Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] from Britain: Help! I’m food confused

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] from Britain: Help! I’m food confused
  • Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:22:21 -0600


Help! I’m food confused
Organic, free range, fair trade – arghhh! The weekly shop has turned into
a nightmare for the conscientious consumer. Lucas Hollweg tries to make
sense of it all

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/art

icle2079701.ece
Lucas Hollweg July 22, 2007

There’s this organic carrot, and it’s doing my head in. It’s a nice
carrot, as carrots go: fat, orange, with feathery green tufts on top. It
has lived a blameless life in a field of joy, innocent of pesticides and
artificial fertilisers. And now, here it is in the supermarket, rooting me
on to take it home.

Only, here’s the thing: the carrot is from Israel. That’s nearly 2,500
miles away. If I buy it, I will take on its carbon footprint, garnishing
every mouthful with the greenhouse gas that it has splurged into the
atmosphere to be here today.

Can I live with that? Does the carrot’s organic worthiness trump the fact
that it is has amassed more air miles than an MP on an international
fact-finding mission? Or should I let it rot for thoughtlessly contributing
to the destruction of the planet?

You see my problem. I’m food confused. And not just about vegetables.
Fruit, meat, dairy – these days, everything is fraught with ethical
complications. If I tried to follow all of them, I’d end up an
oxygenarian – one of those people who eat nothing but air. The “good”
food choices have proliferated like salmonella in an Edwina Currie egg –
organic, Fairtrade, locally grown, free range, boutique, the Leaf mark, Red
Tractor, Freedom Food, farm assured – some important, others just
marketing spin. How am I meant to know what comes first in the pecking
order?

Some choices are straightforward. Processed food clearly puts you on the
fast track to hell. As for animal welfare, I won’t eat anything that
hasn’t had weekly spa treatments. But organic? I used to think it was a
no-brainer: good for the planet (no energy wasted on fertilisers and
pesticides); good for the soil (it works with nature, rather than against
it); good for the creatures that inhabit furrow and field (livestock,
wildlife, farmers). It is also, arguably, good for us.

But when food miles enter the equation, organic quickly loses its halo.
Getting an organic New Zealand apple from the tree to your lunchbox
releases 235 times as much carbon as it saves. How depressing is that? And
that’s before you even think about seasonality. We shouldn’t be eating
apples in June, but we have turned luxuries into necessities, demanding
strawberries in midwinter and nectarines in spring.

Of course, there are some things (citrus fruit, pineapples, bananas) that
don’t grow in Britain, and I would be the last to suggest we could do
without them. I’m also not sure I could survive without spices, olives,
tea and coffee. But there have to be limits, such as not flying blueberries
from Chile in December. And where do food miles and seasonality leave fair
trade? Supporting Ethiopian coffee growers is one thing, but should we
really be importing pears from South Africa, however benevolent our
intentions?

Home-grown is no less problem-filled: your Isle of Wight tomatoes were
probably grown in a greenhouse that burns more energy than a Chinese power
station, and that supermarket potato has been taken by lorry to the other
end of the country to be washed and packed. Sometimes it seems as if
supermarkets set traps for unwary ecoshoppers. You know those fruit and veg
packets with a picture of a happy supplier on the front – farmer Ted from
Hampshire with his organic fruit? Turns out they aren’t always from his
farm at all. Sometimes they aren’t even from his country.

Still, at least you know where you are with meat and dairy. Stick to
organic and free range, and you can’t go wrong. Except that farm animals
happen to be huge contributors to global warming. A field of farting cows
produces enough centrally heated methane to drown out the sound of the
icecaps crumbling. Then there’s all the packaging, the energy-hungry
refrigeration, the distance between farm, slaughterhouse and supermarket
depot.

A brilliant book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by the American journalist
Michael Pollan, poses this dilemma: “When you can eat everything, what do
you choose to eat?” Pollan works his way along the different food chains
in the States, from the longest (which stretches from the cornfields of the
Midwest through intensive cattle farming and processing plants to the
fast-food outlets that blight every town and city in the country) to the
shortest – a modern hunter-gathering mission in northern California, on
which he shoots his own wild boar, harvests morels in the hills, picks
cherries from the streets of San Francisco and makes bread with wild yeast
captured from the air. In between, there is “big” organic –
operations such as the American organic supermarket Whole Foods Market –
and small-scale organic, local growers supplying local people and local
businesses. The hunter-gathering wins hands down, although Pollan admits
it’s not that practical on a daily basis. Local organic comes a close
second.

Pollan has thought about what he eats; he has looked at the contradictions
and worked out what matters. It’s probably pretty similar to what most of
us want – food that tastes good and makes us happy, without troubling
either our conscience or our health. The difference is that he has done
something about it. We can blame the supermarkets and producers, but
ultimately the responsibility for what we eat lies with us. The choices are
confusing, and there is no perfect solution. But the worst thing we can do
is do nothing.

There is a movement in America called the Locavores – people who eat,
wherever possible, a diet harvested within a 100-mile radius (in cities,
we’re talking farmers’ markets, allotments, small shops that prioritise
local producers). Locavores have a mantra: “If not locally produced, then
organic. If not organic, then family farm. If not family farm, then local
business. If not local business, then fair trade.” I would add a line at
the beginning: “If not local organic, then locally produced.” But
I’ve decided the Locavore code of priorities is going to be my way
through the food confusion.

That Israeli carrot will just have to go home with someone else.

WHAT IT ALL MEANS

A ‘GOOD’ FOOD JARGON BUSTER

ORGANIC

Crops are grown without conventional insecticides and artificial
fertilisers. Poultry and livestock are raised without the use of growth
hormones and with only limited use of antibiotics. There are also strict
welfare controls. It takes at least two years for a farmer to get organic
certification, which in Britain is awarded predominantly by the Soil
Association. The downside? Research suggests that organic food may be no
better nutritionally than nonorganic, although the jury is still out on the
hidden health benefits of chemical-free farming.

FREE RANGEApplies to meat, poultry and eggs. At best, it means animals are
allowed to roam free and graze as they would naturally. In practice,
free-range chickens can experience anything from a blissful existence
grubbing in the soil to a life crammed in a barn with thousands of other
birds, with only an occasional foray into the open air. In Britain, the
main stipulation is that a free-range chicken must have continuous daytime
access to open-air runs during at least half its life. Too vague to be
totally trustworthy.

FREEDOM FOOD

Set up by the RSPCA, Freedom Food is all about animal welfare. It applies
to eggs, meat, poultry, fish and dairy. All farm animals under the Freedom
Food scheme must be reared according to strictly monitored RSPCA standards
covering every stage of an animal’s life, from how it is fed to how it is
slaughtered.

FAIRTRADE

Covers everything from fruit, coffee and tea to spices and wine. Awarded to
products that guarantee fair pay and conditions to workers in the
developing world, as well as supporting smallholder cooperatives. Ethically
right on, but heavy on the food miles.

LEAF

Stands for Linking Environment and Farming. Not organic, but promotes
environmentally aware and sustainable farming, whether in the UK or abroad.
Clear-sighted about the dilemma involved in supporting developing-world
farmers, but also an enthusiastic supporter of local producers.

RED TRACTOR

Run by Assured Food Standards, the Red Tractor applies to meat, fruit, veg,
flour, sugar and dairy. Representing everyone from farmers to retailers, it
aims to raise standards in British farming, from hygiene and safety to
animal welfare and the environment. However, it scores poorly against the
animal-welfare measures of the animal-rights group Compassion in World
Farming.






  • [Livingontheland] from Britain: Help! I’m food confused, TradingPostPaul, 07/25/2007

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page