Old advice, but still good advice.

I'm sure we have all heard the saying "You are what you eat."  This has never been truer, although the first time I heard that apt piece of advice it was from my Grandmother.

In her day it meant that if you ate lots of 'bad' food, cooked breakfasts in lard, too much cake or fish and chips and lots of wine and port you would end up over-weight and suffering from gout. These were easy enough to avoid if you were worried about your waist line.  You just ate sensibly, plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and avoided the greasy stuff.  If only it were so easy today.
 
The next time you buy a packet of biscuits or cakes, check the ingredients. This is the ingredient list of a large commercial bakery (who shall remain nameless).  See if you can figure out which cake they are making!

"Sultanas, Wheat Flour, Sugar, Pork Fat, Reconstituted Egg, Vegetable Oil, Soya Flour, Reconstituted Egg White, Whey Powder, Demerara Sugar, Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Thickener (Xanthan Gum), Milk Protein, Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids)"

Can't guess?

OK, I'll tell you.  It's your average common or garden fruit cake.  Now why is pork fat in there?  I've made an awful lot of fruit cakes in my time and I've never used pork fat.  All my cakes came out just fine, I've even won competitions with them.

And Disodium Diophosphate?  Got any in your kitchen cupboard?  I don't think so.  It's used in leather treatments to stabilist the hides and remove iron stains.  Ooooh yummy!  Sounds delicious, and so natural and good for you!

However it now appears that things are getting worse.  I know, you're wondering how?  Now we have people eating a burger made from meat that has never walked, mooed or given milk.  Aritificially created meat.  How humane they say.  It's good for the environment because cows produce an awful lot of methane and require vast acres of pasture which has to be created by chopping down forests around the world.  

Fortunately at the moment it costs an awful lot of money to produce meat this way, so Findus and McDonalds won't be using it in their products, but if it gets cheap enough you can bet your bottom dollar that the food 'industry' will start to use it.

If the enviromental impact of raising cattle and other meat producing animals is so high I have another suggestion.  How about educating people into eating one non-meat meal a week?  It would be better for them, better for the environment and currently no-body produces vegetables in a laboratory.  Although give them time and they probably will.  Good Grief!