Big, Succulent Breasts

WELL, AIN'T THIS just lovely?

As someone who lives on a diet of chicken breast, I find this trickery heinous and wicked. I once bought a bag of these supposed "value" chicken breasts in Iceland and they more or less dissolved like snowflakes when I tried slicing them. And they didn't taste much like chicken either. Maybe they weren't really.

Jay Rayner has been investigating cheap supermarket food for a Channel 4 documentary, The True Cost of Cheap Food, which I'll be tuning into on Thursday.

Rayner asks, "What would you say to a beef pie that was only 18% beef, and a few more percentage points 'beef connective tissue' - or gristle, collagen and fat, as it's more commonly known? How about a pork sausage that's just 40% pork, with a slab of pig skin chucked in for bulk? Or an apple pie with so little apple - a mere 14% - that you can't help but wonder whether it really deserves the name?"

Rayner's discoveries make for sobering reading, particularly in light of the staggering profits of supermarkets like Tesco (it made £1.45bn in the first six months of 2008). Read the article and watch Dispatches... and think about what you're putting into your mouth.