Shop light, feel light

Spot the needle!

Today*, I cycled for food. Today was the perfect day for it; not too hot or cold, the scent of flowering trees and bushes in the air, a light breeze, freshly cut grass... fresh spring green all around me. Today, the dreaded weekly supermarket trip was transformed into a needle in a haystack in terms of its significance in my day.

The dilemmas of an ethical consumer

The dilemmas are coming out of my ears at the moment. So where to start? Perhaps I will warm up with a little of my story:

Although I have always been aware of what I have bought, and was brought up and grew up with a very environmentally conscious mindset, the last few years have seen my ethics become a whole lot stricter - in a non-anthropocentric sense. As members of our community that is all nature on this planet, I am convinced that each of us human beings has the duty to do our best to appreciate and respect what nature has gifted us with. This gift is the basic building block of everything, which I believe, in moral terms, is life (and I don't mean only human life).

So the latest opportunity to become more ethical, to align my actions more closely with my principles, arose when we sold our car. What an act of liberation! But soon reality hits you: living in middle class suburbia, this so-called 'loss of mobility' immediately presents you with a challenge. Yes, gone are a gazillion car-related worries (in the UK these consist of: road tax, petrol costs, annual MOT testing, unnecessary repairs, cleaning the car - honestly, I have problems enough cleaning my flat! Who wants to have to clean a car in addition?! -, insurance etc etc.) BUT "hello" to a whole host of different challenges, mainly consisting of: how do I do my household shopping ... without breaking my back? It's even more difficult for me, with my ethical conscience looming over me as big as... well, a very big thing. How do I shop ethically without breaking the bank and without having to spend half my spare time on it (by going to one shop to buy my potatoes, and to another in a different part of town to buy my butter)?

What's in a "foodie"?

Having thought a lot about whether I might be called a "foodie", and feeling uncomfortable about being labelled as such, I started thinking about why I feel uncomfortable with the term and what it really means (to me).

I think it is safe to say that when we think of a "foodie", we think of somebody who is almost obsessed with great food, who has the level of interest and takes the time to learn about it, often going to great lengths and expense to get their hands on top quality ingredients, to cook and/or enjoy (and probably be served) a tasty meal. Nothing wrong with that. There are worse things to be obsessed with! However, as implied above, it is inevitable that a foodie is normally comparatively well-off and, let's be honest, a bit of a "food snob" (which is probably a term that requires its own analysis!). There will always be dishes that a foodie will not touch or places that a foodie will not eat at, because it would literally be a sign of "bad taste". And this is precisely what bothers me about the term. The term "foodie" is in itself, firstly, exclusive, and secondly, narrow-minded. My aim here is therefore to make a particular point related to the "democratisation" of food. Bear with me while I explain...

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.

Blindness, absurdity and meta-economics

No hear, no see, no speak

Blindness

Blindness to the true human condition - even within ourselves - is amplified by the doom and gloom coming from our media and our politicians:

We all constantly hear in the news how high street sales etc have gone down, and how terrible this is for an economy that is (still) in recession. "We hope that sales will pick up soon!" And then, we will all be happier, will we?! Okaaay...

On food, (super)markets, streets, and smell & co.

Is the local market dead?

I got very excited about some of the passages I read today in one my favourite books, which I have already mentioned previously - "Hungry City: How food shapes our lives" by Carolyn Steel. So I decided to share a "flavour" of it here...

.... on markets:

"Borough [market] feels odd because it exists in a country that has lost touch with its food culture - where the vast majority of us do most of our shopping in supermarkets. [...] Borough is not really about buying food at all, it is about celebrating it. [...]

At Borough, food has become an end in itself. It has become fetishised, as if it were invested with some cathartic power to transform lives. The people who come here, although plainly enjoying themselves, seem to be searching for something more: for roots, for meaning, for salvation, even. [...]