"Findus some more horses"

When i heard the reports of possible 100% horse meat lasagne my initial reaction was to laugh, then to retch and then to properly consider it. During the war no one would have turned their nose at a bit of horse... but then i suppose you were aware that that was what you were dealing with... What shocked me most about it was the idea that the food it was found in was so processed that horse meat was virtually indistinguishable from beef.

It worries me that we are so used to just bunging a ready meal in the oven that we don't really even stop to think what sort of things it might have in it- and i'm not just talking about horses! the sheer number of chemicals used to make certain foods taste and look a certain way is unbelievable. From preservatives, to colourings, additives to fat substitutes- we eat them all a regular basis but we hardly ever think about them. Take... Pop tarts for example. I have nothing against pop tarts... from what i've heard they're quite delicious... but i think there is something quite disconcerting about the fact that they have icing on top that doesn't change shape even after being toasted... Normal icing would melt. Normal icing would at the very least get a bit sticky and soft. Normal icing would not stay rock solid on top of the biscuit. 

And that is just one example of scientists working for huge companies to make food do things it would never normally do! Soft scoop ice-cream... cake mix... etc. etc. We live in a world where food is a million dollar industry and one that provides us with cheap food that we can heat up and eat in less than 40 seconds. A world in which the sound of a fork piercing the plastic cover on a ready meal is almost constant. A world in which people are obese but they don't know why. 

We need to stop eating processed food even if it claims to be healthy, claims to be natural and claims to be humane- because as we know ready meals aren't always what they claim to be. Yes, there is a need for cheap food products but we can help feed poor families using foods that aren't made of miscellaneous meats and a cocktail of chemicals...

So... Tesco and Aldi with your "Findus some more horses" products- I know Waitrose has been putting a bit of a Heston Blumenthal twist on some of it's preprepared foods recently but that doesn't mean you have to too!

Tip: From now on before tucking into my lasagne i will temptingly hold a sugar lump over it, or alternatively a handful of hay or oats. I suggest you do the same.