The lure of spotted dick, sticky toffee pudding, jam roly-poly and similar dinner table dessert traditions has greatly diminished in the UK with each of us, statistically only likely to indulge ourselves but once a year.
Premier foods, owners of that staple accompaniment to puddings, Bird’s custard is so worried about our health conscious habits eroding their sales that they’re approaching MP’s in order to ask them to get hot puddings reinstated on menus in hospitals, schools, prisons and government offices.
Premier’s research indicates that pudding consumption has fallen 60% in the last 10 years and restaurants have removed many of the old desserts from their menus.Even Apple Crumble is only likely to be consumed around 2.2 times a year(I love fractional statistics).
The North of England seems to be the last bastion of hot pudding consumption.
Low sugar, no artificial additives, low fat spotted dick with custard anyone? I think I’ll pass.
Photograph © copyright 2004 Christian Wirth.
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Another example of manufacturers intent on making us have what they want to supply instead of supplying what we want to have.
Apart from that, I must say I found my mouth watering while reading your post. I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth and generally prefer savoury to sweet but I must admit to the occasional indulgence.
Twice lately we have had cake at Pane Vino, either as a desert or even as a standalone treat. Naughty, naughty.
It would not occur to me to buy spotted dick in a tin. I find the idea rather off-putting. Why? I don’t know. After all, we eat so much stuff that comes in tins so why not pudding?
Hi SilverTiger-Don’t we only want what we think we need? And that’s where the ad-people come in. I think a tin is preferable to plastic anyway. I can’t remember having puddings come in anything else but tins way back when (as in when I ate puddings) apart from the ones that were actually made from scratch (a lost art?).
I don’t object to discreet advertising informing us what’s available but that isn’t what you report, which was that Premier Foods are “approaching MP’s in order to ask them to get hot puddings reinstated on menus in hospitals, schools, prisons and government offices.” That isn’t advertising, that’s lobbying and definitely a case of attempting to tell people what they want by sticking it under their noses.
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Stuff(Em) Replied: Fair cop Guv. I take your point but I stand by the advertising thing though I wasn’t referring to the premier foods case in particular but agree I should have clarified.