how many types of chicken?

just exactly how many types of chicken are there? our fresh food friends seem to think that presenting chicken in different formats - cooked, marinated, cut up, free range; constitutes different types of chicken. how is that fresh food? how is it a different type of chicken?

are we really that stupid?

bitter greens

Michael Luscombe is certainly getting value for money from his contacts over at fairfax! Today Vanda Carson has posted 2 articles on smh.com.au promoting the supermarket chain he oversees.

Not surprisingly, woolworths is to launch a branded credit card with insurance and loans to follow. No surprises here, expect that woolies intends to manage this in house (and you thought their focus was on fresh food and getting it to you!!!).

the second article from Carson reports Luscombe graciously vowing to "kick its major competitor while it is down, unveiling a major expansion strategy as profits continue to surge".

nice one!!!

woolies, however they may fail the public, are doing wonderfully on the ASX and are a darling of the business media, whilst coles has gone from bad to worst in terms of investor performance. However, Woolies results are a light at the end of the tunnel for Coles, according to Malcolm Maiden.

everyone loves a winner, and whilst woolies profits has benefitted from a supply chain overhaul (so we are continually reminded), it is easy to forget some of the cold hard facts, such as pricing studies done by choice magazine

corporate social responsibility

If I had a dollar for every time I hear or read a comment on supermarket chains, awful supermarket experiences, and poor fresh produce, well I might still be writing this blog, but my fortunes would be significantly different...

again i cite reports in the media regarding one of our two Australian supermarket retailers, relating both to its apparent lack of ethics and ever increasing profits

perhaps this might go toward explaining why fresh produce in Australian supermarkets is so poor, and where the focus of our retailers really lie...

tut tut tut!

another wrap over the knuckles for woolies...

misleading the public over a "sustainable forest fibre" logo on its Select products

spilt milk

In case you haven't worked it out, I am not a fan of supermarkets. I think their product quality is appalling, I think that they have more responsibility in the "obesity pandemic" than fast food chains, and i find the experience of playing shopping trolley dodgems under flourescent lighting unappealling.
Therefore, I loved this article in heckler, SMH.

red meat

apparently australians have returned to red meat consumption. the following article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald:

lamb or the wool?

we're all getting older each microsecond of the day, but occasionally something reminds us of this inevitable process of what we call life. recently richard glover of abc702 and smh columnist has been reminding me that I am no longer a carefree 22 year old!

In recent weeks he has discussed his domestic appointment as Minister for the Environment of his family, and I chortled along whilst reading the article thinking of my own Al Gore that wanders around trhe house turning things off, and unplugging every day appliance so that i have to crawl under furniture to use them.

so again I felt just another bit older when I read, in praise of cantankerous skinflints because I had to acknowledge that i agree with this nerdy but personable man, on lots of things.

point of the article: supermarkets charge what they think customers will pay and bank on consumers not knowing the difference in quality of a leg of lamb costing $14.99 and that costing $25.00!!!

richard alludes to, but doesn't address, the is a difference - one will be a sheep bred for wool offloaded onto the market owing to drought or other circumstances, and one will be a lamb bred for lamb, on a farm, of a certain meat-providing breed. one of these sheep is prone to a larger surface area (the wool one) and the other is prone to meatiness. can you tell the difference in the supermarket? I doubt it, because if you're buying your lamb there, it's usually the wooly stuff!

Larf

I had a little snigger at a Good Living article this week.

for the past three or so weeks the vast majority of australia has been paying through the nose for fruit and vegetables, particularly green vegetables such as broccoli, zucchini, beans and lettuce. The quality has also been less than what we are used to as a result of a 2-3 week cold snap across the country.

this week, the food media finally caught on that retailers had been charging as much as $9.99/kg for broccoli. and that very day, it was back to $2.99 in some shopping centers. i think this says a lot about the food editors over at the sydney morning herald!

who's got their finger on the pulse?

voice of reason

ALP candidate George Colbran has today been cited as going "troppo" by the sydney morning herald.

"LABOR'S push to banish cartoon characters from promotions of food to children have given one of the party's candidates a mild bout of indigestion.
"George Colbran, who is standing for the ALP in the Queensland electorate of Herbert, operates nine McDonald's restaurants, making him one of the fast food chain's biggest Australian franchisees. He argues that childhood obesity has been over-simplified by those who blame "junk" food"

Mr Colbran outrageously suggests that "voters in the Townsville electorate are far more concerned about the parlous state of local roads and poor access to broadband." newsworthy stuff? (read for yourself if you like)

whilst Colbran and is his electorate wait for their internet downloads in tropical Queensland, the debate over advertising off junk food targeting children rages on...
and on...

earlier in the week the SMH had published an article titled why junking pester power ads may do a fat lot of good, the gist of this article being whether or not advertising of junk food to children bears a direct correlation to increasing rates of childhood obesity. naturally the advertising industry has a presented a case to the governments of australia and its states that it does not

following on from this was then a comments section for the public on pester power moments with kids which provided great entertainment and insight into the polarity of opinions on this subject.

one mother pointed out it was her responsibility to control the access that child had to junk food as her 3 year old had no cash, and couldn't drive. others objected to the "no responsibility" state and others the "big brother" state whilst some parents simply let it be known that they are struggling with their childrens "cannivering".

creative parenting of the day award however, went to "family guy" who has invented a family game of ad-zapping whereby the right to the remote control depends on the ability to hit the mute button within a split second of the commercial break starting OR ending..