People really don't know where food comes from

[Stonehead]

To confirm what many Ishers have long suspected...

Public 'unaware' of food origins

One of the figures that amazed me was that half of the people surveyed did not know that beef originates from farms! Half! I thought it was bad that 22% didn't know sausages and bacon originates from farms, but that half didn't know where beef came from...

[Millymollymandy]

I thought sausages and bacon came from pigs!

[Bonniegirl]

See what we're all up against!

Madness eh!

[Cassiepod]

I don't understand - where did they think the food does come from?

[Bonniegirl]

Most of the kids in my pre-school thought it all came from, T***o, Asda or Sainsburys!

[Clara]

A bit dubious don´t you think? Sounds like one of those surveys done to get the results necessary to promote the cause - namely the open farms event, even though I think that´s worthwhile in itself.

I´d like to know how the questions were asked. For instance, if asked "where do sausages come from?" the correct answer in 99% of cases would unfortunately be "factories".

I agree that people are generally quite ignorant about their food, otherwise you´d hope that a lot more people wouldn´t let certain things past their lips. But I simply don´t believe that so many people don´t know where beef comes from.

Clara x.

[Bonniegirl]

I can believe it, cos I've had this conversation many times, today at tea break in fact! Hamilton is in the heart of the Waikato, it is a huge farming area, specifically dairy. But at the local A&P shows I was told by a lady who ran the farmyard section, that some adult didn't know that hens laid eggs! Amongst a whole heap of things!


It's not quite the same thing I know, but my sister as an adult didn't know that tadpoles turned into frogs! Now how can that happen!

People don't know, don't care!

[Annpan]

People don't know, don't care!

I just can't understand that mentality, I am baffled that people don't know where food comes from, its mad. Do people really NEVER think about it? crazy Do they think food is created from fresh air? where do they think t**co food comes from?

I have a friend who once told me that Scotland imports all its food, that you can't really grow anything here (he had no idea )My reply that he had hardly ever been out of the city and didn't know anything fell on deaf ears.

Then I suppose on this forum it is unsurprising what our attitude is

[Thurston Garden]

When I told my former colleagues I was going to keep pigs for meat, one daft lassie said "Will you make beefburgers out of them?"

[the.fee.fairy]

Ihave to echo the sentiments of where DOES the food come from then? Where do they think that T*sc*s and the like get their food from? Does it magically appear? Is meat a mixture like cake mix?

Gah...people can be so stupid sometimes.

Edited to add stars - is T*scos still in the word filter?

[ina]

I'm ready to believe anything...

One guy (and that was in Australia) told me it took him two years of studying agriculture at Uni to finally realise that cows had to have calves before they could produce milk.

And I remember a guy who runs (or used to) a veggie box scheme not too far from here, and who only included veg and fruit from his own farm, telling the story: A lady who was very much interested in the "all local" aspect of the box, asking him to make sure he included bananas in it every week...

OK, at least these people knew that farms were involved somehow.

[Clara]

Oh dear, may be I have too much faith in mankind!

We usually refer to such ignorances as "where do lentils come from" issues - a question we had to find the answer to, once upon a time

[baldowrie]

This not an entirely new phenomena though is it. Londoners, particularly during WWII, were known not to have known things like what the sea was and what and where eggs and meat came from etc...they had never seen the countryside. My mother didn't know what a banana was, something we take for granted now, and ate the skin first time she tried one.

[the.fee.fairy]

Oh dear, may be I have too much faith in mankind!

We usually refer to such ignorances as "where do lentils come from" issues - a question we had to find the answer to, once upon a time

I have to admit - where do lentils come from?
I've got sprouted lentils that came in the veg box, but how do they grow?

[autumnleaf]

Well I guess it has a lot to do with real education - if people have never had the exposure to the origin of things and have never wondered about things then it would be quite easy to be ignorant. Its quite easy to get stuck in one little world and not realise that there is more.

At least there's the chance to enlighten them a little when the issue arises maybe?