Dietary Errors.

[davywavy]

I was on the train last night. It's something I try to avoid because it's usually a pretty miserable experience, but sometimes I can't avoid it and, as usual, the train I was on was badly delayed due to 'unforseen circumstances'. I hadn't bothered eating anything before I set off as I had hoped to make good time and as I sat there twiddling my thumbs I got slowly hungrier and hungrier until I could stand it no more and headed for the buffet car where I found that everyone else had the same idea before me and it was almost stripped bare.
The only thing of any substance left was a solitary Ginsters Sausage Roll. I've heard bad things about them before and I was duly leery of buying it; any meat & pasty based product with a best-before date more than a year in the future is one to be avoided on general principles, I find. I looked at it. It looked at me (less absurd than it sounds, as I'm sure it had more eyeball than actual pork in it). Go on, said my tummy. Feed me! How bad can it be, really?. Beneath the grinding ache of hunger, I cracked, bought it, and consumed it. I can't say that I ate the damn thing, as 'eat' implies there's some degree of nutrition or pleasure involved, and believe you me, there was none.
Under normal circumstances I rather like pork. Take a prime pig, lightly kill it, and serve it up in slices or huge lumps slathered in crackling and I'm your man. But this...this vile turd-in-a-bun was undoubtedly the single most unpleasant thing I can remember devouring in my entire life. It had as much in common with a dead pig as I do. In fact, given the photograph of me asleep with my top off which I know is out there somewhere, I think I've more in common with a dead pig than the supposedly 'pork' sausage. Jesus. I can still taste it now, and I shudder to do so.

Something I've found when I eat crap food with a lot of fats and short-chain sugars and not much else in it is that I start to feel awful very quickly. I get a fuzzy, sore head, like the early symptoms of a cold. I sometimes wonder if that's how the McDonalds-dining population feel all the time; a bit tired and irritable and finding it hard to think - it would certain explain a lot if so. It was like Ginsters were deliberately adding insuilt to injury; not only had they foisted upon me one of the least edible foodstuffs I've ever encountered, they then made me feel utterly rotten for about twelve hours afterwards. It was an utterly foul, rank, disgusting, repugnant slice of misery which someone with more humour than honesty had described as 'tasty' on the wrapper.
Presumably there are people out there who have eaten and will eat more than one of these things in their life - if there weren't Ginsters would quickly go out of business - and it does make me realise that there's a whole other world out there with which I normally try not to engage. A world in which people see mechanically extruded brown paste as meat. A world in which some people read the words 'tasty treat' and actually believe it.
Well, they're welcome it it. Ugh. I can still taste it in the thick layer of grease adhering to the back of my throat. Never again. Never, ever, again.

Comments

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

That sounds remarkably unpleasant. And yet it can't be cost as the reason for why it's so bad.

Greggs, a bakery chain with branches all over Birmingham does sausage rolls. They are, at 50 pence, cheaper than a Ginsters one afaik. They are freshly cooked, and you get them hot and steaming. The pork in them is well flavoured, and the pastry flaky. Even if they're cold they're nice. But then they are designed to be eaten within a day of purchase and not languish in a fridge for months on end.

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

Anything Ginsters is usually fairly unpleasant.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I had heard this, but allowed my tummy to overrule my brain.
Story of my life in many ways.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Ginsters is not meat!

I have 1.3 kg of pork belly ready to cook for this evening.

Nom nom nom.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I simply can't face food at the moment. I've been put right off. It was foul.

[ditzy-pole.livejournal.com]

single most unpleasant thing I can remember devouring in my entire life

This is a good day for my cooking!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Well, to my knowledge, you never served me Turd-in-a-bun, Turd a l'orange, Turd Surprise, or Turd in the hole.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I once had a Ginsters pastry of some sort which only tasted of salt so I couldn't tell what the ingredients were, which might have been a good thing.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Heavy salting is used to disguise flavour, so it might well have been anything.
Rest assured, I shall never eat anything made by them again. I have learned my lesson.

[song-of-copper.livejournal.com]

Ooh, gnasty! :-( Some camomile tea may help...

I've been seeing a lot of Wall's lorries recently, emblazoned with the boast that their meat pie/sausage roll type products are 'COMPLETELY FULL OF FILLING!!!' I am not sure that this is good advertising, given the likely composition of said filling... :-( Unless of course it's a health warning, rather than a slogan!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of the old spoof advert about their sausages: "Walls! Just about the only thing not in 'em!"

[cleosilver.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler is in charge of catering at Ginsters :)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I was thinking exactly that whilst I was eating consuming it.

[fonnparr.livejournal.com]

You should have eaten the cardboard that came with it instead

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

More nutrition and I doubt I would have thrown up quite as much as I ended up doing.

[fonnparr.livejournal.com]

rip the cardboard up into tiny pieces put in a bowl of water and pretend you are eating Kelloggs Special K with skimmed milk - with your eyes closed you won't even be able to tell the difference

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

I remember the old Ginster's adverts which had "They're coming to take you away Ha Ha" on the soundtrack. Clearly this should have been a warning that eating consuming putting it in your digestive tract is a symptom of some mental illness.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I would certainly agree that eating anything from those people more than once would be a symptom of eitehr a mental illness or a severe eating disorder. If I were bulimic, for example, it would have helped me along tremendously.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

I do fine on those sausage rolls. To me they taste good. But, then again, every time I've gone on a healthy eating kick (five portions of fruit and veg a day) I've experienced my health rapidly slipping away until I cut back on the veg and increase the fat and sugar. I apparently *require* junk food and cheese, and about two portions of veg or fruit a day, but no more and *definitely* no wholemeal wheat bread.

Then again, my general health is appalling. It's just that it gets even worse with 'healthy' eating.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you were struck by a radioactive sausage roll as a child, or possibly had e-numbers bonded to your bones in a bizzarre medical experiment?

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

That's possible. I had been putting my ability to digest and thrive on dead pig in all its forms down to my Viking ancestry. Not to mention that Nottingham, my home city, has been a merchant centre in all of its recorded history, so I have generations of hot-dubious-meat-pie-eating to buffer me.

Ginsters sausage rolls are still better than a pot of peas and a suck of ham.