Janet Baraclough wrote:
>
> If you mean, you intend to serve only ingredients grown in Britain,
> you can have potatoes and
> tomatoes but still no coffee, tea and chocolate.

Or black pepper, cinnamon, or brown sugar.
Are there beet-sugar refineries in Britain?
If not, no white sugar, either.

On the other hand, with the recent success of the BNP,
he might be on to something. He might be planning
to appeal to a certain clientele who will patronize
his establishment for ideological reasons. They might
even convince themselves that the food is better for
these ideological reasons. Like those people who eat
Marmite.

Mark Thorson wrote:
> Janet Baraclough wrote:
>> If you mean, you intend to serve only ingredients grown in Britain,
>> you can have potatoes and
>> tomatoes but still no coffee, tea and chocolate.
>
> Or black pepper, cinnamon, or brown sugar.
> Are there beet-sugar refineries in Britain?
> If not, no white sugar, either.

The same can be said of much of Europe. Just look at the staples of
European cooking and see how many of them came from the Americas.

Dave Smith wrote:
>
> Mark Thorson wrote:
> > Janet Baraclough wrote:
> >> If you mean, you intend to serve only ingredients grown in Britain,
> >> you can have potatoes and
> >> tomatoes but still no coffee, tea and chocolate.
> >
> > Or black pepper, cinnamon, or brown sugar.
> > Are there beet-sugar refineries in Britain?
> > If not, no white sugar, either.
>
> The same can be said of much of Europe. Just look at the staples of
> European cooking and see how many of them came from the Americas.

An important distinction being whether the line
is drawn on ingredients that were originally from
elsewhere but are produced domestically now vs.
ingredients that have always been produced
domestically. Of course, if it's the latter,
how far back does "always" mean? Prehistoric
times? Roman times? Europeans did not always
have wheat. Heck, if you go back far enough,
they haven't always had any farmed food.

Mark Thorson wrote:

>> The same can be said of much of Europe. Just look at the staples of
>> European cooking and see how many of them came from the Americas.
>
> An important distinction being whether the line
> is drawn on ingredients that were originally from
> elsewhere but are produced domestically now vs.
> ingredients that have always been produced
> domestically. Of course, if it's the latter,
> how far back does "always" mean? Prehistoric
> times? Roman times? Europeans did not always
> have wheat. Heck, if you go back far enough,
> they haven't always had any farmed food.

Perhaps it can include all foods that were available when it became
Britain. Like most of the rest of the world, it is a country that has
seen a lot of population changes as people invaded/ moved in from a
variety of western European regions. As they came they brought their
various foods with them. There were Picts, Gaels, Celts, Romans, Danes,
Anglo Saxons, French etc. Each has made significant contributions.

Britain became a major world power in the 1500s as it sent out explorers
privateers and its navy to colonize and empire that spanned the globe,
and there is every reason to include the products that came to Britain
from its empire.