Michael Bateman: The Strange Taste of Tomorrow

Task 1: Introduction

Have you ever eaten any of the following? Which of these are acceptable for you to try?

Snails

Frog legs

Sea weed

Jelly fish

Haggis

Raw fish

Hedgehog

Camel

Snake

Task 2: Reading

Read the introduction:

Food science, unfortunately, is not always dealing with what is acceptable to the public. The word `new', such an exciting concept in other areas of advertising, causes only apprehension when applied to food. A new food? For science can open up a world of novel proteins, new methods of animal husbandry and feeding-stuff, new crops and new fish and meat to eat. But the food trade can say `no', and that is that. They know the extent to which the public attitude to food is guided by social and religious taboos, childhood conditioning, simple prejudice and preference.

We spend the best part of 40 million pounds a year researching into farming and fishing and growing and the range of discoveries is extensive and fascinating. We grow apples like raspberries and harvest them with machines after two years: we are learning to trick cows into having twins and sheep into lambing twice a year by fiddling with their summertime. We're marvellously equipped to utilise everything from sea weeds to weed seeds.

Task 3: Reading Comprehension

A. Read the first part of the text and prepare its summary by answering the questions:

Why did the British ministry begin looking for a new species of fish?

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Why was the new fish of interest to food producers?

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How commercially successful was it? Why?

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The men at the British Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries have been alarmed by the overfishing of international waters - we can expect a 20% drop in catches soon. So they have been making sorties to discover possible new species of fish. With an eye on the unilateral fishing limit claims, they picked on the deep Atlantic shelf which hugs the West coast of Ireland, and they came up with a curious-looking deepwater fish, the grenadier.

What happened? The MAFF told Birds Eye and the big fish finger producers that they had discovered a fish which lent itself to the same treatment as cod, which is the basis of fish finger production. At this point, Graham Kemp, head of Birds Eye press, consumer and information services, started to sound out the Press, mentioning that Birds Eye was thinking of incorporating a new range of fish in fish fingers. Privately, he said: ` We'd put ground-up cod's head in our products if we thought the housewife would accept it.

It was eventually John Waterman, long-serving Head of Information at Torry Research Station, Aberdeen, who announced the `exciting' news at a press-conference. Now, Waterman happens to be one of the world's most knowledgeable people on the subject of the fish names, and he knew that the grenadier fish was best known as the rats-tail. He also knew that a name like rats-tail was bound to offend the aesthetic taste of the British housewife. So he judiciously chose one of the fish's more pleasant names. Asked by the Press at the conference if the grenadier was not better known as rats-tail, John Waterman replied truthfully that it was, but they wished it to be known as the grenadier.

Could you eat rats-tail? asked the headlines in the papers and TV. Big joke. But Waterman was not laughing because thousands of pounds spent on the sea research was down the drain. Birds Eye, noting the public reaction, said it had no intention of using rats tail in fish fingers. What a thought. And in a sudden panic it stopped labelling its fish fingers `white fish' and put them out as pure `cod'.

Explain in your own words:

2. Explain the word `apprehension'?

3. What does the research into farming and growing seem to have been aimed at , judging by the achievements mentioned in p.2?

4. What does the writer mean by `we're .. equipped to utilise everything from sea weeds to weed seeds?

5. Why did MAFF choose the deep Atlantic shelf for its research?

6. Explain the phrase ` lent itself to'

7. Why was John Waterman not amused by the Press reaction to the new fish?

B. Read the second part of the text and prepare its summary by answering the questions:

What seems to be the key to the success of new food products?

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How is this success achieved?

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What product is a good example of this process? Why?

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At the Food Research Institute, Norwich, Liaison Officer, Arnold Tomalin says research can only go so far: it provides the information but we live in a society where it is left to the entrepreneur to decide whether or not to take it further.

Of course, Tomalin is right. When people vote with their pay packets in High Street shops every week they make peculiarly conservative choices. There is no doubt that scientists can find no food alternatives, but who will find it worth their while to present them to a reluctant public.?

Big Business - Unilever can do it, for one. Unilever's research covers everything from salmon fishing in Scottish lochs to putting Texturised Vegetable Protein in meat pies; from sucking the last scraps of flesh of a cod's backbone to turning the world's cheap oils into hydrogenated butter. It cost Unilever 250,500 pounds in gas chromatography and allied research to identify and synthesise the 22 separate unique flavour components to get the butter taste into their margarine.

It is obvious that a product like hydrogenated palm and coconut and herring oil could not achieved world-wide acceptance without a boost from persuaders and perhaps it is there that the whole key to food acceptance lies.

If it had not been for the last decade or so of brilliant advertising campaigning, how could margarine have climbed out of the hole it found itself in at the end of the war? If Unilever can get people to eat their marge surely there can be no limits to the possibilities of brilliant research allied to clever advertising.

Jeremy Bullmore, the creative director of Britain's largest advertising agents, has no illusions about what food acceptance is. `We sell the myth about food rather than the reality'. So, the advertiser is concerned with generating this excitement in products. He has to confess you can't do this in food by proclaiming its novelty. But it's a challenge which will come.

We `re talking about foods that haven't evolved. They'll need to be marketed in shapes which are familiar. Like marge. They could have had a product which was clear, a kind of jelly, or a blue margarine, but it wouldn't have been acceptable. So they made it look like butter.

The truth is, says Bullmore, that times change, `It's really a matter of what's acceptable and what is not. Who's right and who's wrong about snails and eels and so on. A friend of mine, a great ornithologist, bought a book in France and opened it at the `Robin'. It began:' this little charming songster is best served…..'

Explain in your own words:

1. Explain in other words `they make peculiarly conservative choices'

2. Why is it unlikely that margarine would have achieved public acceptance without help?

3. What does `there' refer to?

4. What does `it' in `it's a challenge' refer to?

5. What was the likely reaction of Bullmore's friend to the section on the Robin in the book and why?

6. What does the public acceptance of food depend on?

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