Imagine the world was ruled by chickens.
Imagine they took our women, placed them in little sheds that weren’t even big enough for them to scratch, they can’t wash, and are forced to have babies in these positions, with no privacy from all the other women stacked next to them. I myself, squished in there with my nose touching my shoulder and my leg bent backwards, would be pretty depressed, to understate, not forgetting the disgusting cramp I’d get probably after an hour, let a lone a whole year. But hey, the chickens don’t mind. They’re saving money after all.
The other week, I was in the big Sainsbury’s and in the confusion of misplaced labels, low prices and things put on the wrong shelves, I bought a box of battery farmed eggs. I didn’t realise until I got home, and I was dismayed, appalled, and to be honest I’m annoyed with myself for not taking the bloody things back (don’t know what Sainsbury’s refund policy is on eggs). One thing for certain was that I didn’t use them.
This got me thinking as to why I’m so opposed to them - I’ve always known battery farmed eggs were bad, and hated them, but I couldn’t say completely why that was - so I did the obvious thing and googled it. 70% of the UK’s eggs are battery farmed. This means: the hens have the room of an A4 piece of paper to move, they never see what they produce, they can’t flap or scratch or dust-bathe, and after the average of a year, they’re finally taken out and slaughtered. They never come into contact with a rooster; all their eggs are artificially produced and most male chicks are killed because they have no use as a living thing. Unsurprisingly, these conditions can turn the hens a bit mental (as I’m sure we all would stuck in some windowless box with our hands behind our backs); with the discomfort of having to lay in utter public (even hens need their privacy guys!) and nothing to see but their hutchmates’ bodies, the chickens can turn violent and sometimes end up pecking each other to death. Thankfully, some farmers can deal with this by ‘beaktrimming’ - using a red hot blade to take off part of the hen’s beak, which sometimes causes them to die from either bleeding or shock.
One of the most painful things about this - not counting the actual horrific elements of it - is that, according to surveys, a free range hen will on average only produce 15 eggs less than a battery hen in a year. Ask yourself - would there really be such an egg shortage if all our eggs were free range, or at least barn (when hens are all kept together in a big barn, not nearly as good as free range, but have room to walk about and peck the ground - all a chicken really asks for in life)? Of course, one argument might be that most chickens are only reproduced to serve the purpose of being a battery hen, and wouldn’t be alive were it not for that. Nothing asks to be born! I’m sure the hen’s not sitting there with a big unitchable itch in its back thinking, ‘well, my life’s crap, but I’m thankful I got a chance to live’.
Not wanting to sound like an animal-loving lunatic, but all living things have the basic emotions: fear, contentment and pain. And why should we enforce anything negative on a creature that doesn’t have a choice? Sounds a bit like sadism, when you put it like that…
But the solution to this frankly revolting problem is amazingly simple: stop buying battery farmed eggs. M&S have finished with them, and now only use free range eggs in all their products. Unfortunately, good old Marks and Sparks can be a bit pricey for us students, but so long as we continue to support the other supermarkets that are planning to abolish the evil eggs, which are Waitrose (all own brand stuff uses free-range), Sainsbury’s (Taste the Difference range are completely free-range), Co-op and Budgens (working towards being battery farmed free), and even Asda which has a small, special range dedicated to using free-range only, and society will start to get the message. If McDonalds, one of the biggest corporations in the world, can switch to using free-range only, which it did in 2003, isn’t that’s incentive for any individual or business? It’s pretty easy when you think about it - if Cadbury’s Wispa bars were taken off the market due to poor sales, surely the same would follow with battery farm eggs…
Next time you’re having a cooked breakfast, making an omelette or baking a cake, please just think about where your ingredients came from. I don’t know about you, but I’d be happier splashing out on that 50p more - things can taste a lot nastier if you know they were gotten out of a miserable life.
Friday 11 April 2008
Thursday 10 April 2008
Bulmin' Hell
Ohhhhh, Bulmer’s! I don’t like it!!!
