My inner conflict arises when I go grocery shopping to a supermarket.
First I would carry the shopping basket to where bread is. I usually pick the organic wholemeal bread. Then I would move to look for some fresh fruit. Gala apples from France or cox apples grown in UK? Cox, definitely. Fairtrade bananas or Organic bananas? I usually buy fairtrade bananas. Chocolate is easy. I always buy Green&Black's fairtrade organic chocolate which tastes so good. A little bit tough decisions to make await in the tea and coffee section. Fairtrade or organic? Actually, I just want good Assam tea and dark roasted Brazilian or Guatemalan coffee, to be honest.
When I shop for shoes or clothing, I can get it done in 10 minutes. I hop into my favourite shop, look around, pick some, try them on and buy if I like any and don't if I don't.
But food shopping consists of so many things. Is it fresh? Is it organic? Is it ethical? Is it affordable?
At a charity shop, I recently noticed the little fridge sitting next to the till and the cartons of orange juice in it. It's fairtrade, of course, but it is from Cuba.
Orange juice from Cuba? Can't they sell it to nearby developed country like the USA?
“Cuba can't do business at all with America.” my husband tells me.
Okay, then how about Canada?
“Do you know how far it is from Cuba to Canada?(Slight disgust on his face) I think it's faster to ship orange juice from Cuba to Europe. Do you have a world map?”
Never mind, I say. I try to picture a world map without placing Japan in the center but I can only imagine big five chunks and everything else is blurry.
But you do agree that it's faster and more ecological to get orange juice from Spain or somewhere, if not locally sourced, than importing concentrate orange juice from Cuba, don't you? He agrees.
I'd like to support fairtrade products when I can but it's tricky sometimes. If it's things like bananas or chocolate, I would buy fairtrade products. Even better if it's fairtrade and organic. But when it comes to orange juice, my priority vote has to go to reducing food miles because I think the global warming is the biggest problem on the planet at the moment.
I try to get fruit, veges and meat from a local green grocer and a butcher as much as I can.
My husband and I make 30-minute trips on foot to these shops carrying our own shopping bags.
The veges and meat they sell may not be as cheap as supermarkets' "value" food but reasonable and fresh, as they are almost all locally sourced. No herbs from the West Bank. And I am sure they are "fairly traded" with the farmers unlike the ones in some supermarkets.
Shopping this way seems to work best, quality-wise, ethics-wise and foodmiles-wise.
