Does the return of the hamburger signal a happy meal?
Post categories: Burgers,ÌýThe Food Programme
| 15:46 UK time, Friday, 3 June 2011
Consider the , the most demonised food on the planet. So often it’s used as shorthand for everything that’s wrong with the way we eat: soybeans used to feed cattle grown on land that was once rainforest, heating up the world so that we can get our £1.49 fix; and then all that grain and protein shovelled into animals that are designed to eat grass. It does them no good, contributing to the development of dangerous forms of E.coli in animals that have - when meat’s been contaminated in slaughter houses - led to severe food poisoning. Not to mention the millions of hectares of land that could be used to grow food directly for us. And at the end of it all when the patties hit the high street, they’re served up on white squishy buns with enough sugary, fatty gloop to raise your . So should we give up the hamburger?
Image credit: Paul Winch-Furness
In this week’s Food Programme, I went to one of them: a pop-up in what during the day is a greasy spoon caff in East London. The chefs were young and taking a night off from working in their normal, far-grander restaurants, the young crowd were keen and the hamburgers were a revelation; nothing fancy, just great meat in a well made bun. But the meat came from animals produced on farms where beef production is just one part of a more complex mixed farming system. How crucial that is became clear as we talked in the programme to farmer , author of Meat: A Benign Extravagance, and whose book Good Food for Everyone Forever makes the case for what he calls Real Farming.Ìý Both of them argue that we need meat - nothing else can be grown on the uplands that make up 40 per cent of the land mass of the UK, but that meat has to be almost the by-product of the sort of farming that’s environmentally benign, is based on good animal welfare and that produces meat with real taste and great nutritional value. Meat, in fact, like the stuff that went into our Burger Monday burgers - not £1.49, but a treat worth saving up for.Ìý
Sheila Dillon is the presenter of Radio 4’s The Food Programme.
Are you turned off by takeaway burgers? Or are you enjoying your own burgeoning burger revolution? Let us know...
Comment number 1.
At 7th Jun 2011, Vicky Squires wrote:It's not so much the environmental damage caused by the rearing of the meat, it's the proliferation of those dreadful polystyrene boxes that annoys me. Being non- biodegradable, they must cause immense damage - and will continue to do so for years to come. There's usually at least one bobbing about in the harbour here in Brixham. Burgers have made a come-back in our house, but as vegeburgers made with allotment goodies. My recipe even gets the thumbs up from my meat-loving husband! ('I don't want to be a Vulcan' - I think he meant 'vegan').
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Comment number 2.
At 7th Jun 2011, Ruth Badley wrote:A properly mad burger with quality meat is a very fine thing indeed. Always has been in my mind. Part of the McDonalds PR message is that their cheap, fake version is a 'treat'. Parents and children have fallen for it with dire consequences - not only on health but on the ability to appreciate how they are being cheated. A great burger does not taste like McDonalds! And why not? Need I say more?
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Comment number 3.
At 7th Jun 2011, youngandfoodish wrote:I agree with Ruth. There is just no excuse at all for eating cheap, assembly-line burger with processed, frozen or questionable ingredients. There should almost be a different word for a burger made with quality meat. Steakburger, perhaps.
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Comment number 4.
At 7th Jun 2011, Ruth Badley wrote:I think that should read properly MADE burger- apologies!
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Comment number 5.
At 7th Jun 2011, PaulWF wrote:Nice burger photo - a credit is always appreciated, and makes one feel respected. It was taken by me, Paul Winch-Furness / www.paulwf.co.uk - you did manage a credit on the 'listen again' page, I'm sure you can manage one here too?
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Comment number 6.
At 7th Jun 2011, PaulWF wrote:If you could add a photo credit for the burger, I would be grateful. Photo: Paul Winch-Furness.
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Comment number 7.
At 7th Jun 2011, Grobs wrote:When I was a kid a McDonalds trip was a treat. I think maybe every full term holiday there might have been a visit into town for shopping and we might have got a McDonalds. It wasn't cheap either, about half what we normally spent on a weekly food shop. Now it's just so accessible, price and ubiquity of the 'restaurants'. It's sad that things like that and cheap chicken shops often end up being a large source of a lot people and children's diets.
But on to the good stuff. I went to my first Burger Monday a few weeks ago, it was amazing - of course the food was a bit part of it. But also it had a real party atmosphere. Reminded me a little in spirit of some of the 90s dance music scene - the guest chefs, the DIY element, the gathering of like-minded going against the mainstream.
I wrote a bit about it here:
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Comment number 8.
At 7th Jun 2011, Diane Caldera wrote:I'm just gonna stick to my veggie burgers instead!
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Comment number 9.
At 8th Jun 2011, Ramona Andrews Ö÷²¥´óÐã Food host wrote:Re comments #5 and #6: apologies that the photo credit was missed off this blog post – I will add it today.
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