Destination Anywhere

Last weekend, I had a couple of hours to myself. I used this time to go to the supermarket. Now, you might well argue that this is a stupid thing to do with precious little time to myself. By rights, I should have been swanning around the garden looking glamorous or attempting through massage to remove the massive knots now ever-present in my shoulders.


But I went to the supermarket. I was there for over an hour. I spent $300.


Believe it or not, this lengthy trip to the marche had been some time in the planning. Apart from the fact it was getting hard to justify not buying a new can opener, I also wanted to interrogate the labels of things that I either regularly buy or intended to buy. How much sugar is in that tomato sauce*? Which cordial has the highest fruit juice content? Which fruit juice is hiding vegetables in it? Do I really believe Ribena's claims to now be as chock full of Vitamin C as any other drink? Why can't I think of non-beverage examples?

Really though, my main source of disgruntlement motivated by my increasing concern about "food miles". Being astute about the distance your food has travelled before entering your shopping trolley is an increasingly popular way of taking personal responsibility for carbon emissions. My SiL recently said she had stopped buying the most fantastically lip-smackingly beautiful Danish butter. Her reason? "Whoa, check out the food miles on that sucker!".

So as I pushed my trolley around, I looked for foods that haven't travelled that far to get to me. Now there are some inherent problems here. The first is that I was shopping at a major chain store. This means that I'm going to get the produce they buy on a national scale, which in all likelihood has not come from, say, the apple farms down the road. However, I have also discovered that even our local greengrocer is a little guarded about the source of their produce. I resolved to rethink my fruit and veg shopping and stick to non-perishables.

I started in the organic aisle. I didn't stay there for very long, because while organic food might be as great as all get out, I was immediately hit with a new quandary: in a battle to the bitter end, should locally produced food triumph over organic content? Much of what was available in the organics aisle was imported, from significant distances, and I wasn't sure what to make of that. I bought a couple of things (100 per cent fruit chews, for example) and then moved into the remainder of the aisles.

I learned some very interesting things. For example, I discovered that the only tinned tomatoes made wholly from Australian tomatoes (that were available that day) are canned by Ardmona. I was about to eschew the French jam I would normally buy in preference for one named after a small town in North East Victoria. Then I discovered that despite its name, it uses "imported ingredients". Buggered if I know where they come from, so back on the shelf it went. And let's not even start on peanut butter. Can you see now why I didn't do this with a five-year-old in tow**?

Another reason I didn't do that particular shop with Grizzlewick is the fact that, well, he is somewhat fussy. I'm not talking "tantrums in the aisle because Mum bought Ardmona", but he has particular tastes. Some of these are distinctly food-mile unfriendly. Watermelon in the off-season, for example. Bananas post-cyclone. What's worth more - the inevitable death of the planet, or Grizzlewick eating a meal without complaint***?


At drinks that evening, one of my friends pointed out that there is a new "virtually direct to the public" meat outlet in our town. Well, the food miles on that gear must be low, so I resolved to check it out. And came up with a new quandary for myself. The outlet in question is a notoriously bad employer. In a "bye hon, looking forward to seeing who we can borrow money from this week to supplement your horrendously inadequate wage, and hope you don't die at work!" kind of way. What is my responsibility here? Do I continue with my refusal to buy from that producer, knowing how they treat their staff? Or do I put global issues first, and buy the locally produced product?


And while we're on the subject, what about Fair Trade products? Does it matter if the coffee I buy has winged its way several thousand kilometres to get to me? How do I balance my responsibility to emerging markets in which people are trying desperately to claw their way out of poverty, with my desire to be ethical about the environmental costs of food production? We're already paying more to buy Fair Trade items, in recognition of the need for people in emerging economies to earn a living wage. Would we be happy to whack another two dollars onto the price of a block of chocolate if we knew our environmental concerns were also being met through carbon neutralisation?


I'm well aware that this is, at least in some ways, a privileged conversation to be having with myself. While I did wince at the additional cost of some of the items I bought last week, the reality is I can afford to meet those costs. If was earning $20,000 a year and supporting a family of four, my decisions regarding food might be a lot simpler. But why is this fair? Why should environmental sustainability (or subsidising a reasonable standard of living for developing nations) be beyond the reach of people who don't earn as much money?

Anyone who can give me a formula to decode these myriad competing lefty priorities will become my new muse.

And in answer to Big Fromage's question about whether or not vegetarians can consume the placenta of their recently born child - straw poll of mothers I know tells me that many do, but also in thinking about it, I realised....

......"whoa, the food miles on that sucker must be.....non-existent"

* In case you're wondering, the answer is "heaps".



** And no, I didn't apply this level of CSI-style evidence gathering to M and M minis. On some days they are my only saviour, and I'm happy to carbon trade to keep them in my trolley.

*** This is a question I prefer not to ask after 6:30pm at night, because at that particular time, I know the answer.