Re your interview with Jamie Oliver (G2, 30 April): the UK has decided that the only shop is a supermarket and all purchase decisions are based on price. The retailers and industrial suppliers have responded with products that meet the price criteria while maintaining their profits.
This 21st-century adulteration of food – what some are calling “hyper-processed food” – differs from our Victorian counterparts only in subtlety, using cheap ingredients made possible because we now have a better chemistry set than our 19th-century predecessors.
As Angela Hartnett infamously said, there is no food culture in the UK, and the only sound emanating from the gilded corridors of the corporate and political elite is “let them eat shite”.
Dave Wakefield
Meltham, West Yorkshire
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