Tom Brown: Food makers tell such porkies

WE are what we eat, they say. If true, then we're a load of rubbish. So much of our grub is ground up, rehashed and doctored with additives and colourings to make it appetising we don't really know what we're eating.

Historic British dishes like "Ultimate pork sausages", "Traditional Shepherd's Pie", "Aberdeen Angus Minced Beef & Onion" and even, Betty help us, "Rover's Return Lamb Hotpot" are not what they seem. They're all on the list of foods contaminated by the banned Sudan 1 chilli powder dye. Still more stomach-turning is that many of the recalled products carry comforting names like Dawn Fresh, Perfectly Balanced, and Good Choice.

This scandal has proved you shouldn't swallow what's on the labels, which are marketing men's fantasies to gull us into thinking that sludge is haute cuisine. And we're eating far too many ready- made convenience meals, so we can't control what's in them.

My personal goddess, Delia Smith, is right when she says we should get back to basic old-fashioned home cooking. It isn't all that hard, doesn't take much more time - and it's more fun than chucking a parcel of plastic food in the oven.

Yob-chef Jamie Oliver has my sympathy for trying to turn school dinners into healthy eating. He has no chance with school dinners limited to a budget of 37p per meal - it's hard to feed a dog on that - and because kids will always opt for burgers, fish fingers and Smilies. In Tom Brown's Schooldays, my taste-buds would tingle for school mince followed by sago pudding, which we called frog's spawn. Dinner at home would be a fry-up or a fish supper. It made me the man I am - an overweight, former heart attack victim with Type 2 diabetes. Bon appetit!

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