Quality, not quantity

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys and if you pay pennies you get horsemeat. A bit obvious really. In the old days, if people couldn't afford meat they ate vegetables or pulses and were a lot healthier as a result. Now, people expect to get a quality ready-cooked meat meal for a quid and want to eat meat every day. It's no use blaming the supermarkets - if people didn't buy it, they wouldn't stock it. They are only catering to our demand for cheap food and our expectation that meat should be a staple rather than a luxury. Similary, councils and NHS Trusts are going for the lowest price when it comes to catering and so, lo and behold, we now have horsemeat in school dinners. Calton is only surprised that they have found so little of it. If this current scandal causes us, as a nation, to re-examine our addiction to cheap, junk food, so much the better. Quality, not quantity, is what's needed.