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What new depravity is this?

“UK supermarkets accused of ‘bombarding’ shoppers with cheap meat”, whispers the Guardian’s Denis Campbell in shock:

Britain’s biggest supermarkets stand accused of “bombarding” shoppers with offers of cheap meat, despite pledging to promote more meat-free diets to improve health and tackle global heating.

They are using money-saving promotions, such as two for the price of one, as a way of “pushing” meat, at odds with moves in the UK and globally for consumers to eat less of it, research found.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons are each offering scores of deals every week on meat products such as burgers and sausages to drive sales and boost their profits, according to a report from the

Marketing directors of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons? Apparently not. This disturbing news comes from the…

charity Eating Better. It is an umbrella group representing more than 60 organisations including WWF UK, Greenpeace, public health bodies, dietitians, the RSPCA and food charities.

25 comments to What new depravity is this?

  • Bell Curve

    Quelle surprise. This disturbing news comes from a who’s who list of paternalistic utter cunts 😀

  • bobby b

    ” . . . the government’s crackdown on the promotion of foodstuffs that are high in fat, salt or sugar – to tackle childhood obesity – begins in October. Marketing of such foods will be outlawed on TV before the 9pm “watershed” and also online, though the food industry is trying to persuade ministers to delay or water down both plans.”

    Really? It’s THAT bonkers there? You’ve allowed your whacko vegans to make the marketing of meat illegal? Quietly rolling our eyes at such loons has allowed them to believe they have value. They do not.

    This is what we get for being polite and not making fun. It’s time for ridicule and shaming. We are omnivores.

  • Surellin

    Shame on these retailers, offering goods and services that people want and need!

  • Stonyground

    Fat isn’t the health bogeyman that it was once thought to be, didn’t the government get the memo? Salt is only a problem to people who have blood pressure issues and is an essential ingredient in a balanced diet. Carbohydrates are the problem if you need to avoid getting overweight because your body metabolises them very quickly, by first turning them into sugar. Refined sugar can be bad but that is the only thing that they have even partly right.

  • Stonyground

    “…though the food industry is trying to persuade ministers to delay or water down both plans.”

    Why not point out that the plans are based on unscientific bollox and that childhood obesity is a problem created by inappropriate application of the BMI which is not suitable for children?

  • They – and the Grauniad – can promote what they like and I will eat what I like.

  • David

    And veganism is a lifestyle with associated health issues. Lack of B12 which if not rectified with supplements can lead to anaemia and increased chances of breaking bones due to osteoporosis. I don’t suppose there’s been any research into plant based burgers and whether they might have long term health issues

  • Alex

    Why not point out that the plans are based on unscientific bollox and that childhood obesity is a problem created by inappropriate application of the BMI which is not suitable for children?

    I don’t go along with the vegan push, or the general health scare fear mongering of the media and the Holy NHS but it is clear that childhood obesity is a real issue. How do I know this? I have eyes. I see lots of kids waddling along at 10, 13, 15 years of age or even younger.

    When I was a 10-year-old kid I thought nothing of walking the 6 miles to the next town over and spending the day there exploring all the various country lanes and footpaths between. It was more interesting than spending the day reading a book, even though I was an avid reader on wet and cold winter days. 8 months of the year I was very active, in the winter I still walked the 3 miles to and from school twice a day. At 15-16 I was running 12 miles in the morning. I’m not old, I think I am probably one of the younger people commenting on this site.

    This kind of lifestyle isn’t the norm any more (maybe it wasn’t entirely when I was that age either, but it was less unusual). Today, parents keep their kids in structured activities and then during their ‘free time’ they are just playing video games or other sedentary activities. Nothing wrong with playing video games, I do that myself. But it is definitely the case that there are far, far more fat kids around today and lifestyle changes can’t be ignored nor should we lie to these kids or positively affirm their crappy lifestyles.

  • Mr Ed

    This is the sort of crap that evil zealots push as part of the totalitarian agenda of destructionism, wholesale hatred of humanity. What I note is that ‘Select Committees’ of MPs (in a House of Commons controlled by the Conservative party) will routinely swallow this line whole and produce earnest reports raising concerns about this sort of ‘pushing’, here is a quote from the Retail Gazette:

    MPs from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee grilled executives from Sainsbury‘s, Morrisons, Waitrose and Tesco on why many still offered buy-one-get-one-free offers on perishable items on their websites.

    These deals have been found to significantly contribute to food waste, as retailers place items close to their sell-by date within the deal.

    It’s believed this encourages customers to buy food they do not need which soon ends up in the bin.

    By whom is it believed? On the basis of what evidence? Can they point to a single household in which this has happened?

    Speaking to the committee, Conservative MP Simon Hart said: “We have three-for-£10 on selected meat (Morrisons), at Sainsbury‘s we have two-for-£3 on milk.

    “This is the sort of thing we were told earlier on does not happen. Yet, this is happening while the committee is meeting.

    “We are being sold this as a good news story, yet, while we are talking, people are artificially being pushed to spend more in your stores on volume sales.

    “I can‘t square that. Just because one (type of shopping) is online and the other isn‘t, doesn‘t clear this up as far as I am concerned.”

    Morrisons’ Steven Butts said: “Generally, across the sector there is a move away from multi-buy offers because customers say they don‘t really want them and the focus is towards regular low prices.

    “Certainly, in store, things like buy-one-get-one-free have gone. With (home) deliveries people are buying in bulk because you are getting it delivered to you.”

