Why is all our fresh food wrapped in plastic? (Tesco)

Member Name: lellagrace

Product:	Tesco
Date:	08/10/06 (941 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Are there any?

Disadvantages: Bad for environment, bad for our health, bad for the food!

TESCO IN GENERAL

I shop at Tesco because it is the nearest supermarket to my home. I find their prices quite competitive and their own brand ranges good value. I have also used their home delivery on several occasions and been impressed by that.

ETHNIC FOODS

In my local Tesco there is a whole section devoted to ethnic foods. There is a large muslim population near here and we now have a chance to buy herbs and spices which were previously not available. In a large town not far away with a large Jewish community, kosher foods are available too. All these enable us to try out different foods from our traditional “meat and two veg.”

PREPACKAGING

But what about our meat and two veg? Yes we can buy the ingredients at Tesco’s or indeed any other supermarket, but it is like eating plastic! Everything is packaged in cling film, polystyrene or polythene. Why????

Having visited a supermarket in France recently I would like to ask Tesco (and other major supermarkets) why the same range of unwrapped fresh foods is not available to us here in the UK as in France?

SALADS

Take the humble lettuce for example. In the UK we might be able to choose from iceberg, little gem, or round lettuce – all packed in plastic bags or cellophane wrapped. If we prefer a different variety we have to choose a different plastic bag filled with Bistro, Herb, Italian or other assorted lettuce leaves. Yet in France the salad counters are brimming with huge lettuces, none of them wrapped in polythene or anything else, they are natural looking, like lettuces used to be. And the variety available is vast! Not just two or three varieties like we get here. I am fed up with having to buy several plastic bags of mixed salad when it would be much easier to buy a whole lettuce in a variety other than iceberg!!

VEGETABLES

What about carrots? In the UK we get them loose, scrubbed clean, where we can select our own, or we can buy them in yet another plastic bag. In France they are available with the green tops still attached, a whole bunch of carrots complete with soil. They taste much fresher than the plastic wrapped varieties we can get. I overheard one small child (English) ask his mum “Mum, what are those green bits on those carrots?” He had probably never seen carrots like that before!

FISH

Let us now move onto the fresh fish counter. A vast assortment of fish, of many different kinds, some of which I have never even seen for sale in England. We are an island for goodness sake – doesn’t that mean our seas should be filled with fish other than cod, haddock and the occasional eel? We have prawns the size of the tiddlers we used to catch in the park lake when we were kids. Yet abroad prawns are huge and nowhere as near as expensive as any we can buy here.

MEAT

And what about fresh meat? The French can buy so many different cuts of meat, some of it already oven prepared – rolled, skewered, filleted. In the UK we can buy chops, steaks, joints or stir fry chunks. Of course in France they can also buy veal and horsemeat, something I would not wish to be available here.

UNHEALTHY DIET

No wonder the British diet is so unhealthy and many people are overweight. We don’t eat properly that’s why.

Why do we put up with our vastly inferior food on offer in the supermarkets! The French make wonderful meals, their children are brought up knowing how to cook a meal without having to resort to opening a packet of fish fingers or a can of baked beans.

REST OF EUROPE

I have generalised about France so far, but it is the same throughout most European countries. Their supermarkets offer a much better selection of good quality, fresh foods than we can obtain here. Even their smallest supermarkets offer a better variety than our largest ones, something which horrified a French visitor to my home. I took her to the largest Tesco we have in the area and she couldn’t believe how little choice there was.

BEER AND WINE

I understand Tesco has a store in Calais, but when I checked this out on Google it only seemed to give details of the alcohol available. Now is that what we Brits have become renowned for when we go to France? A race who is happy to eat any junk that is available as long as it can be washed down with beer or wine?

What a sad thing if this is true. We are part of Europe in many ways, yet when it comes to our daily diet we lag far behind our European counterparts. But until the supermarkets change what they sell to us, this will continue.

DEMAND BETTER QUALITY

We need to stand up and refuse to buy plastic wrapped produce and insist on our foods being as good as those offered on the continent. We pay extortionate prices for organic produce, there is a demand for it, but I am not convinced it is because of the non-use of chemicals etc. I am sure it is because many of us prefer to buy our foods loose instead of in those prepackaged plastic bags.

GOVERNMENT

The British Government are keen to make us toe the line with European policies in so many things, and at the same time they admit we are a nation who does not eat properly. Isn’t it time then that they did something about forcing supermarkets like Tesco to offer us better quality and choice of fresh foods? And perhaps at the same time they could invite a European equivalent of Jamie Oliver to produce a series of TV programmes instructing us on how to cook healthily.

ENVIRONMENT

One last note, in my local Sainsburys you can buy re-useable bags, yet Tesco don’t have these. Instead Tesco offer extra points if you bring your own bags. I can only think they must have a mountain of printed plastic carrier bags waiting to be used up. I do hope when these are all used that Tesco’s will offer customers re-usable bags.

In addition, I hope they will discontinue the use of plastic wrappings on their fresh produce. I dread to think what all this plastic is doing to our environment.

Summary: Give us the same food as Europe