Vegetarians here and in India will be smugly entertained by the current hysteria over meat products in the United Kingdom. The prime minister described the discovery of horse meat DNA in various cheap supermarket processed meat dishes as appalling. In fact, he could hardly find words of strong enough opprobrium to describe this shocking event and anyone not up to speed on the story might well have imagined he was discussing an act of terrorism or a major massacre when he stood up at prime minister’s question time yesterday. Things were so bad that eventually something had to give and in the usual British way, horror gave way to bad jokes that even the appalled prime minister was unable to resist.

Historically, of course, we have a bit of a bad record of denials regarding the rumoured improper use of meat products and it seems that horse is not the only problem here: pork has been found in some beef products, so once again a broad range of the population is likely to be offended or disgusted. It is not clear, however, that there is any risk to the health of consumers of these products although the rumour mill is getting going on possible carcinogenics in drugs normally given to horses for various veterinary conditions. As our mass-produced chickens, let alone other cheap meats, are fed every sort of hormone to make them grow to double the size in half the time and we already know such drugs are dangerous, it is hard to get more than usually worked up about that aspect of the issue. Where we should be deeply concerned is not so much regarding, unless for moral or religious reasons, the hidden mixing of one meat with another, but rather what this tells us about our efforts to produce cheaper and cheaper food.

I am not a vegetarian but most people would be far better off eating less meat as they used to in the past when meat was not an everyday expectation. Now it seems everyone does expect to eat meat and to get it ridiculously cheap. For that, we are prepared to put up with factory farming methods and processing systems that turn almost every part of an animal into something that arrives burger shaped, full of fat and preservatives and should not be considered fit for human consumption in many cases. In fact, a decent bit of horse meat, as the French and Italians know, is far more preferable — actually in France it is also more expensive than beef.

Nobody in this country fancies the idea of eating a horse, most of us know or have known one too well for that — we find it almost as shocking as eating dog and are increasingly sentimental about killing anything — but an emotional response to events, possibly the reason for David Cameron’s hyperbole, is not very helpful in sorting out the root of our meat problem. It is entirely a question of supply and demand based on lack of education, skills and time. To spell it out, we do not understand about food and nutrition or we wouldn’t feed our children McDonalds and worse, a standard diet in some cases apparently. We do not know how to value and cook raw ingredients and we do not have time to do it anyway. Of course, large numbers of us don’t care either.

I was listening the other day to an interview with Paul McCartney, the ubiquitous persona of vegetarianism in this country, not to mention of almost any national entertainment ad infinitum. This was, however, a perfectly sensible reminiscence about the food he ate growing up in Liverpool at a time when vegetarianism was almost unheard of here and he certainly hadn’t thought of it. It did not surprise me to hear that the diet in a Liverpool council house in the late 1940s and 1950s was pretty much the same as the diet in the nursery of a Wiltshire manor house a few years later. We all had roast meat of some sort on Sunday; in Liverpool it might have come from the local butcher who probably knew quite well the source of his meat; in Wiltshire it might have come straight from the home farm or from a similar local butcher. Then we all ate the leftovers for a day or two in various reheated forms, cottage pies, rissoles, minced this and that and very good too. Then possibly — I do hope I’m not upsetting the vegetarians here, but remember these were shared memories with the daddy of all veggie converts — we might have had liver or kidneys, offal was very popular, cheap as it still relatively is, and good for children apparently. All that would have come from the same reputable source and with it came vegetables, lots, from the garden or perhaps a local market in Liverpool. Puddings were rice, steamed, fruit in various forms, with custard or condensed milk in Liverpool, more likely cream from the farm in Wiltshire.

None of us had a lot of sweets, none of us had anything regularly very much more processed than a bit of mincing or mashing in our kitchens — nothing arrived from a shop ready cooked except ice cream and occasional Christmas treats. Everything was fresh, came from fields, farms and gardens and in case of the vegetables arrived in whatever shape it had grown and with a good deal of healthy dirt attached too. Mothers, cooks and nannies knew how to turn all this good quality, quite often cheap like the offal and a lot of the vegetables still are today, food that we all enjoyed by and large and that, by and large, was good for us, good value and a reasonable business for those who produced it. There was not a lot of excess either in Liverpool or in Wiltshire and nobody had to worry that what they were eating was anything more than it appeared to be.

Well times have changed, life has sped up and we expect infinite variety in all areas of our lives including our food. I for one am enraptured to be able to buy fresh spices, Chinese vegetables and Italian salamis, and French cuts of meat, not horse of course, but I am less delighted by the supermarket fridges full of ersatz readymade microwavable Chinese, Indian and Italian dishes rather than the ones made at home. Occasionally I make use of them, but again, only occasionally. It does take time and some knowledge to cook good dishes but just as the roast dinner was a one off weekly event in the past, so a complicated dish of whatever provenance would or could be an occasional treat now.

A former executive at the massive supermarket, Tesco, said that food in the UK is simply too cheap and if we want good quality food we are going to have to pay more for it. Well, yes of course, up to a point, but the time cost is often the issue as much as the financial. You need to have some idea, like most people used to in the days when home economics — cooking and budgeting for a family, in other words — was taught in schools as well as in the home itself. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of our population couldn’t care less what they put in their mouths so long as it doesn’t cost much, takes no time to make and tastes of the usual ‘flavourings’. For every day, a readymade packaged dish full of heaven knows what may be quick but usually not much more so than chucking a whole lot of vegetables in a wok for a quick stir fry, making a salad with in-season and therefore inexpensive ingredients, quickly cooking some of that cheap offal: liver and onions anyone? Of course, with McDonalds and a supermarket full of cheap meatballs and, if you are lucky, a packet of frozen peas, down the road, why bother?