Alistair Williams

Lidl has put peas in the beef and written High Protein on the front. The pea is hidden in a little black box, in a font you need a suspicious nature to read. It isn't a pea. It's the beige powder left after yellow split peas are milled and soaked in alkali. Vegan shakes are made from it. It tastes of a wet cupboard and it costs a fraction of mince. It's short of methionine. Beef isn't. So the 37g on the front is a bigger number doing a smaller job. The cow spent 2 years turning plants into beef. Lidl has put the plants back in. They took the fat out too. The flavour, the vitamins and the fullness left before the pea arrived. Food removed, crop added, and the word for that is High. Nobody in a gym has ever read past High. The reason isn't hidden. Lidl promised a quarter of its protein would be plant based by 2030. The meat-free aisle went grey. So the peas are going into the beef, where the customers are. In Holland the same mince is already 40% pea. Britain hasn't been told its number. Tesco printed Meat & Veg on the box in 2019. Dead in a year. Lidl moved the veg to the back. Buy the ugly 20% mince with one ingredient. The animal already ate the peas.