Supermarket deception

 

Our not-so-super -markets

"Skimmed milk masquerades as cream" 

 

Panel 2

Before we return to the deception aspects, let's dawdle within our acceptance of less-than-ideal situations.

The broccoli is tossed into a heaving trolley and is soon hidden by the rest of the shopping.  Just before a final fling into the pan, in many households, one third is thrown away.

That takes us into the realm of the exploitation by sellers of our need for instant everything.   

My pet subject is gastronomy.  In the present context, it looks at the ways in which different nations view food and drink.  The French wouldn't think twice about tasting the grapes in the supermarket.  Here, they're often in sealed boxes or bags.  Nobody munches the bunches in Britain!

What we do is fly round the supermarket and grab.

And there's more to it than that which you may have seen here.






 More about deception:

Panel 3

3a

There's acceptance and there's deception. .  A word we can develop is deceptance.  It works on the same basis as tax evasion or evadence and avoidance which is generally seen as the accepted way of reducing your dues as far as the man in the street is concerned.

Deceptance on this page is the extension by supermarkets of our acceptance of techniques like

  1.  the bread being at the far end, 
  2. moving the soup every five minutes, 
  3. and muzak to move us more quickly round the store looking for soup, 

into the more murky techniques before reaching blatant deception. 


3b 

Plump deceit

We know that water is added to numerous and various food items but the deceit progresses to how it is held in. The chicken breast plumped up with H2O by a third in volume, never mind weight, depends on beef or pork protein powder to stop the water dripping out. Government and other food analysts are working to prevent this type of activity and use DNA analysis techniques to prove that the chicken is not only chicken. Manufacturers use other specialists to disguise the fake chicken DNA and so a cycle of analysis is perpetuated. If within the hope of adopting the spirit of green gastronomy, one aspires to eat wholesome food, what chance for our personal analysis of food labels is there?


3c

Lochmuir salmon

3c/a

Another angle on deception is the "names" given by sellers. a term used advisedly. In 2009, M & S sold “lochmuir Salmon”. You pick up the packet, you react to the association that it is from Scotland and pop it into your basket. You didn’t notice that there was no capital L to lochmuir and that its M & S small-print cover-up because it doesn’t exist.
 
3c/b

Let us read proper Scots comment on lochmuir salmon..You see there that the farce has been going on since 2006.   

3c/c

It's still on sale at Marks & Spencer.  It's now privileged with a capital L.  Take a look at it next time you're in M & S.  Note the water it's almost floating in.  It may be loch fishery water. 

3c/d


But that's more than just deception.  If we didn't buy the product, it would disappear.  
 
3c/e

You are about to go to a page I prepared earlier, as the saying goes.

One key quote is

And shock horror, if you’ve been blithely buying ‘Lochmuir’ salmon – and we do, to the tune of £300 million per year – and thinking this was an actual place, you would’ve been quite wrong. I imagined a tweed-wearing fisherman whiling away heather strewn hours on the banks of Lochmuir, so I was surprised to hear that Lochmuir exists nowhere but in the creative brains of the marketing department.    more 

The name was chosen by a panel of consumers as it represented and reinforced the concept that the salmon was from Scotland.  more 

3c/f

If time is short, it takes in What's really in our food      


3c/g

However, M & S is not all bad.  If you appreciate wine, then look at the company as St Michael here.   

  

 Panel 4

There will be more like this but I want to move on. There will be pages devoted to specific products.  

Muesli is a seemingly value-sounding purchase. Other pages will have different focus such as sustainability, nutrition, food safety, and excess packaging. There's an element of the last-named on the muesli page






If you would like more on the quotation, it's here:

Skimmed milk masquerades as cream" 

 more    listen, if you will

 

 

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