The missing link between farm and fork [WFJ #46]

Local, seasonal, and high-quality veg is readily available to Frome. But do we know what to do with it?

At the start of Britain’s first lockdown in March 2020, the market share of convenience foods – that’s to say ready meals, frozen pizza, and such – swiftly tanked, pretty much overnight, as people had more time to get reacquainted with their fondness for cooking.

As restrictions lifted, pre-prepared meals went back on the upwards trajectory, eventually returning to the pre-pandemic ‘normal’. But then it kept going, eventually to a point where 11.5% (a five-year high) of meals cooked at home were convenience foods. 

We all know cooking from scratch, with fresh ingredients, is in a lot of cases the better way of doing things. Better for you, better for your wallet (68 pence per meal, in fact), and in some cases better for the planet. 

And yet, only about half of us follow through on that line of thought. According to a YouGov survey in the summer, a quarter of Brits regularly cook from scratch using fresh ingredients and without a recipe, while 23% do so with a recipe.