The great British public really has got into the habit of eating dodgy cheap food. We’re happy to pay the least amount possible, kidding ourselves that the contents must be OK, because reputable supermarkets, local schools and the government just wouldn’t allow us to eat anything dubious or dangerous. They can be our watchdogs and our guardians. That means when there is a food scare, instead of taking responsibility ourselves, we can kick up a fuss and say that they haven’t done our job for us.

I want to absolve the supermarkets, government and schools, because we need to accept some responsibility. Saint Jamie of Oliver has got it seriously wrong. Don’t start with schools, kids only eat a small proportion of their annual food intake there. The huge proportion of what they eat is dictated by their Mums and Dads. If you want to feed your family properly start reading the packaging, all the clues you need are there, and as the famous advert says, our food “does exactly what it says on the tin”.  

But we don’t want to spend our valuable time reading labels, we’d rather whizz round the supermarket aisles as quickly as possible, spending as little as possible. And if that’s what we want, that’s what the supermarkets will give us. In fact for the first time ever we’re spending more on food outside the home (restaurants, take-aways etc) than inside. Our eating-out lifestyle is paid for, by the money we save on cheap supermarket food, especially the food we shove down our children’s throats. £2.49 for a Starbucks grande latte? No problem. £2.49 on a packet of sausages? Blimey, that’s expensive, you must be joking.

In fact sausages are a good example. Why pay double the price for premium sausages, when you can get a brand name you’ve heard of, for half the price? It’s a false economy that’s why. The real meat you buy in cheap sausages is three times more expensive than the best sausages in the land (which by the way come from the North West), and I can prove it . . .

The best selling brand of sausages in the UK sell £62 million worth a year. They are based in the West Midlands. They’re supposedly made to an Irish recipe, which evokes images of a secret combination of ingredients mixed lovingly and passed down from generation to generation. However, they aren’t available for sale in Ireland, and I’m not quite sure where you would get some nice old Irish lady to come up with this mixture; 41% pork, water, 10% pork fat, rusk, potato starch and soya protein concentrate. The remaining 2% contains salt, stabilisers, diphosphates, guar gum, antioxidants, sodium metabisulphate and cochineal.

I’ll translate for you - the pork element is allowed to be skeletal muscle with attached fat and connective tissue. The attached fat is allowed to be 30% of the meat, and the connective tissue is allowed to be 25%. So, a pork sausage could contain only a quarter of what I would consider to be ‘proper’ meat.

Although fat can be included in the description of meat (if it’s attached to the muscle), in these sausages, pork fat is also added separately. If the meat is processed to within an inch of its life and finely minced there is no texture at all. Pure pork fat gives the sausage a bit of bite, so that it feels like you’re actually chewing something, rather than eating blancmange.

If you do the maths, you can work out that at least a fifth of the ‘Irish recipe’ is water. Phosphates help to keep the water in and soya helps to keep the fat in. Rusk gives bulk and helps to bind the contents. All designed to prevent the sausage from shrinking when you’re cooking it, so you can convince yourself they’re as good as real sausages.

As to the rest; guar gum is an economical thickener and stabiliser, antioxidants prevent discolouring, sodium metabisulphate is a preservative to extend shelf life and cochineal is a colouring.

The packet states that it’s all stuffed into “non-UK beef casings”. Personally I don’t know where these come from or what they’re made of, but it’s legal in the UK for them to contain uncooked beef intestine, which is banned from the content of the sausage itself because it’s considered too dangerous to eat.

If a packet of pork sausages doesn’t say “reared outdoors”, then it’s likely to come from pigs reared in crowded factory conditions, sometimes 2,000 to a shed on concrete floors. They’re packed together with little room to move and their tails are docked and teeth clipped to prevent them from fighting and biting each other. With such a lack of fresh air, respiratory disease is high so they’re routinely given antibiotics to keep them going.

These sausages, and others like it, cost around £1.50 a dozen, and weigh 340g. Some of my favourite sausages, made by North West producers from pigs reared on their own land, appear to be more than twice as expensive. They’ll cost you around £1.74 for six, but they weigh 280g. Is the cost differential a con?

Many of our North West fine food producers feed their pigs on the best possible wheatgerm and the best milk. Often the meat content is 95%, using prime shoulder and belly pork trimmed of fat. The remainder may be fresh herbs, wine or garlic, but definitely no preservatives, no colouring and no rusk. If you visit their farms you’ll see the pigs roaming free.

Consequently the moral of the story is . . . don’t buy a dozen sausages costing £1.50. That probably works out at 57g of proper meat per £, and you’ll be eating 171g of other stuff I’d rather not think about. Buy the so called ‘expensive’ sausages. For a £ you’ll get at least 153g of real meat and another 10g of food that you’d recognise.

Your kids will thank you for it. Eventually.

© Sue Nelson 2006