    In September last year, the London Evening Standard published an expose on supermarket food waste which revealed London supermarkets wasted £230 million of food every year.

    A suspiciously round number there. And with inflation, the waste figure will increase, the amount of food wasted will probably be five avocados.

    When did it became a matter for Parliament how a supermarket manages its stock? What limits do MPs seen on what is and is not their business?

  • Stonyground

    “…why many still offered buy-one-get-one-free offers on perishable items on their websites.”

    Er, because if we don’t sell it we have to throw it away and then we don’t even make half price on it. If someone buys it there is a possibility that some of it will get wasted. If we don’t shift it then it all does. This stuff isn’t hard to understand.

  • Stonyground

    Then the alleged problem is caused by inactivity rather than diet and they are barking up the wrong tree?

    I would add that my observations of people in general don’t concur with yours about there being lots more fatties around.

  • Rudolph Hucker

    No doubt the vege-socialist Guardian would also complain if the supermarkets “bombarded” us with cheap(er) petrol, diesel and electricity.

    It would only encourage the non-intelligentsia to carry on with normal happy lives! Shocking! Don’t they know they are meant to be grateful for being poor and miserable?

    I’m especially ready for a BOGOF on electricity.

  • Zerren Yeoville

    Meanwhile, people vote with their wallets. At my local Sainsbury’s I can’t help but notice that the ‘markdown’ shelf in the chiller unit for stuff that’s reduced because it’s about to go out of date is usually dominated by ‘plant-based’ crap.

    Readers of F Paul Wilson’s short story Lipidleggin’ will feel an uncomfortable frisson that this is indeed the kind of future that ‘They’ have planned for us.

  • Vegan (n): person who believes Hitler did not go far enough.

  • Rudolph Hucker

    @Niall:
    Vegan (n): person who believes Hitler did not go far enough.

    Careful now!
    Reminding people that the National Socialists (vegetarian environmentalists) were also the original Green Party in Europe can have unexpected results. Like screaming apoplexy and appeals to misinformationism.

  • Mr Ed

    Careful now!
    Reminding people that the National Socialists (vegetarian environmentalists) were also the original Green Party in Europe can have unexpected results. Like screaming apoplexy and appeals to misinformationism.

    Quite: But give the current Lefties a couple of years and it will be re-positioned as a mis-understood but well-meaning over-enthusiasm driven by the economic forces at the time.

  • Snorri Godhi

    It’s a positive-feedback loop:
    The more Guardian readers & writers avoid eating fats, the more they get brain-damaged.
    And the more they are brain-damaged, the more they avoid eating fats.

    (NB: this logic does not apply to omega-6 fats: the more you avoid them, the less the brain damage.)

  • Paul Marks

    Where is this cheap meat? I want some!

    If I ate more meat and less bread (I eat bread because I am poor) I would be less fat – would that not be good for my health?

    As for the Guardian – yes the “New Liberalism” or “New Freedom” (real old slavery).

    Woodrow Wilson (in his Collectivist “classic” “The State”) suggested sumptuary laws, to stop people showing off their wealth. I suspect he admired slavery – and just regretted that it had only applied to black people. Himself and other “educated” people as the all powerful Plantation Owner – and the population of the whole world as slaves or serfs (“you will own nothing”). The great dream of the international elite – from that day to this.

    But even he did not suggest limiting the amount of meat people could buy.

    The modern “liberal” international elite are utterly extreme in their evil.

    The “Guardian” types desire that people prostrate ourselves before them, and lick their boots.

    And they are working on it – for example one of their projects (of Bill Gates and the WEF crowd) is to buy up farm land, and to get governments to “rewild” other land from farmers and ranchers.

    They trot out various “policy” excuses (“C02” or whatever) – but the real reason is that they want people to crawl and beg.

    As Mr Orwell might have put it – they want to be the boot grinding the human face, for ever.

  • Paul Marks

    A book such as “Philip Dru: Administrator” (by Woodrow Wilson’s “Other Self” Colonel House) suggests that the Collectivism of the Guardian is certainly not a new thing among the establishment elite.

    And the Imperial German “alternative”? They were WORSE.

    Just as Mr Putin is WORSE than this lot today.

  • Snorri Godhi

    If I ate more meat and less bread (I eat bread because I am poor) I would be less fat – would that not be good for my health?

    You don’t have to eat bread to save money: you can eat potatoes, eggs, lentils, potatoes, ground beef (or pork), and rice. And potatoes.

    With ground beef, you can make better, healthier, and probably cheaper burgers than you can buy in a supermarket.
    My recipe available on request.

  • Rudolph Hucker

    @Snorri
    The more Guardian readers & writers avoid eating fats, the more they get brain-damaged.

    My medical-training colleagues are still trying to work out how they can explain (to other doctors) that the whole low-cholesterol diet thing was a scam, invented by one person who cherry-picked data on heart disease. Especially as cholesterol forms a large part of a normal brain mass, insulating the neural pathways.

    Just like with insulation round electrical cabling, or in delicate electronics. If you degrade the insulation, or it breaks down, eventually you get failure.

  • Eric Tavenner

    The self appointed Lords of All want the peasants back on a serf’s diet.

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray

    Paul, I read that you are what you eat. So apply caviar to all your foods, and you will become rich! I hope you feel better now.

  • Paul Marks

    I do not buy burgers Snorri – but thank you for your information.

    Nicholas – an excellent idea!

    And you, of course, will be paying?

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray

    If you fly over here, I’ll pay for your caviar! Sydney is a bit wet at the moment, so bring an umbrella.