What does FRESH MEAN to you in relation to food?

That is the question that Chris Warburton at BBC Radio 5 live posed to me this morning.  Why did he ask?  The Daily Mail had run a ‘story’ about the food industry – and about Pret A  Manger in particular, buying their (French) baguettes from France, frozen and finishing them off in their ovens and selling them as ‘fresh’ .  They had seen that the USE BY  on a box of frozen baguettes was 12 months, though those in the Pret store where they saw them last week, were only a few weeks old according to the production date on them.

No store has the room to keep a year’s worth of baguettes, so it is more likely they will be used within a day or two ….  Supermarket In-store bakeries and lots of coffee shops etc use this part -baked frozen bread and I don’t honestly think anyone thinks they have a baker come in overnight and bake them from scratch. I think Fresh food means that when you buy it , it is perishable and you need to use it within a short period of time  as opposed to frozen, chilled, canned etc

Do you agree ?

Here is the clip from the show –