Mange Tout

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Mange Tout

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twoscoops

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1924
Location: Warwickshire

Posted: Thu Jan 20, 05 3:17 pm Post subject: Mange Tout

Modern Times

9:40pm - 10:30pm Thursday January 20th

BBC4

Mangetout

The series documenting the contemporary world tells an illuminating tale about how food reaches the supermarket shelves. The mangetout is a designer pea grown with reverence and eaten with indifference. While it is served at a noisy dinner party in Basingstoke, a representative from Tesco arrives at a vegetable farm in Zimbabwe where it is grown.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45715
Location: Essex

Posted: Thu Jan 20, 05 3:20 pm Post subject:
Ta, that's definitely getting recorded.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28251
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Jan 20, 05 3:58 pm Post subject: Re: Mange Tout

Twoscoops wrote:

I have seen stuff on mangetout before, a vegetable somewhat scorned by the locals, and a classic case for considering how economies work.
Good farmland is given over to export of a cash crop, land that could be being farmed by local people for real food.
Does this help a Countries economy, or more to the point the poverty of its people, or does it just add to the net outflow of resources?

jema

Bugs

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10744

Posted: Thu Jan 20, 05 6:48 pm Post subject:

It's difficult to explain to people that you object to buying sugar snaps from Zambia and green beans from Kenya and asparagus from Peru, not because you object to the countries, quite the opposite in fact.

I don't know (that's why I'll watch these progs if I can) whether the growing and selling of these crops is in fact good for these countries; all I know is I would not like to do it and would rather grow my own food and trade locally. Hard to tell whether what's right for me is right for other people but I can't see how it could be otherwise in this particular situation.

snowball
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 6246
Location: swindon

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 05 8:51 pm Post subject:

Just watched it. Saw it the first time round, had to re-watch to convince myself that the arrogant b@�$%"@"+s were as bas as I thought they were.
Listening to the white upper middle classes talking about how wonderful they are for buying mange tout so that theos people could be happy in their mud huts because that' all they need put me off my dinner.
Clearly the pickers on the farm who get one pence for every 150g of the right size and shape pea they pick get something out of it.
One wonders though, how much more they would get if all that arable land was used and run co-operatively to feed the local population with food they want to eat. The surplus, and there would be a surplus, could then be sold or traded.
If the food was grown to be eaten, instead of used as a pretensious status symbol in Britain, the Zimbabwian workers may also have some leisure time. And the kids may get the chance of a proper education instead of learning songs to apease the great god Tesco. (All the Tesco people did was sneer at them anyway.)
Okay, rant over, I feel slightly better now.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28251
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 05 8:56 pm Post subject:
It was the sort of programme that makes you want to kick the TV in and it really did show that the white farm owners were slaves to Tesco and the workers were slaves to slaves jema

Treacodactyl
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Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 05 9:15 pm Post subject:

Make's me glad we've stopped buying such things. Admittedly it took a large strange caterpillar in a pack (may even have been Mangetout from Zimbabwe but not Tesco) to make us think about what we buy. Now we think twice about stuff, even coming from nearer countries such as Spain and we try and think if we can wait until it's in season.

I found it very worrying the local farmers were talking about Tesco in the same way people talk about God.

Gertie

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Posts: 1638
Location: Yorkshire

Posted: Fri Jan 21, 05 9:28 pm Post subject:

I confess I did not watch all of the programme - basically because I couldn't stomach the way Land Owner dealt with his workforce and the way the Foreman dealt with his workers.

Tell you what, if some b*st*rd came into my workplace examining my fingernails and deciding to take chunks out of them I know where I'd stick the bleedin' clippers.

Turned over when the little girl gave a welcoming speech in praise of the wonderful Tesco.

p.s. I'm going there (Tesco's that is) in the morning - please don't let me think about Mange Tout, otherwise I'll stick my fingernails into every veg I handle!!!

snowball
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 6246
Location: swindon

Posted: Sat Jan 22, 05 7:10 am Post subject:

Quote:

Tell you what, if some b*st*rd came into my workplace examining my fingernails and deciding to take chunks out of them I know where I'd stick the bleedin' clippers.

I know what you mean.
Mind you, in Morrisons, I was told to go around with shoe polish to get everyone to shine their shoes when a didector was coming in. Needless to say I didn't,

especially when the cashiers are sat behind tills and you can't even see their feet.

Gertie

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Posts: 1638
Location: Yorkshire

Posted: Sat Jan 22, 05 7:16 am Post subject:
Mad, isn't it. We have a Morrison's near us - we used to go every week as Lundy loves the place. We now have a brand new Tesco's nearer us, so I have to say 90% of our shopping done there

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28251
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Sat Jan 22, 05 7:24 am Post subject:

Gertie wrote:

Mad, isn't it.

We have a Morrison's near us - we used to go every week as Lundy loves the place. We now have a brand new Tesco's nearer us, so I have to say 90% of our shopping done there

near is the so often key, round here a complete supermarket boycott would mean an massive jump in "food miles" to the point of absurdity.

jema

Gertie

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Posts: 1638
Location: Yorkshire

Posted: Sat Jan 22, 05 1:57 pm Post subject:

Just returned from shopping at Tesco's (sorry, Snowball!!). Resisted the urge to penetrate the vegetables, nearly attacked an old lady though

who pushed Lundy out of the way whilst he was picking some carrots - no disrespect to our more senior citiziens (don't mean anyone here, folks!!!)

Just find it a strange experience when there are boxes upon boxes of vegetables and someone hogs the lot in a protective manner, pushing other shoppers out the way. It's not as if there isn't enough to go round - DON'T START ME ON THAT ONE!!!!

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28251
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Sat Jan 22, 05 2:59 pm Post subject:

Gertie wrote:

Its the poeple who manage single handledly to block aisles

or stand nattering with out a care for other shoppers that bug me.

jema

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