HungryHungry.org - a website about food and cooking and eating and drinking and pots and pans

Last week I watched the BBC’s Horizon episode Prof. Regan’s Supermarket Secrets - to tell the truth it was something of a disappointment. To me the trouble was what could have been an interesting programme, entirely missed the point.

Prof. Regan is clearly a very intelligent woman and a good presenter for this one off episode, but she also appears to have a rather narrow world view, focussed to clearly on what can and cannot be measured. Now anybody who knows me will know that I come down firmly on the side of science, rationalism and the scientific method. I have very little no time for mumbo jumbo, religion etc.

For me the most interesting part of the programme was the section about organic food - and I think the programme clearly missed the point. People who choose to eat organic food do so for a variety of reasons, most of which are not amenable to easy measurement. We eat organic food because we prefer not to consume pesticides and the residue of artificial chemical fertilizers. We eat organic food because once you have eaten the fresh broccoli from a veg box, you can never eat the bland insipid stuff from a supermarket again… and perhaps most importantly for people who eat meat - we have the assurance that the animals we eating have lived a happier live than their factory farmed cousins and hopefully they have actually lived happy (to the extent that an animal can be happy) lives. Anybody who has seen a gang of piglets running round a muddy field will know what I mean.