I think everyone, well, I think some people, owe something to Koppenberg. These beautiful people provided the answer for some other people (not sure if they were beautiful or not) who went to the pub but didn’t like beer, in fact all they wanted to do was order a Bacardi Breezer (or if we were to set this nowadays, a VK) but were afraid of looking, well, immature (and not hard enough if you were a bloke. In fact not hard at all). Step in Koppenberg. We were allowed to buy a ’proper’ drink, cider after all is a proper drink, but at a fraction of bitter alcoholic taste. I can’t quite bring myself to say it tasted like a pear - anyone who’s actually tasted a real pear and thinks it comes out in Koppenberg never really tasted a real pear - but it was sweet, fruity, and, erm, delicious. I was never a person who didn’t like beer, I like the taste of alcohol (which must be a good thing, right?) but I was definitely partial to a Kopper down the local - it was refreshing, gave me a sugar burst, and was a bit cidery. But then something happened. I’d laid off the pear ciders for a while, stuck to vodkas and real ciders, and decided to partake in one once more. Oh my god! It was so sweet, so hideously sweet, that I couldn’t believe it had ever been a regular of mine. From then on, it was over for me an the Kop, although we share some good memories and I still admire its work.
THEN - Bulmer’s put out an advert. It was an advert for a new Bulmer’s Pear Cider. Now oi do loike a bit o the ole coider and I know Bulmer’s is a good brand, it’s done me well in times of Magner’s shortage (or other non-brand organic makes - they’re really what you call a cider), and adding to that, there’s something about cider adverts, the still ones not the TV ones, that really get to me; remember the Christmas Magner’s with a close up of a cold, gold, dripping pint next to a fresh crisp holly leaf? Oh the pain - the pain that caused me!
So I forgot my differences with pear cider - everything deserves a second chance. I gave into the advert, as I knew I would the first second I saw it (was in a random little pub in Suffolk, I remember it well…) and I bought myself a bottle and I drunk it. Because Bulmer’s is quality right? Right? I wish I could affirm. This did not taste like cider, nor did it taste of alcohol, it tasted of a pearish water with a load of glucose added. It wasn’t even that fizzy! Water is one of the main words to describe here, it was unbearably watery and I couldn’t believe that Koppenberg had the better version. Bulmer’s is expensive, the least they could have afforded to put in was a bit of carbon dioxide! Certainly the word we’re not looking for here is cider. If Bacardi (or VK, whatever) made a pear flavoured breezer it would probably taste a bit like this; in fact they should - if everyone is crazing over pear cider they may as well just give into the fact that either a) they like pear flavoured substances, and should therefore have a perry, or b) they don’t like the taste of alcohol, and should just face up to it by showing everyone that yes, they are drinking an alcopop (or just don’t drink at all - that’s probably cleverer).
Anyhow Bulmer, it’s a bummer - stick to what you’re good at love.
I think everyone, well, I think some people, owe something to Koppenberg. These beautiful people provided the answer for some other people (not sure if they were beautiful or not) who went to the pub but didn’t like beer, in fact all they wanted to do was order a Bacardi Breezer (or if we were to set this nowadays, a VK) but were afraid of looking, well, immature (and not hard enough if you were a bloke. In fact not hard at all). Step in Koppenberg. We were allowed to buy a ’proper’ drink, cider after all is a proper drink, but at a fraction of bitter alcoholic taste. I can’t quite bring myself to say it tasted like a pear - anyone who’s actually tasted a real pear and thinks it comes out in Koppenberg never really tasted a real pear - but it was sweet, fruity, and, erm, delicious. I was never a person who didn’t like beer, I like the taste of alcohol (which must be a good thing, right?) but I was definitely partial to a Kopper down the local - it was refreshing, gave me a sugar burst, and was a bit cidery. But then something happened. I’d laid off the pear ciders for a while, stuck to vodkas and real ciders, and decided to partake in one once more. Oh my god! It was so sweet, so hideously sweet, that I couldn’t believe it had ever been a regular of mine. From then on, it was over for me an the Kop, although we share some good memories and I still admire its work.
THEN - Bulmer’s put out an advert. It was an advert for a new Bulmer’s Pear Cider. Now oi do loike a bit o the ole coider and I know Bulmer’s is a good brand, it’s done me well in times of Magner’s shortage (or other non-brand organic makes - they’re really what you call a cider), and adding to that, there’s something about cider adverts, the still ones not the TV ones, that really get to me; remember the Christmas Magner’s with a close up of a cold, gold, dripping pint next to a fresh crisp holly leaf? Oh the pain - the pain that caused me!
