What's Ireland Eating? RTE 1

mike65

Anyone watching this? Yet again the nonsense about fresh food stuffs being expensive and how processed food is handy, cheap, quick is trotted out. And this was from someone who is a supposed expert on health. I'm not brilliant (or a Saint) but I have no trouble eating a diet which is not processed for the most part, the takes no real time and is perfectly cheap enough.

The obsession for chicken is something I don't get I have to say.

Corsendonk

Yes very rose tinted as usually from RTE. I know a couple of the veg growers and lets say they left out some facts in their stories but that said the supermarkets do have alot of power. Divide and Conquer works pretty well with Irish Veg Growers.

They love the Chicken example as you said but they forget to mention that we have a hugh export business of leg, thigh and wings to Asia because the Irish consumer only really eats breast meat. It would be more profitable if we were less picky as consumers and ate the brown meat from the bird.

Darkginger

It's madness eating only the breast meat - the thighs and drumsticks are where the flavour is! I buy only Irish (sadly, neither organic nor free range very often nowadays, unless we get to Aldi where free range is affordable), but try to always buy a whole bird, not a body part

It's so easy after a bit of practice to get the breasts off - then the legs, and then the wings - I save wings in the freezer until I have enough to make some kind of hot wing/buffalo/BBQ wing thing for the 2 of us. Breasts get used in something with a strong flavoured sauce, like a curry, and the thighs and drumsticks go into paellas and risottos, or stews - with a stock made from the carcass.

I can't see chicken feet ever catching on here, so export away! It does seem silly to ignore the best flavoured stuff though. I suppose it's something to do with the increasing preference to eat meat that looks nothing like a part of a (previously) living creature.

Having said all that, I don't think it's necessarily the consumer who's buying imported chickens - it's the manufacturers of processed food and fast food outlets. Lots of people nowadays read labels and care about the provenance of their meat and other foods - but you can bet that yer average chicken nugget isn't a free range one - nor necessarily Irish. The flavour in the fast foods and processed foods comes from the additives, the breading etc., rather than from the meat itself - so where's the incentive for a manufacturer to buy Irish quality chicken?

Corsendonk

No incentive really for catering trade to tell you the chicken origin, there was legislation brought in for restaurants to display the origin of the beef but you don't even see that enforced too much. As you said most of the imported Chicken goes into catering trade after being imported into places like Holland in hugh frozen blocks of breast meat, breaded or made into nuggets, relabeled as Dutch then sent on to Ireland. 15 of Europes largest further processed poultry plants are around the port of Rotterdam.

Some of the restaurant trade also supliment Irish fruit and veg with cheaper imports. The supermarkets have had to work at sourcing Irish and labelling products to indicate this but no one has really questioned restaurants or asked for proof. With restaurants and catering under even more financial pressure I can't see that trend changing.