You know that when a television programme contains Britain in the title it’s attempting to cash-in on a collective sense of identity.  In most cases it’s a bit lazy.  In the case of Britain’s Really Disgusting Foods its symptomatic of the laziness, vacuity, and attempt to cash in on essentialist presumptions about food.   If I were to go down the essentialist route also I could sum-up the show up in a single sentence: The programme has cherry-picked the cheapest foods available to caterers in order to create a straw-man argument, cherry picked experts with vested interests against things like mechanically recovered meat, and created a cloud of brainless confusion aimed at a teenage audience on BBC 3.

The presenter, who’s mildly funny, like dandruff, starts the programmes by saying “I reckon there’s certain things that need answering once and for all, so I’ve composed an email to the meat hygiene service looking for some answers”.  He asks them if ears, eyes, eyelids, noses, brains, lips, nipples, bumholes (rather than anus – the programme is aimed at the youth, man, and they all say bumhole), tail,  testicles, penis, bones, and ballbag, are allowed in sausages.  Testicles appear twice.  Presumably for comedic purposes.  Ha ha.  Twenty minutes later we find out that none of those things are allowed in sausages.  There is, however, a loop hole that means that if you don’t call your meat products sausages they’re allowed 5% meat.  Which I’ll return to.

The programme goes on to discuss the cheapest chicken breasts available to caterers.  Which, surprisingly, or not, as the case may be, are injected with water, salt, and stabilisers.  Partly because they’re frozen.  According to the programme this is disgusting.  A great opportunity to inform the audience is missed  at every opportunity.  Salt, and the associated problems of over consumption are well known, but the chief point the programme makes about the chicken breasts is that they’re disgusting.   Without any qualification of the health ramifications of added salt – or that if consumed sensibly there’s really no problem.  But according to the programme they are disgusting simply because they’ve undergone processing.  Animal welfare can go fuck itself.  It’s not touched upon at all.

Then, at a food trade fair, to demonstrate how disgusting the cheapest, nastiest, cherry-picked faux-sausages are, they give a demonstration of how to make the cheapest, nastiest, faux-sausages. Raising the spectre of mechanically recovered meat.  In order to do this they get Richard Guy – the Real Meat Company founder, who has no conflict of interest at all, an entirely neutral contributor (like fuck)  to give a demonstration of mechanically recovered meat.  Holding up a chicken carcass that had the breast, leg, and other good bits of meat, removed.  Which is exactly what I use to make an excellent chicken soup, using the leftovers from a Sunday roast. He then goes on to explain how the meat - the straggly bits sinew etc. -  is removed in a factory to produce a paste.  They mention the use of ingredients like sodium metabisulfite, and they state, unequivocally, that it “isn’t there to make you live longer, be happier or anything else, it’s there to make a heap of disgusting meat stick together”.

Sodium metabisulfite is familiar to all home brewers.  It is used to sterilise equipment.  It is also a preservative.  It has been used to a very long time, and it has zero side-effects.  You piss it out.  It has absolutely nothing to do with sticking meat together.  It extends the shelf-life of products, and helps prevent food poisoning.  BBC 3 viewers should take what BBC 3 tells them with a pinch of salt.

Shortly after the that programme cuts to a chalk board with “The search for the Worlds Worst Sausage”  the apostrophe is missing from World presumably on purpose, for comedic purposes.  The problem with the board is that technically it’s false advertising.  The cheapest, nastiest, faux sausages they are making are not legally allowed to be called sausages.  No mention is made of the fat-content or salt content.  The two chief problems with the cheapest nastiest food you can cherry pick.  It’s referenced – they mention that fat goes in. But not how much or how much salt goes in.

The programme then consults a nutritionist, who tells us, with minimal elaboration, what we already know about the cheapest nastiest food you can cherry pick.  Nutritionally they’re not very good. Surprise surprise.

They later mention hydrogenated fats.  Hydrogenated fats are bad.  They state that hydrogenated fat “Increases risk of coronary heart disease/contains no nutritional value”.  They do increase the risk of coronary heart disease.  Similar to butter or other natural products that contain saturated fats.  However – they’re wrong about hydrogenated fats containing no nutritional value.  It’s the trans-fats which are a by-product of hydrogenated fats that have no nutritional value.  No mention is made of the problems with saturated fats.  Presumably because telling people their expensive supermarket best sausages can also be bad for their health doesn’t fit their straw-man argument.

They pick on the use of waxy starch in apple pie filling.   Which is no different from using cornflour to thicken things.  But that wouldn’t support the argument.

