Every traditional material we have been told to give up was working perfectly, for free, for centuries. Every industrial replacement has been worse for the body, worse for the land, and considerably better for the shareholders of the company that sold it. The pattern is not subtle, and the people running it are not embarrassed. Your great-grandmother is no longer here to call it.You are. --Sama Hoole
A short history of the great British improvement. They came for beef dripping. We got margarine, then seed oils, then a cardiac ward in every hospital. They came for butter. They told your grandmother it would kill her husband. The replacement was a tub of palm oil emulsified with rapeseed and a yellow dye, and her husband died of a heart attack in 1989 anyway. They came for full-fat milk. We got skimmed milk, a vitamin D deficiency epidemic in children, and a cereal aisle fortified to plug the gap. They came for mutton, the meat that fed every shepherd, miner, and mill worker for six hundred years. We got a chicken breast injected with water and a turkey twizzler. They came for the kipper. We got a Findus boil-in-the-bag, dyed orange, and a fish oil capsule sold at the chemist to make up for the omega-3 nobody is eating. They came for wool. We got polyester fleece, and microplastics in human placentas. Every one tested. Sixty-two out of sixty-two. They came for leather. We got synthetic shoes that delaminate in eighteen months, and a high street with no cobbler. They came for the cotton nappy. We got the disposable, and a landfill that will outlast the child wearing it. They came for the cast iron pan handed down three generations. We got Teflon, and a forever chemical now found in 98% of British rivers. They came for the wooden bowl your grandmother kneaded dough in. We got Tupperware, then BPA, then "BPA-free" plastic containing compounds we have not yet bothered to measure. Now they are coming for the cow herself. The replacement is a textured pea isolate, extruded in a factory in the American Midwest, packaged in plastic, and marketed as the ethical option by a company called Cargill, who happen to be the third-largest meat processor in the United States. Every traditional material we have been told to give up was working perfectly, for free, for centuries. Every industrial replacement has been worse for the body, worse for the land, and considerably better for the shareholders of the company that sold it. The pattern is not subtle, and the people running it are not embarrassed. Your great-grandmother is no longer here to call it.A short history of the great British improvement.
— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) May 11, 2026
They came for beef dripping. We got margarine, then seed oils, then a cardiac ward in every hospital.
They came for butter. They told your grandmother it would kill her husband. The replacement was a tub of palm oil emulsified… pic.twitter.com/nzz8yBPXeX
You are.
