Yes We Can: What do the tins we eat say about the UK?
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Baked beans, tinned pies, corned beef, creamed tomato soup, plum tomatoes, ackee, pineapple chunks and condensed milk.
Our store cupboards are bursting with tins of food, they provide comfort, cheap family meals, quick lunches and easy dinners. Maybe even a sure stock of ingredients as Brexit edges closer.
Yet over the years, the UK market is dwindling. Stats show young people are less interested in tinned fruit and fish. And then there's the image problem. Tinned food has a reputation in the UK it's struggling to shake off. Cheap, unhealthy. Fine for those making do with tiny budgets, not if you can afford the fresh equivalents.
As Madrid born Patrick Martinez found out first hand when he set up a bespoke tinned fish company in Liverpool, we have a funny relationship with tinned food in the UK. A relationship quite unlike our continental neighbours. We deeply love these foods, but we might not admit our affection openly.
In this programme Sheila Dillon speaks to food writer Jack Monroe about the politics of tinned food and why she thinks we ought to cook and love the tinned foods lurking in our cupboards.
Presented by Sheila Dillon. Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury.
Transcript
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| 0:38.0 | I started my business in May 2018. On Friday I decided to take the unit and then over the |
| 0:48.0 | weekend I just came up with an idea. My name is Patrick and I am the founder of the Tim Fish Market. |
| 0:55.0 | It's all about premium Tim Fish from Spain and Portugal mainly. |
| 1:00.0 | Well, I had all sorts of comments, okay? Perhaps the best comment I got was, I've been looking |
| 1:09.5 | for this like for so long. Then I have also people who doesn't really understand it. From seeing |
| 1:18.7 | the table a lot of people didn't know what it was. This is the food program, the place for hungry mines. |
| 1:26.7 | Tin foods funny isn't it? I mean on your Mediterranean holidays you can find beachside cafes serving cold wine and |
| 1:38.4 | with it you'll get some bread and sometimes just a tin of marinated oily fish and it's delicious. |
| 1:47.1 | But here, well we've got issues with that. You won't find restaurants, |
| 1:51.8 | cafes presenting you with tins, and you won't often find your friends serving |
| 1:58.8 | you food straight from tins. We'd have to dress it up quite a lot to hide it, or put it in a casserole or something, and yet... |
| 2:10.0 | When you look at the penetration numbers, the number of people in Great Britain who buy it, it's everyone, it's nearly 100%. |
| 2:16.0 | 99.4% of us in Great Britain will have bought a tinned product in the last year. |
... |
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