Charlbury Co-op

Mon 4 Mar 2019, 18:16

Ha ha ha ha ha....

Mon 4 Mar 2019, 18:03

And even worse, the cat food space is limited, behind a pillar and difficult to access!

Mon 4 Mar 2019, 17:58 (last edited on Mon 4 Mar 2019, 18:17)

....... and cakes, and crisps, and  chocolate of every description, biscuits, sweets, hot cross buns, fizzy drinks, and so on. Not against any of these items per se, but when you look at the total shelf space that's allocated to these things, none of which add up to a decent meal, I think it's disproportionate.

Tue 26 Feb 2019, 17:43

In answer to Alex's original point, the co-op already does stock lots of low sugar and fat free products. Apples, bananas and lettuces to name a few.  

Tue 26 Feb 2019, 15:57

I think most kids who live in Charlbury walk to school anyway. It’s different for people like Katie in the outlying villages.

Mon 25 Feb 2019, 23:31 (last edited on Mon 25 Feb 2019, 23:43)

Apologies Katie.

You are right.  Impossible to compare then and now.  

My children took the bus to and from comprehensive school - I had three.  (Children, not buses).  I now have five Grandchildren so someone is doing something right!  Or should I say "wrong"?  I don't think there are school buses now.  I wouldn't know, I no longer have first hand experience.

 Seriously, the point I was making was an attempt to deal with Alex's concerns by advocating a holistic approach.

Btw, the "good old days" were nothing of the sort.  E.g. no central heating, at least not in our (rented) home, and free meals?!  No.  I got them because my parents were poor, but that involved the walk of shame every Monday morning clasping my allowance book which the Teacher stamped.  Not much fun in front of my fellow classmates, and not a great way to start the school week.

We all know who snatched the milk!  But that's not Charlbury related.

Having said all that I still find the notion that one can "protect" one's children against cars by, well, using one's car, a trifle illogical.  I suppose it depends on the distance.  It is possible to chaperone children to schools (on foot) so then everyone benefits.  Perhaps we need more schools and buses.  What would I know?

Mon 25 Feb 2019, 19:31 (last edited on Mon 25 Feb 2019, 19:34)

Absolutely, and perhaps some of those who contributed to the thread about street design on the forum in December – when Liz Reason advocated “streets for people” – might want to reflect on the effects of a car-dependent society on our kids. When I was growing up in the ’80s in a small rural town, I would regularly zip around the nearby estates on my bike, and was cycling to secondary school unsupervised at the age of (I think) 11. It’s a brave parent who’d permit that these days.

Mon 25 Feb 2019, 18:09

Hannen, you're being a little bit hard on us parents! I can assure you that kids still run around and play hide and seek etc. They also participate actively in all sorts of sporting activities as you can see in our own Town on any day of the week. Most are extremely energetic, but the world has changed. I wouldn't let my kids walk to school from where we live as there is no footpath and much more (fast) traffic than in the 1950s. Also in many families both parents are working which means we have to drop kids at school and then head straight to work. Obesity is partly due to hidden sugar in food, which was used to substitute fats when fats were pronounced as "bad", but getting the food industry to agree to countermeasures such as uniform labelling and taxing high sugar foods is impossible. In addition, the elimination of so many things that were free for kids in your childhood, such as milk and school meals, means that you can't compare then and now. The point I'm making is in fact the same as yours, that obesity is complex, but I assure you we are not killing our little darlings, If you want to encourage kids to walk to school, then the rest of society needs to facilitate that by reducing our dependence on cars to make roads safer and reduce pollution.

Mon 25 Feb 2019, 09:53 (last edited on Mon 25 Feb 2019, 10:23)

Agree with Jon.

Alex, this is such a complex area now - essentially under the "nutrition" umbrella.

A lot of vested interests coupled with ignorance.

For 10 years I have referred to a wonderful book:  "The Nostalgic Cook Book".  Bill Habets.  

ISBN978-1-903904-80-0

It's a great read in its own right and shows just how far we've drifted away from sound nutritional principles.  Sorry Jon, not a lot for the vegetarian in it!

Quite apart from diet there is the lack of exercise.  As a schoolboy in the 1950s  I and all the other pupils would walk to school every day.  For me that was a 4 mile round trip.  Add to that the running around in the playground and after school hide and seek and Indians and Cowboys or whatever, one can see that I was running/walking 30 plus miles a week.  And I wasn't yet 11!

So the intake of food was simply burned off.  As Jon intimates it was organic anyway.  Processed food was unknown.  We started the day with a large cooked breakfast, had elevenses, then lunch - suet puddings etc., then afternoon tea, then "High Tea" with scones and cream and home made jam etc.  Lots and lots of cakes.

I can't remember a single overweight child.

Contrast that with today when parents often take and collect their little darlings to/from school - effectively killing them, or at any rate, storing up trouble for the future.

Of course it was easier in those days as neither my parents or any of my friends, could afford a car.  Bicycle was for Dad - so that he could get to work and back in relative comfort, as a stonemason, although the winters and rainy days must have been awful.

The point I'm making in a clumsy way, is that it's not so much what we ingest, it's our whole lifestyle.

Sun 24 Feb 2019, 18:32

The uncomfortable truth may be that it stocks what people buy. But you can tell them what you think (there's a link to their Membership Team on their app, for example) and in my experience you do get a reasonably considered reply. Though I've not emailed them about sugar.

I object to the fact that there is always something exceptional or cranky about not stuffing your face with sugar. It should be normal! It's a bit like organic produce. Inorganic fruit and veg have only been around since the 1950s. Organic was normal for millennia. It's inorganic food that is weird.

Sun 24 Feb 2019, 17:35 (last edited on Sun 24 Feb 2019, 17:42)

Does anyone else agree that Charlbiry Co-op needs to carry more products with "no added sugar" or  "low" or"fat free"?  

There is an obesity epidemic with more and more people being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes (for various reasons) and we all need to eat more healthily. In short carrying so many sugared products can't be a good thing. Society's attitude is slowly changing.

Supermarkets such as our local co-op really could  be doing more to help in the sense of what it ranges in my opinion.

What are your thoughts on this?