Cheep Chickens from Tesco.

PS they said on tv that ASDA and TESCO are lowering many of the prices to bottom, but only for a few days, in order to attract more customers to the shop - as opponents such as ALDI and LIDL seem to increase their revenues from day to day.

 

It has been very interesting reading these posts this morning and it is right that everyone can spend their money in whatever way they so wish even if it is on £1.99 chickens.I have friends and family who have more money than I will ever own who will jump at the chance of buying cheap food,because they come from generation where people had to live as frugely as possible because things were in short supply and old habits die hard.

My parents raised 9 of us plus adopted another child and also fostered so I am sure that we wasn't fed the best food going and no doubt if there had been very cheap chickens in those days then we would have probably have gladly have eaten them.I can remember my parents keeping their own chickens at one point which I believe most families did in those days,but that was years ago and now things have changed with battery farming etc.

I can remember not so long ago people being encouraged to eat more white meat because it was/is lower in fat which is supposed to be better for us health wise.

I started buying the free range chickens after watching Hugh and Jamies programmes but the price just started going up and up so in the end have had to rethink that one

In an ideal world we would all like to have more money in our pockets to be able to spend it on a better way of living but at times it isn't possible.Me and Mr Kandy are not dessitute,would like a bit more money coming in to the household but with a change in circumstances have changed the way we shop accordingly,grow more vegetables this year and have invested in a bread maker so that we can now have cheap loaves of bread which will save us a few pennies so we might be able to go back to buying a decent chicken once in a while...:thumb:

 

My tuppenth...

Having been a strict vegan for a few months (yeeears ago), then veggie, now a mixed up non-lacto-occassional-pescatarian, I appreciate the miserable existence of many intensively reared creatures, and still choose not to contribute in any way to their suffering.

I choose to spend my humble earnings as ethically as possible. I have seen a time when I could afford neither meat (even if I wanted to) or computer, and survived quite happily without either!

It is a choice thing - if people buy the 'cheep' chickens, 'cheep' chickens will be produced for the market. I personally choose to stand away from the industrial meat industry altogether. I enjoy my diet and learn loads through contact with the diverse communities of people online! :D

 

Hello everyone, I am not surprised people have such strong views either way. It is an emotive subject.

I wouldn`t trust the supermarkets lies and PR, and don`t believe rich cooks understand at all what being poor is like. Struggling as a student, I am afraid, just does not compare to being responsible for feeding your children.

But,


I don`t believe people truly appreciate how bad the birds lives are. I am vegetarian and my family are omnivores and as the only cook in the house I do not have a problem with buying or preparing meat at all, as I firmly believe in peoples right to choose. And it is pure propoganda that free range birds have to cost £9 as opposed to the £2 intensive chicken. People compare the weight and then scrape most of that weight into the bin after they have eaten. Try comparing the size of the birds when they have been cooked-I did and can guarantee buying intensive reared birds is a false economy.

I have four omnivorous people to feed on a very tight budget, I only buy free range meat, (as an impartial observer I have found it to be the best choice )and I get three seperate meals out of that one bird-thats twelve dishes and have yet to spend more than £6 on a single chicken. After that I freeze the remains and every now and then can I get about 3 pints of stock from stewing the very last bits. Even Tesco and their (supposedly) cheap chickens can`t beat that economy.


People in Britain eat too much-look at the obesity rates, and through forcing families into needing two incomes to live we have all the lost the time and the ability to be good calibre cooks. Our food culture has been poisoned by the drivel we see on cookery programmes. We were told only last week of the disgusting level of food we throw away. There is an enormous chunk of people that can`t even make their own pastry!


It has been a long time since we in this country have experienced true poverty.



I often wonder how people in developing countries must view us, overfed, overindulged and arguing over which meat we can "afford" to buy instead of being thankful we can afford to buy any at all. I am sometimes ashamed of my culture.



Apologies if I have offended any one in particular, but I think there is a middle road here and we are being lead by the nose by supermarkets who do not have our best interests at heart only their profit margin which seems to get bigger each year.


regards

 

Well said Claire/lollipop:thumb:

It is very rare that me or Mr K throw any food away apart from the chicken apart from the bones that is. Our local Tesco's started selling the free range stuff at a quiet reasonable price but then started adding on a cuple of pounds to the price so in the end they wanted silly money for them which would stop people from buying them in the end.I read somewhere on another forum that places like Tesco's were buying in a lot of their chickens from France anyway,but don't know if this is correct.

We moan about the conditions of animals we eat in this country and how they are kept before slaughter but when you look into how a lot of other countries treat their animals prior to people buying them then this country probably isn't half as bad.

