Vote with your food

Calling you - yes, you - to vote with your food! Where is your food vote going at the moment? Inform yourself about what you are putting in your mouth - not only for nature's sake, but also for the sake of your and your loved ones' health and quality of life. What exactly are you supporting when you are buying your food? Dig deeper, past the greenwash if there is any. (I for one will be contacting Sainsbury's to ask them about their sourcing for their organic produce.)

Nobody puts the power that is in our hands - or rather, our mouths and stomachs (!) - into words any better than my oft-quoted favourite author Carolyn Steel:

"How food shapes our lives in the future is up to us. Whoever you are and wherever you live, we can make choices that together would make an enormous cumulative difference.

• We can choose to eat ethically.
• Protect the countryside by 'eating the view'.

(Talking about landscapes - check out 'foodscape artist' Carl Warner's amazing photographs: http://www.carlwarner.com/foodscapes/.)

• Demand transparency in the food chain.
• Eat less meat and fish, and pay more for it when we do.
• Support local farmers through box schemes, farmers' markets, or community-supported agriculture.
• Buy from our local food shops if we are lucky enough still to have them.
• Talk to shopkeepers about food; let them know we care.
• Demand that whoever we buy our food from, whether local grocers or supermarkets, they source their food ethically on our behalf.
• Get political about food. Demand government action.
• Learn to read food labels.
• Cook more.
• Invite our friends over for dinner. Get invited back.
• Eat with our kids. Buy them baby frying-pans* for Christmas.
• Teach them to cook.
• Enjoy food more.
• Dig up the back garden.
• Start composting. [...]

Our legacy to those who inherit the earth will be determined by how we eat now - their future lies in our knives and forks and fingers."

*(preferably not plastic!)

Source: Steel, Carolyn "Hungry City: how food shapes our lives", Vintage, 2009, p.323-324