So I forgot my differences with pear cider - everything deserves a second chance. I gave into the advert, as I knew I would the first second I saw it (was in a random little pub in Suffolk, I remember it well…) and I bought myself a bottle and I drunk it. Because Bulmer’s is quality right? Right? I wish I could affirm. This did not taste like cider, nor did it taste of alcohol, it tasted of a pearish water with a load of glucose added. It wasn’t even that fizzy! Water is one of the main words to describe here, it was unbearably watery and I couldn’t believe that Koppenberg had the better version. Bulmer’s is expensive, the least they could have afforded to put in was a bit of carbon dioxide! Certainly the word we’re not looking for here is cider. If Bacardi (or VK, whatever) made a pear flavoured breezer it would probably taste a bit like this; in fact they should - if everyone is crazing over pear cider they may as well just give into the fact that either a) they like pear flavoured substances, and should therefore have a perry, or b) they don’t like the taste of alcohol, and should just face up to it by showing everyone that yes, they are drinking an alcopop (or just don’t drink at all - that’s probably cleverer).
Anyhow Bulmer, it’s a bummer - stick to what you’re good at love.
Wednesday 9 April 2008
Tesco Light Choices Maple Cereal Bars
You know that drama exercise you used to be made to do in school, where you had to pretend there was a massive chewing gum in your mouth and you had to ‘chew’ it for ages, this piece of nothing, to exercise your mouth muscles? Well you’ll be happy to know you can relive that experience by eating one of these cereal bars. Literally, harder to chew than a big piece of toffee (although it’s not sticky, thankfully) and even harder to find a bit of taste - I really think Tesco forgot to put the flavour in here. I have used the expression ‘it tastes of nothing’ quite a few times before and yet never have I genuinely, genuinely meant it until now. This is bad, considering the third ingredient in the bars is fructo-oligosaccharides, something that sounds so scary and yet so meaningful that it must be in there to produce some sort of taste. Apparently not.
I think this is unfair, as the bars are clearly meant for dieters (the brand being ‘Light Choices’, and there only being 75cals and 0.6g fat per bar); so what are you trying to say Tesco, that if you’re on a diet you’re not allowed to taste anything? That you should only eat pointless food? Because pointless is one very effective word for these ‘maple’ (2% maple syrup per bar, by the way) cereal bars, and probably quite a polite one. Diets should not be about having a horrible time with food, they should be about controlling your intake accordingly so you can have healthy but lovely things - everything in moderation, I say. And besides, I’m sure an actual bowl of cereal, some organic muesli with ‘no added sugar’ or a bowl of porridge would be healthier than these little soya lecithin, humectant injected pieces of ‘food’.
I’ve just thought - they might taste like wallpaper…or it might just be wishful thinking. Although, these are probably little gems if you’re a singer or an actor. Eat one of these a day, and your mouth will get a proper workout - your voice will be sparkly clear and super strong, even in the places with the worst acoustics.
I think this is unfair, as the bars are clearly meant for dieters (the brand being ‘Light Choices’, and there only being 75cals and 0.6g fat per bar); so what are you trying to say Tesco, that if you’re on a diet you’re not allowed to taste anything? That you should only eat pointless food? Because pointless is one very effective word for these ‘maple’ (2% maple syrup per bar, by the way) cereal bars, and probably quite a polite one. Diets should not be about having a horrible time with food, they should be about controlling your intake accordingly so you can have healthy but lovely things - everything in moderation, I say. And besides, I’m sure an actual bowl of cereal, some organic muesli with ‘no added sugar’ or a bowl of porridge would be healthier than these little soya lecithin, humectant injected pieces of ‘food’.
I’ve just thought - they might taste like wallpaper…or it might just be wishful thinking. Although, these are probably little gems if you’re a singer or an actor. Eat one of these a day, and your mouth will get a proper workout - your voice will be sparkly clear and super strong, even in the places with the worst acoustics.
Size Zero Strikes Again (I promise I'm not crazy...)
I was watching Coronation Street recently and was struck by something. No, not the ratio of the amount of times Gail Platt blinks to the size of her head, which is so incredibly much to so incredibly little that surely there should have technically been some brain explosion or something by now. I digress; what actually struck me was the size of Becky Grainger’s biscuit. Now I am being serious. It was a digestive, if I’m not mistaken, and my, what a big digestive it was! It is sad that this strikes me, and not sad because I notice the sizes of biscuits on soaps (that’s obviously not sad!) but sad because the sizes have changed. They’ve reduced dramatically, and as I loyally ate my McVitie’s digestive half an hour later, I couldn’t help feeling a little put out.
