Thursday 8th October

Yes, I do realise that plastic packaging can keep food fresh, especially when it is shrink-wrapped or filled with supposedly harmless nitrogen – but it can be a nightmare to get into.  Sometimes they have these little corners marked ‘open here’, where the two layers are not welded together – but you have to have tiny fingers and the strength of a lion to actually open the packaging in this way.  Too often one resorts to a sharp knife and a, I must admit quite satisfying, stabbing action to actually get into your bacon……talk about killing your own food.

And anyway, what is so wrong with buying our food fresh from a real food shop where it might be wrapped nicely in paper, and served to you by a human being?

What we have to realise is that all innovations, especially in packaging are essentially for the benefit of the manufacturer and not for us the consumer, though they are often sold as ‘convenient’ or ‘new and improved’.  We are rapidly moving into a plastic world, where products are manufactured, chemically treated in some way, and hermetically sealed in almost impenetrable packaging.  This is supposedly so that our wonderful Supermarkets can offer us ‘choice’, when what we want is ‘good’, ‘local’, and ‘easy to use’.  It has now got to the point that one has to have a pair of very sharp pointed scissors at hand at all times.  Today I had to put new ink in the printer.  I had to cut open the thick plastic packaging which was incidentally ten times the size of the ink cartridges themselves, this of course left sharp edges and made reading the instructions far harder as they were in two pieces.  The cartridges were also hermetically sealed in plastic and a pair of nail scissors needed to open, so as not to damage the actual cartridges.  Frustrating and time-consuming and all so that the manufacturer can keep it on the shelf for months, and incidentally charge you more for a replacement cartridge than the printer cost in the first place.  Have a nice day…..