer like the economy of scale perhaps.

It seems to me that one of the reasons this site exists is because, like me, many people would sooner have a smaller amount of really good food - if only from time to time - than all the piles of rubbish that supermarkets seem to have little problem selling.

[wheels]

Ask Mrs Tomlinson that? I'm brave: I ain't stupid, she'd kill me!

(only joking - I have a good relationship with all the producers listed in my local food directory)

I guess we have to accept that if we want good food with high welfare, we should be prepared to pay for it. After all, 50 or so years ago chicken was a luxury, not the 'basic' it has become today.

Mind - let's not knock our producers, their lowest standards are higher than the best standard of much of the imported meat that will replace theirs if they are priced out of the market. That, to me, is even more worrying.

Phil

[beardedwonder5]

Does smoking interfere with taste receptors?

[saucisson]

Smoking what?

Dave

[Batman]

Ah, so many things to ramble on about.

What is 'good' food?
What is 'acceptable' animal hygiene?
What are 'acceptable' profits?

and that's just the start. You'll be grateful I'm not going to talk on about any of those

I find it difficult to taste any differences in the various types of chickens that I've bought over the years, I think in part because chickens, particularly smaller ones, are difficult to cook well and with the various food scares we tend to overcook it.

For larger cuts of meat for roasting I tend to use my local butcher where I generally get good tasting locally reared meat. I also tend to buy the belly pork I use in my sausages from there but will pick up the shoulder pork from one of the supermarket chains.

From a purely personal perspective, I also have to confess that my sense of taste is poor. I don't seem to have the ability to differentiate tastes (or smells for that matter) in food or wine, to the extent that some others do. Which is very disappointing for someone who likes to cook. (For me its nothing to do with smoking as I am a life long non-smoker.)

With regards to animal husbandry, I'm not sure I've satisfactorily resolved that in my own mind yet but I don't think that's a topic for this board.

[welsh wizard]

Taste is of course subjective and often with my customers it tastes better because they know its free range. However it does pain me to say that I find it difficult to tell the difference in chicken which is one reason, I and the family eat a lot of game. One aged relative after tasting a pheasant (couldnt get those when I was a girl, the man at the big house would have chopped your hand off), commented on it tasting just like chicken used to taste, and I guess she had a point.

For me pheasant, wild rabbit, pidgeon, venison & wild duck rule. They are not as expensive as some think and the meat because of its richness does go a long way.

Sorry starting to ramble.................

Cheers WW

[wheels]

... are not as expensive as some think and the meat because of its richness does go a long way.

In fact, they're incredibly cheap, they were charging �4.50 for a brace of oven-ready pheasants on Leicester Market last week.

Venison steaks were only �5 lb.

Phil