If we think back to when we were little, or even better, ask our parents to think back to when they were little, it becomes obvious that many foodstuffs, particularly treat-like substances i.e. the biscuit have shrunk. Cream Eggs used to fit perfectly into eggcups, Mini Rolls were not that mini and a Big Purple One was a bloody big purple one. Now they have contracted, slowly but surely, so noticeably when you think about it that I’m sure it won’t be long until our Cadbury’s Fingers are Cadbury’s Toes (the baby toes on the end, mind). But why?! The success of these corporate companies today - McVitie’s, Cadbury’s, Fox’s, Nestle - are so significantly huge that it is inexcusable to cut back on produce, yet pretend they’re giving us the same. We, as their customers, have provided them with the money to be the ridiculous successes that they are - we forget the honest, individual businesses because the corporates give us easy access - and they repay us by giving us less! The world really is coming down with a size zero academic, not just amongst the Poshes and Parises but in our biscuits. No wonder people are getting skinny if they’re eating less unknowingly!
Now, I couldn’t manage to find any figures to prove this argument (for some reason, no one wants to provide a website stating the changes in biscuit dimensions) but I’ve heard it from quite a few different people, so we can’t all be imagining it. I am loyal to my digestives, I have them every night, but it disappoints me to think they haven’t been loyal to me. I don’t know where Becky Grainger got that biscuit from but it certainly wasn’t a big brand packet (although maybe it’s different up north?), but anyway, I wish she’d tell me. I think it’s time that biscuits got their figures back (even though that might ruin mine…).
If we think back to when we were little, or even better, ask our parents to think back to when they were little, it becomes obvious that many foodstuffs, particularly treat-like substances i.e. the biscuit have shrunk. Cream Eggs used to fit perfectly into eggcups, Mini Rolls were not that mini and a Big Purple One was a bloody big purple one. Now they have contracted, slowly but surely, so noticeably when you think about it that I’m sure it won’t be long until our Cadbury’s Fingers are Cadbury’s Toes (the baby toes on the end, mind). But why?! The success of these corporate companies today - McVitie’s, Cadbury’s, Fox’s, Nestle - are so significantly huge that it is inexcusable to cut back on produce, yet pretend they’re giving us the same. We, as their customers, have provided them with the money to be the ridiculous successes that they are - we forget the honest, individual businesses because the corporates give us easy access - and they repay us by giving us less! The world really is coming down with a size zero academic, not just amongst the Poshes and Parises but in our biscuits. No wonder people are getting skinny if they’re eating less unknowingly!
Now, I couldn’t manage to find any figures to prove this argument (for some reason, no one wants to provide a website stating the changes in biscuit dimensions) but I’ve heard it from quite a few different people, so we can’t all be imagining it. I am loyal to my digestives, I have them every night, but it disappoints me to think they haven’t been loyal to me. I don’t know where Becky Grainger got that biscuit from but it certainly wasn’t a big brand packet (although maybe it’s different up north?), but anyway, I wish she’d tell me. I think it’s time that biscuits got their figures back (even though that might ruin mine…).
No To Snow (At the Mo)
The other morning, I thought it was Christmas. I woke up and snow, actual proper snow, was floating dreamily past my window in big, lovely snowflakes, settling onto the ground outside, coating the streets, rooftops, cars and any passing people in thick layers of white. Annoyingly out of season - I could have done with it at the real Christmas - but beautiful all the same. If I’d wanted to I could have built a snowman. Luckily I didn’t or an hour or so later the snowman would have died. An hour, just an hour afterwards the weather changed; first it started raining, turning the snow to a delicious slush, then sleeting - then a little more snow - then sun. It was a proper sunny day, the temperature was acceptable, and it actually looked like April. If I’d woken up a few hours after I actually did, I would have never known the snow had even made an appearance; it was like a whole rainbow of seasons all in one day. Later on it snowed again, settled slightly. Then it hailed. I asked myself, what actually is this? How can such contrasting weathers appear next to each other so ridiculously closely, as if they were friends that didn’t want to miss each other? Maybe God has contracted a mental illness. Or, something much scarier: global warming is starting to control our environments.
