Why are we not buying more British food given there’s a cost of living crisis? - Sarah Todd

Last autumn Britain had a bumper crop of apples. There was hardly a neighbourhood in the country that didn’t have a hastily scribbled ‘help yourself’ sign and bags of surplus apples offered for free. Supermarkets spat in the face of this bumper crop and almost half, at 48 per cent, of apple packs on their shelves had been imported in the seven weeks to November 14. As an aside, there was only Iceland - a retailer that this columnist must admit to being a bit sniffy about (but not any longer) - who sold 100 per cent British apples during this period.

Our windfall apples were sprinkled with a spoon of sugar and stewed up. The self-satisfied smugness that came from feeding the family a pudding using just two (three if the dollop of cream from a Yorkshire dairy is included) ingredients has been blown to smithereens.

Even sugar, it seems, isn’t whiter than white in the minefield that is the modern supermarket shelf. Take two well-known brands, side-by-side on the baking aisle, both ‘made’ in Britain. Both proudly sporting the union flag. The reality is one is produced from imported cane sugar and the other is made from sugar beets; a crop which is grown in this country and is currently being harvested in British farmers’ fields.

Does all this matter? Yes it does. We are already a divided nation and somewhere along the line good honest food has been tampered and made more complicated than it needs to be. The sad irony of a whole chicken costing less than a couple of paper-thin reformed breaded kievs because we, as a nation, can’t be bothered to wait an hour-or-so for something that would feed a whole family (and give a few leftover slices for the next day’s sandwiches) to cook. Looking around some families are now onto the third generation that is unable or unwilling to cook. Food has been hijacked by retailers, social media influencers and celebrity chefs, elevated to unobtainable glossy-magazine photoshoot status. There doesn’t seem to be many in the middle ground, yours truly occupies, of being able to shove a roast in and actually owning a potato peeler and being able to boil up some spuds.

Every Thursday of this writer’s childhood, my late grandmother would get dropped off in York and while her farmer husband was at the cattle market she would trawl the city’s open-air market for the best meat and vegetables.

How have we, in such a relatively short space of time, become so far removed from this army of 1970s headscarved grandmas? Apart from a bag of bananas and a few oranges, she would never have been daft enough to come home with anything a) overpriced or b) not British.

While nobody wants to see genuine poverty, the current cost of living crisis could - if handled correctly - be the kick up the backside the nation has needed to go back to basics and take some responsibility for their own food and finances.

Picture this scene. Red-headed woman watching the lunchtime news. She’s wearing a thick jumper. This is nothing out of the ordinary; the whole household puts jumpers on during the winter months. Energy price rises or not, it would never cross this family’s minds to have the heating on during the day.

A little more background information. The television she is watching is a cast-off from the Mother-in-Law and the sofa was bought a year or so after getting married 25 years ago. Annoyingly, there is nothing wrong with it. No springs have sprung through, it was British made and bought from one of those old-fashioned shops where the staff still enquire if madam needs any help and don’t fob customers off with the offer of better deals online.

The news presenter introduces the next item, a mother moaning about the cost of living crisis and having to use food banks. She is perched on a brightly coloured sofa straight out of a modern home-furnishing advert. A state-of-the-art television takes up nearly the whole wall behind her. Yes, you’ve guessed. She’s wearing a t-shirt. Enough said.

Sarah Todd is a former editor of Yorkshire Life magazine. She is a farmer’s daughter, mother and journalist specialising in country life.