Dear LPG, 

Isn’t it funny how quickly our taste buds adapt.  When we were young food came at us in a much simpler form, I am so old that I remember when Sainsbury’s was a long lobby lined with marble counters and shop assistants there to serve you with what you actually wanted to buy.  Now days, there is no one to ask about what you are buying, but we have more written information on the back of every tin, sachet, packet, or box than we ever really get around to reading.  It even affects all aspects of the different components of your dinner if you want to make It yourself from scratch.

It is something that I would have been really grateful for when I was a naïve wife who had a lot to learn about preparing meals that I thought would impress my new husband during the first post-honeymoon months of marriage, but the lists now include all the additives and preservatives, your statutory rights, which part of the world the food came from, its best before date, if it was made in a factory where they use nuts, and other such important information.  In fact, if we were to read all the details on the labels of the food that we buy when we go shopping, the shops would all need to have much longer parking restriction times and perhaps somewhere to sit so that customers could read and fully take in all the small print before leaving the shop with the goods. 

I remember being a young mum with a child who had an allergy about 40 years ago and I really did take a lot of notice of what the packs said back then, but now I am hard pushed to take a really good look at the sell by date as I drop the stuff into the trolley, and that includes all those things that look interesting enough to try for the first time.

I wonder if you are one of those ’always take one from the back’ shoppers.  I go shopping with a friend who sees what she wants then instinctively starts digging around to the back of the shelf display of tins or packets before making her choice.  I can understand this when it comes to fruit, vegetables, or meat but she also does it when choosing tins of baked beans and washing powder although she still rarely reads the small print.  

The way we use time dictates that so many of us take the stuff home and store it where it needs to go without ever giving the library of facts on the back of the pack a second thought.  It is only when we get to having a bit of a kitchen cupboard clear-out that we take the time and if you are anything like me, that is one job that you don’t do too often.  Do you find the odd tin at the back which shows a sell by date which passed years before the current one?

If you have a chest freezer there are always a few surprises down in the bottom of that too… 

The sad truth is that so many shoppers are looking to minimise the time spent shopping while the detailed information on the back of the packs we chuck in the trolley get longer and longer… 

HW, Ladywell 

 HW, has found a little information for us…

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