Put your money where your mouth is

Last night was shopping night. We went to our usual supermarket having not really eaten last week’s shop. Having picked up the few bits we needed, I casually glanced over at the poultry counter. There haven’t been any Organic chickens for about two months since the chicken programs Jamie Oliver and Hugh F-W filmed were aired. Anyway, there were two beautiful organic chickens sitting on the shelf, waiting to be bought.
We don’t really need chicken, but I thought I’d have a look. The price has gone up, but I expected that to happen now that the demand outstrips supply. It’s 50p a kilo more expensive (that’s around 25p per pound in real measurements). That made the not-quite 2lb chicken a princely £10 (almost). Well, I ummed a little more.
But, I decided I have to stand by my convictions and put my money where my mouth is. If I’m so committed to having chickens have a better life then I have to be prepared to pay for it. So we bought the chicken. I reckon it will make easily three, maybe four meals if I’m careful with it. if I can stretch it to four meals (or more) then that’s only £2.50 per meal, which is pretty reasonable.

I can understand that your average single parent with two kids to feed probably can’t afford to spend that much, even if it could last for four meals. Perhaps the problem is that we (as a nation) have become too used to being able to shovel our gobs full of whatever we want, whenever we want. We never had the waste-not want-not culture that some of our parents, and grandparents (and even great-grandparents for some of the younger generation now) did. I don’t think that we need to eat a whole chicken for every meal, every day. I think that we should aim for meat-and-three-veg most nights, but that could be chicken, fish (yes, I know that’s not cheap either), pork, lamb (don’t talk to me about blue tongue), beef, or indeed any other edible animal (rabbit, pheasant, guinea fowl – I could go on)
My point is that we should stop viewing it as our right to eat more chicken than we can stand (or in the case of many, to eat just the breasts and legs and then waste the rest of the good bits) and start viewing it as our privilege.

[steps off soap box, for now]