The collective wisdom of our grannies is an invaluable guide to navigating the complex food landscape, writes SARAH CAREY
IT IS one of the bittersweet tragedies of my life that my mother has turned out to be right about just about everything. From her grim warnings on investments (“you’ll never have in your pocket only what you earn yourself after a day’s work”) to the predictability of personality (“what can you expect from a crow’s egg, but another crow?”) I could have spared myself some harsh experiences if I’d listened to her from the start.
Still, I'm not the only one to rue my dismissal of elder wisdom. Reviewed just yesterday in this paper was Michael Pollan's best-selling book Food Rules – An Eater's Manual. It lists 64 rules for healthy eating, most of which are based on the collective wisdom of people's grannies.
Pollan says he wrote the book because a simple trip to the supermarket now requires people to navigate a “truly treacherous food landscape” and thus he identifies the core problem with food – the part where you have to buy it.
About four years ago, time poverty persuaded me to indulge in reckless behaviour such as online shopping or piously filling my trolley at a small local shop without looking at the prices. Now the constraints of actual poverty have obliged a shift in behaviour. After considerable experimentation, analysis of price and quality, wrestling with ethics and measuring my own time and effort, I’ve ended up accepting what I should have known all along – my mother was right.
She advised buying small amounts regularly in an assiduous commitment to avoid waste. This convinced her that despite the supposed savings the most expensive place to shop is a supermarket. We all know the sense of dismay that strikes when you arrive at the till with an overloaded trolley even though you only came in for a few things. You always buy more than you intended.
Even Lidl and Aldi, for all their cheap pricing, offer only one choice of trolley – a bloody enormous one, thus enabling the impulsive purchase of gardening equipment or DIY accessories that you never knew you needed. So while debates rage about pricing, sourcing and ethics, the guiding ideology of any supermarket is to break the resolve of even the most determined and efficient shopper. There are none more determined than me but even I’m not impenetrable and can be undone by the combined efforts of hundreds of marketing executives who conspire to mislead the consumer into believing they are getting value.
So here are some of my rules for shopping, with thanks to my friend Frances who has studied the matter with some diligence. They are based on the premise that due to unemployment and a reduced social life, most of your time is spent foraging, so no complaints, please.
Now, most consumer advice focuses on comparisons between competing products and bravely recommends experimentation with own-brands. This is a fatal approach. What you really need to to do is eliminate entire aisles and whole categories of products from your shop. For example, even venturing towards the snacks and biscuits and kitchen accessories displays a lack of commitment to real savings.
Take cleaning products. Any product that purports to “improve” other cleaning products or worse, clean machines that are supposed to clean, is a post-modern domestic horror. Unless you are abusing your cleaning appliances, I can’t see why they need cleaning. Rinse aid is a luxury and if you have soft water or a water softener then you don’t need salt. The only product you need to wash clothes is washing powder, and you should use less than the recommended portions. I’ve been cutting dishwasher tablets in half for years, and miraculously, the dishes are still clean.
A great rule of thumb is when you get to the till, do a processed-food check. You could probably remove most of it and eat adequately. With the exception of butter, margarine and Glenisk plain yoghurt, I don’t buy any other processed dairy product. No children’s yogurts, no dairy drinks, no smoothies, no chemical-ridden cheese. My children drink milk and eat fruit. I buy the cheapest fruit juices on the market and dilute them. Despite the exhortations of the calcium lobbyists, amazingly they haven’t developed rickets. Neither have they required dental treatment, which is just as well since I heard that the children’s service has been cancelled.
Most food involving flour can go too. Just buy the flour instead. To my undying shame, when I was rich I used to buy ready-made pancakes. Now we make pancakes, crumpets, potato cakes, scones, pastry and my Victoria sponges comes so easy I can whip them up in between other domestic tasks. I haven’t started baking my own bread yet, but I’m sure that will come whenever the International Monetary Fund does.
I stick with the local butcher for meat and eat vegetables in season. Buying fresh herbs is for emergencies only. Parsley, rocket, thyme and rosemary grow perfectly well outside and basil and coriander do well in pots on the windowsill. You do miss them in winter, but let’s face it, it’s far from fresh basil we were raised. In any event, spending €2.99 on a package of glorified weed shipped from Kenya says you’re just not poor enough.
Pollan's Food Rules – An Eater's Manualargues that eating like our grandmothers did is good for our health. That's true, but fortunately, it's good for our pockets too.