Another reason for friendly bombs to fall on Slough. Masterfoods, makers of Mars, Snickers and Twix amongst others, have started introducing rennet into their products. Rennet is made, charmingly enough, from cows' stomachs. Some cheeses have it too, some prefer a vegetarian substitute. When the latter is used it makes absolutely no difference to taste or texture. But now, for no good reason, you can't be a vegetarian and eat a bloody Snickers.
As I've probably mentioned before, I despair of capitalism sometimes. Not because of it's greed or callousness – it's supposed to be those things – but because of it's incompetence. We live in an age of targeted marketing and saturation-bombing advertising and zippy-zappy internet techniques to get us to buy things. And why bother? When a huge company just fiddles with its recepies to exclude millions of people from its potential market.
In Masterfoods' defence, they don't seem to fully understand the issue. A spokesman said only "extremely strict vegetarians" would be repelled while "a less strict vegetarian should be fine." Now, look. Not eating stomachs isn't just a stance taken by the fundamentalists. It's not on a par with only consuming fruit which has fallen naturally from the tree. Not eating stomachs is pretty much at the heart of the matter. Oh, and in case you were wondering, we don't eat hearts either.
I think Masterfoods have taken Dylan Moran's line a little too seriously: "I'm a vegetarian but I'm not a hardcore one. I mean, I eat meat."
As I've probably mentioned before, I despair of capitalism sometimes. Not because of it's greed or callousness – it's supposed to be those things – but because of it's incompetence. We live in an age of targeted marketing and saturation-bombing advertising and zippy-zappy internet techniques to get us to buy things. And why bother? When a huge company just fiddles with its recepies to exclude millions of people from its potential market.
In Masterfoods' defence, they don't seem to fully understand the issue. A spokesman said only "extremely strict vegetarians" would be repelled while "a less strict vegetarian should be fine." Now, look. Not eating stomachs isn't just a stance taken by the fundamentalists. It's not on a par with only consuming fruit which has fallen naturally from the tree. Not eating stomachs is pretty much at the heart of the matter. Oh, and in case you were wondering, we don't eat hearts either.
I think Masterfoods have taken Dylan Moran's line a little too seriously: "I'm a vegetarian but I'm not a hardcore one. I mean, I eat meat."
No comments:
Post a Comment