Rose Prince - The Savvy Shopper

Breed: Highland

Lower Hurst Farm, Hartington, Nr Buxton, Derbyshire SK 17 0HJTel: 01298 84900www.lowerhurstfarms.co.uk

Breed: Hereford (organic)

Pipers Farm, Cullompton, Devon EX15 ISDTel: 01392 881380www.pipersfarm.com

Breed: Devon Ruby

The Somerset Meat Company, Marshalls Elm, Street,Somerset BA16 0TYTel: 01458 448990www.meatontheweb.co.uk

Breed: Red Devon Ruby

The Well Hung Meat Company, Tordean Farm, Dean Prior,Buckfastleigh, Devon TQ11 0LYTel: 0845 230 3131www.wellhungmeat.com

Breed: Aberdeen Angus and South Devon (organic)

West Country Water Buffalo, Lower Oakley Farm,Chilthorne Domer, Yeovil, Somerset BA22 8RQTel: 01935 940567

Breed: Water Buffalo

West Hembury Farm, Askerswell, Dorchester, Dorset DT2 9ENTel: 01308 485289www.westhembury.com

Breed: White Park

Woodlands Farm, Kirton House, Kirton, Boston,Lincolnshire PE20 IJDTel: 01205 722491www.woodlandsfarm.co.uk

Breed: Lincoln Red

Wootton Organic, Ramshorn Farley Oakamoor,Staffordshire ST 10 3BZTel: 0800 652 9469www.woottonorganic.com

Breed: Aberdeen Angus

Veal is a by-product of the dairy industry, because obviously only females are needed for milk production and male calves are therefore unwanted. The cruel practice of confining veal calves to crates and feeding them milk only (calves need straw roughage) that is permitted in EU countries is banned in the UK. In March 2006 the EU voted to lift the 10-year ban on live cattle exports, which means that farmers can now send unwanted calves for veal production to Europe again. The more milk-fed British veal you consume, the less farmers will be encouraged in this inhumane practice. The farms below produce humanely reared veal.

Helen Browning Organics, Eastbrook Farm, The Calf House,Cues Lane, Bishopstone, Swindon, Wiltshire SN6 8PLTel: 01793 790460www.helenbrowningorganics.co.uk

Innovative system in which calves are left a long time with their mothers. The emphasis at this farm is on the humane treatment of livestock. Also produces beef.

Little Warren Farm, Fletching Common, Newick,East Sussex BN8 4JHTel: 01825 722545

Specialist small-scale farm producing organic veal and beef. All calves are reared naturally and humanely and suckled on Jersey cows for six months.

Welfare Friendly Veal, Higher Stavordale Farm,Charlton Musgrove, Wincanton, Somerset BA9 8HJTel: 01963 33177

The veal calves on this farm are reared the kind way, loose in small groups in open barns with deep straw bedding, fed on a mixture of milk, straw and grains. The farm sells several cuts of meat, which is pink with a sweet, buttery flavour.

Tea and biscuits being a national pastime, it comes as no surprise that the crunchy one of the duo escapes much scrutiny. In any case, the very longevity of some brands suggests that our biscuit habits are hard to break. Who, for example, remembers a time when Bourbon Creams did not exist?

However, the biscuit world may be about to change. In January 2006 new labelling laws came into play in the US that will send shock-waves through Britain’s biscuit makers. The issue is the transfats in hydrogenated fat, a prime ingredient in mass-produced biscuits (and snack food) that is linked to a host of health troubles. From January packs must state the presence of transfats, a move that the American Food and Drug Administration believes will save lives. There are no plans yet for such labelling in the UK, but that may change.

Manufacturers maintain that hydrogenated fat helps biscuits store well, but the low price of the stuff is really the big attraction. However, in a nation where childhood obesity and type-2 diabetes are on the rampage, should we eat more, cheaper biscuits or relish the luxury of the occasional one packed with butter (which has fewer of the negative health implications of hydrogenated fats)? And is fat the tip of the iceberg in the biscuit debate? What else is added to biscuits in the name of innovation?

A plain sweet biscuit, like shortbread, should be just butter, sugar and flour. Varying the ratio of these ingredients affects the texture: a high butter content makes the biscuit crumbly and rich – and more expensive; a greater ratio of starch (from flour) delivers a harder, drier biscuit. But it’s unusual to see butter on a pack’s ingredients list at all. In its place will be the dreaded hydrogenated fat and a wealth of other additives designed to colour, flavour and preserve.

Plenty, and the authorities agree, though there are no plans yet in the UK to label the transfat content in foods containing hydrogenated fat. Transfats are created when fat is hydrogenated, which means that the fat is hardened and the melting temperature raised by a chemical process. Transfats raise cholesterol, reduce the nutritional value of breast milk and are linked with low birth weight. They also reduce the immune response, affect fertility, disrupt enzymes that metabolise chemical carcinogens and drugs, and increase the formation of free radicals that cause tissue damage. Transfats also raise blood insulin, a factor in the development of diabetes. In the UK, biscuits containing hydrogenated fat must mention it in the ingredients list. It will usually appear as ‘hydrogenated vegetable oil’. The oil itself is often mixed and can be derived from various plants, including rapeseed, sunflower, soya, maize, coconut and palm kernel oils. Some of these oils are saturated.

On the contrary, evidence is emerging that butter is by far the more nutritious of the two. The fat in butter is saturated, so it is not recommended that we eat large quantities of it, but it does have many benefits. It contains ‘true’ vitamins that are fat soluble, therefore easily absorbed and more potent. The saturated fat in butter is antiviral and antimicrobial and is burned rapidly for energy – faster than unsaturated vegetable oils, which are more readily stored by the body. It aids digestion and the lauric acid in butter helps prevent tooth decay. Butter may even help you lose weight. The calories from butter are more rapidly burned than those found in corn or olive oil. Butter from grass-fed animals contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a potent anti-cancer agent that also aids weight loss and promotes lean muscle tissue. Butter contains only a fraction of the transfat found in hydrogenated fats.

As concern about transfats increases, the industry has turned to other technology. Some labels will read ‘vegetable oil and vegetable fat’, which means the manufacturer has combined ordinary vegetable oils (refined palm, rapeseed or oil from another plant) or vegetable oils that have been hardened by another means. Fractionation is popular with bakers; this process separates (using a centrifuge) the saturated fat in vegetable oils from the unsaturated fat. The saturated fat, which has a higher melting point, will have the firmness that is desirable for baking. Remember, however, that you will be consuming a higher proportion of saturated fat. Lower-fat vegetable oils can be hardened using ‘interestification’, a more complex process in which the fatty acid molecules are altered and rearranged using enzymes. All this technology – you ask yourself, on the basis that we are not meant to stuff ourselves with biscuits anyway, why not just eat the odd butter biscuit?