The programme’s attitude towards E-Numbers is similarly stupid.  At one point the host compares E-Numbers to excrement.  They mention that an E-Number colouring is derived from coal tar.  Like paracetamol used to be, and a whole host of other things utilising organic chemistry.  The idea that anything good can be derived from coal tar is ignored.  To support the argument that the E-number colouring in question is bad they mention that it’s banned in two countries.  I don’t know how many countries it is not banned in, but that doesn’t support the argument, so it’s omitted.

They talk about how marketing people give a false impression of food.  The next time I get a shag out of wearing Lynx deodorant I’ll celebrate by eating a trans-fat laden cake in a park where it’s always sunny and there’s no dog shit.  Marketing gives a misleading idea of what product is/does.  Well I never.  If the argument about misleading advertising were backed up by a coherent argument about unhealthy or disgusting food the programme may have had a point.  Instead it’s an opinion piece of the worst kind.

BBC 3 and Britain’s Most Disgusting Foods are shit.  It’s a broadly misleading programme, aimed at teenagers, that adds nothing to the argument about healthy food, and potentially increases the ignorance of its viewers.  The programme contains nothing about how much salt, saturated fat, and sugar it is healthy to consume.

An episode of the F-Word particularly annoyed me.  Gordon Ramsay, in full on intervention mode, met some 20-something NORPs that live on takeaway curry, one of whom wants to run a marathon.  Gordon, in his infinite wisdom, recommended a curry recipe; the logic being that someone that lives on curry would want to cook it for themselves.  My problem is that if people can’t do basic food right, there’s fuck all point in teaching them things like making a curry.  As soon as the celebrity chef has gone the rice will be overcooked, the food will be under-seasoned, and worse the fuckers will force their new found gastronomic confidence on guests.

Often people who, basically, can’t cook, buy the latest Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay cookbook.  It’s not that the recipes are bad, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay are better chefs than the majority of people, it’s just that the pretentious fuckers buying their books often can’t cook a decent soup, let alone many of the recipes.  That’s why I think Marco Pierre White, and Delia Smith *, aside from being mental as rabid badgers, in their own way, are doing better things for British food than walking cocks like Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsay. They are teaching delicious basics.  That’s what many people in the UK need.  Not over-complication and pretentious fuckwittery.  For example - basic soup.

Anyone can cook a decent, ubergruppenhealthy **, soup.  All of what follows is approximate, and flexible:

The core of the recipe: One sliced medium onion, two peeled chopped carrots (or more if you like carrots), a bay leaf,  a few handfuls of of chopped potatoes, a couple of sticks of chopped celery, a peeled whole clove of garlic (more if you want), and some skinned chicken.  Put it all in a big saucepan cover with water  (plus a couple of stock cubes - although some are cuboids strictly speaking) or stock, put in some dried black peppercorns to taste (five or six is fine).  Optional herbs include thyme,  parsley,  tarragon (be careful – it’s a dominating herb –  a small pinch at most) etc.  That’s a basic soup.  Optional other stuff includes chopped ham, mushrooms, cabbage, leftover vegetables, a small handful of pearl barley, a handful of rice,  - nettles even, swedes, turnips, celeriac etc. etc.  It’s simple.

Cover. Bring to the boil simmer for an hour or more, taste, season, remove any bones, skim any excess fat, and voilà – acceptable, very healthy, soup.  A cheap pack of 12 chicken thighs will be enough for about 8 people with large soup portions – more people can be served if there’s some bread.  Alternatively a left-over roast chicken carcass is just fine also but it will need to be simmered longer.  A kid with minimal supervision and a blunt butter knife can make soup.  You can experiment, and find the perfect combinations/ratios for you.  Don’t get me started about dumplings and suet dumplings. A well trained dog could probably make them.  Bit of white pepper in the dumplings – lovely.

Total cost less than £8 – the main cost is the meat.  Dried herbs are fine. If it’s left overs the total cost is less than £5.  Hate chicken?  Use cheap cuts of lamb (cheap is betters suited to simmering) or rabbit (drop the tarragon in both cases IMHO), simmer until the meat is tender, and flavours defuse.

Celebrity chefs are teaching people stuff they aren’t equipped to do well.  MPW and DS excluded. I’d rather have a decent soup or other healthy basic recipe than some faddish nightmare cooked badly from a recipe book.  Serious.   Marco Pierre White is right.

* Years ago, at some ill-defind point in the past, I watched Delia Smith in an altered state of mind, and it took me weeks to get over it. In fact just thinking about it makes a little nervous.
** Which is, after all, what Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsay has in mind for us.  For us all to be ubergruppenhealthy.

Plus I think the comments some of the comments on Tony Naylor’s piece are a national treasure.