I prefere to grow all my own vegetables and fruit where I can because I don't like eating stuff that has had loads of peticides and herbiecides sprayed onto them before they hit the shops or dipped into stuff to preserve them for long period

I think we can discuss these issues until the cows come home so to speak

 

Hi Kandyfloss,

My Mam ( may God bless her saintly soul) used to say that the most expensive thing is life is food thrown away, or time wasted. We were an old fashioned family and can remember getting cabbage and ribs, or hash for tea regular. And we all ate the same thing(my Dad getting the biggest plate of course). I was brought up in the seventies and my mum and dad had nothing really. She worked every day and 4 nights because she had to, had two holidays abroad in the whole course of her short life, struggled with three kids one of which was a complete witch of a teenager( errrr that would be me then), but I never remember ever having to go without, or at least thats the way she made it seem. And that sort of family matriarch is the sort of person I think we don`t see enough of in my generation. Too many kids are getting money and little time from their Mums and Dads these days. But I don`t blame them (please don`t anyone shout at me), I blame these ruddy supermarkets. Toys!, in a food hall. Clothes! next to the warzone of a vegetable aisle! and don`t forget they assault you on the way in to sign up for their credit cards. These places need burning down.


POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ps
You can freeze those bones cooked or not and after you have about 3 or 4 of them you can get a really good soup from the stock, and any you dont eat straightaway can go back in the freezer. And another thing which is outrageous about supermarket chickens (hate them as I am sure you can tell) is where the hell have the giblets gone!! Thieves I tell you, thieves!
You can make a good pate with those-thats another meal with crusty bread and side salad.


Love my soapbox-gosh sorry.

 

:thumb:Ditto.

 

"As fond as I am of organic free-ranging good quality food, in the end it´s tha cooking that matters!"

To get a chicken price down to dirt cheap one or more things have to happen:

o Cram them in etc. as many have pointed out.

o breed them to fatten up quickly - which is a bigger danger, to my mind.

Fatten-quickly causes the chicken to put down the wrong sort of fat (not the Omega-good-fat), just like an obese teenager, and eating them leads to bad diet and obesity. Not the sort of thing that white chicken meat is renound for.

So buying cheap chicken isn't only a moral issue, for those that have given up MacDonalds et al following the realisation of how bad it was for them, high-speed-fattened chicken needs to be considered in the same way. Unhealthy.

 

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Well, I was not aware to have written anything so strong worded as to need editing, if so I apologize.

I know I said I wd not post again here. More apologies.

One last thing I wd like to say: health is made up by a whole load of things, not just what you eat. When both me and my husband both worked full time we lived a in two different countries, 1200 km apart and only spent together four to six months a year. I wd be so completely exhausted and stressed out by my job that I brushed the bottom of depression before realizing I needed to let go of something. We had two good salaries and could afford to buy the best of best. I had no time to cook it though, so I mostly ended up munching a packet of chips on the bed in the evening. Talk about healthy. Now we work less, earn less and afford less, yet our lives (and health) have improved beyond measure, that is a fact.

Everything is always relative. I respect the opinion of all, but I don´t think anyone has a right to declare what is good for other people as a hard rule. Every life is different. I wish we could all be perfect and ethical and healthy all the time, and if somebody manages that, they have my absolute respect and admiration, but the simple truth is that most lives are about juggling a whole lot of compromises, and people can just try to juggle along as best they can.

 

I see, thanks, I did not think of that!

 

I am old enough to remember when chicken was a Sunday dinner treat and meat and fish were cheaper. Rabbit was on the menu weekly and of course steak and kidney and braising steak. Even those products are expensive these days. Dairy products on the whole were cheaper.

Keeping the bones for stock or making soup...I have always done that, just like my mum used to...waste not want not was the phrase.

I generally buy my chickens from the local butcher, he is glad to tell you where they come from and the conditions they are kept in, but I have on occasions bought cheap chickens for such a a bbq. I know the chickens I purchase are not organically raised, but as long as they are local and reared humanely, that'll do me.

I do feel however, as long as there are £1.99 chickens in the shops...then people will buy them...better that than a burger every day.

 

Hello Ivory,

I think you talk a lot of sense.

Mine needed editing, I think I got a bit hot under the collar about greedy supermarkets. I know what you mean about meaning to say no more, sometimes I just can`t keep it in, although maybe if the heavens hadn`t just opened up above me I would probably have still been outside digging.

I think someone upstairs wants me to take it easy today.

Just go and find a myself a bag of chips lol. ( free range potatoes you understand)



I love your tag Shiney, I thought it only brought wrinkles, and a bad back.