Now don’t think ‘not another global warming campaign’ because I know there are a lot of them and I myself am guilty of flicking past them because I always think same old same old. I’m not a scientist nor am I an activist, I’m an ordinary person who has suddenly realised that this serious problem really is serious. Picture this: a dry, riverless wasteland with shrivelled up plants and a tornado sweeping past to blow what remains into the stifling air, a mars-like desert that makes us wonder why oh why is our drinking water being rationed when so many of our homes were flooded - the water didn’t look very short then. No, we’re not in that sci-fi situation right this minute and I’m aware of a certain opinion called ‘won’t effect me in my lifetime so I don’t care’ (I’m sure your kids and grandchildren will feel really special to know you thought that), but I personally find it pretty eerie stuff, and the weather freakshow the other day just shows us that it is effecting us, this is our lifetime, a lifetime which would be preferable to not seem like a crazy clock fast forwarding a year’s worth of time in a day.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of how you can help the situation before, and yes, some things are annoying. I’m not going to tell you all to stop driving cars; the day the world does that will be the 31st February two thousand and never - it’s unrealistic and it won’t happen (although some of us could cut down car usage - I won’t argue with that). But I do think if everyone did something, and regularly, we can make a difference. My favourite way of helping is the bag for life. They are so much better than crappy carrier bags - they hold a hell of a lot, and I also use mine when I go out clubbing (not as a handbag), so everyone can fit all their stuff in it when it comes to the cloak room, and that way everyone can share the cost. If there’s one thing I think everyone can do, it is buy a bag for life - no, buy several, they’re all less than a pound - and stop using those depressing bits of polythene that really are cluttering up the world. According to the Asda website, 6billion bags are wasted each year (apparently enough to cover the whole of London) - pretty disgraceful, if we’re honest - and 1 in 10 people take a carrier bag for an item they’re going to eat as soon a they leave the shop! And I doubt a lot of them put the empty bag in their pocket until they find an appropriate place to dispose of it. Luckily I’ve noticed that supermarkets are stocking up on biodegradable carrier bags now, however (in fact, I noticed this the day of the freaky weather), so if you happen to forget your bag for life, make sure you ask for one of these. I do feel guilty, I really do, but I’m confident if everyone actually makes an effort we can start to change things, and when you think about it, reusing things such as bags is probably less of an effort than going to the trouble of getting something new, isn’t it?
So, in the words of Oasis, it’s “little by little”, but in the words of Hannah Montana, “we can, we can do anything” - if we all do it together. Maybe then we will get snow at Christmas, and we can keep it there. I’d like to remember what summer, spring, winter and autumn are this year, but not all at the same time. This is Great Britain, not Narnia.
Now don’t think ‘not another global warming campaign’ because I know there are a lot of them and I myself am guilty of flicking past them because I always think same old same old. I’m not a scientist nor am I an activist, I’m an ordinary person who has suddenly realised that this serious problem really is serious. Picture this: a dry, riverless wasteland with shrivelled up plants and a tornado sweeping past to blow what remains into the stifling air, a mars-like desert that makes us wonder why oh why is our drinking water being rationed when so many of our homes were flooded - the water didn’t look very short then. No, we’re not in that sci-fi situation right this minute and I’m aware of a certain opinion called ‘won’t effect me in my lifetime so I don’t care’ (I’m sure your kids and grandchildren will feel really special to know you thought that), but I personally find it pretty eerie stuff, and the weather freakshow the other day just shows us that it is effecting us, this is our lifetime, a lifetime which would be preferable to not seem like a crazy clock fast forwarding a year’s worth of time in a day.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of how you can help the situation before, and yes, some things are annoying. I’m not going to tell you all to stop driving cars; the day the world does that will be the 31st February two thousand and never - it’s unrealistic and it won’t happen (although some of us could cut down car usage - I won’t argue with that). But I do think if everyone did something, and regularly, we can make a difference. My favourite way of helping is the bag for life. They are so much better than crappy carrier bags - they hold a hell of a lot, and I also use mine when I go out clubbing (not as a handbag), so everyone can fit all their stuff in it when it comes to the cloak room, and that way everyone can share the cost. If there’s one thing I think everyone can do, it is buy a bag for life - no, buy several, they’re all less than a pound - and stop using those depressing bits of polythene that really are cluttering up the world. According to the Asda website, 6billion bags are wasted each year (apparently enough to cover the whole of London) - pretty disgraceful, if we’re honest - and 1 in 10 people take a carrier bag for an item they’re going to eat as soon a they leave the shop! And I doubt a lot of them put the empty bag in their pocket until they find an appropriate place to dispose of it. Luckily I’ve noticed that supermarkets are stocking up on biodegradable carrier bags now, however (in fact, I noticed this the day of the freaky weather), so if you happen to forget your bag for life, make sure you ask for one of these. I do feel guilty, I really do, but I’m confident if everyone actually makes an effort we can start to change things, and when you think about it, reusing things such as bags is probably less of an effort than going to the trouble of getting something new, isn’t it?
So, in the words of Oasis, it’s “little by little”, but in the words of Hannah Montana, “we can, we can do anything” - if we all do it together. Maybe then we will get snow at Christmas, and we can keep it there. I’d like to remember what summer, spring, winter and autumn are this year, but not all at the same time. This is Great Britain, not Narnia.
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