Organic or local and seasonal not to mention sustainable

[Joanbunting Profile]

Which is/are important to you ? It is a bit of a dilema for many of us, especially those on tight budgets. However I also find there is a certain amount of snobbery, superiority and consequently guilt surrounding this topic.

I am considered by some to be overly fussy about the provenance of my food. I don't insist on organic though, being much more concerned with seasonal and local produce. I really care about supporting local producers. I also care about food miles so, although I have yet to see locally grown bananas and pineapples, I can choose to by fairtrade (equitable as they are known here) produce.

I like to know where the meat I eat comes from and how it has been produced. I am passionate about sustainable fish stocks and for that reason am buying more frozen fish because there is only one local fish supplier who can verify the provenance of their fish

We grow our own vegetables and keep hens , all more or less organically, but we don't boast about that. We just enjoy the eggs and veg. Most of the wines grown round these parts are organic by reason of climate but it is not often labelled as such.

Your thoughts please?

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I am more concerned abbot seasonal, local, sustainable on the whole than organic

Though of course I like lemons, bananas, and wine from far-flung places so food miles aren't the be-all and end-all

And as far as animal foods are concerned, I am more worried about high welfare than organic, as clearly are many people; as previously noted I am amused by UK shops that label their eggs FREE RANGE Organic, although of course the standard for organic eggs means that unless free range they can't be certified organic.

[Alexandria Profile]

Joan Bunting,


I do agree with you regarding, where my meat, eggs, fish, poultry, veggies and fruits and dairy products are sourced or where they come from and yes, we do buy local, substainable grown or raised from the La Mercat de La Boqueria or local farms and dairies a bit north and natural or bio as it is called here, and my dad, husband and sons fish up the northern coast of Costa Brava. We do not buy farmed fish or shellfish..




The main problems are packaged goods, such as bleached white flour, bleached white sugar, anything industrialised on a large corporate scale, which have transgenetic chemicals or ingredients in them .. Many of these products including packaged bread have transgenetics or Gmos in them and thus, I buy only natural or organic products ..



Have a lovely holiday season ..

[jeral Profile]

In "me" terms, I'd like all food I buy to be good and wholesome - who wouldn't?

In big picture terms, there are questions that are difficult to answer, e.g.

- Should arable farm land be given over to raising food to feed animals and more land to house them if not to be housed in high density "factories", rather than raising grain to feed people?
- Ditto re arable land given over to growing bio fuel grains?
- Should every scrap of arable land be used such that fields can never lie fallow, and due to multi-cropping needs chemicals (as well as crop pesticides) that will lead to "dry earth" contaminated dust instead of good soil?
- How long can we destroy our seas before the balance of nature is so disturbed from pollutants and overfishing, dredging etc, as to change completely what even survives in the sea?

It would be great if everyone insisted on buying (and could afford) the "good stuff", but would there be enough to go round? Factory farming and huge fields minus hedgerows was partly due to cost, efficiency and profit, but also to meet ballooning need and want that can't be ignored. If all such were scrapped, they'd have to be replaced with something giving equal food output given the rising world population.

A magic wand is urgently needed as what we do or want individually won't change much in this corporate globalised world.

[Badger's Mate Profile]

Rather like the issue of plastic pollution, it's a complicated business with many considerations. It's only simple if a blinkered and dogmatic view is taken. The best anyone can do is appraise themselves of the details and do what action they are comfortable with, not getting in a tizz about it and (certainly) not lecturing others.

We're lucky to have local producers; get our meat from local farms, or butchers who source locally. We grow most of our own fruit and veg without pesticides, but of course we have tea, coffee, bananas and avocadoes, spices and many other things that have to be imported. We only buy strawberries and asparagus from local farms in season. At the moment we're buying clementines; if making a cake into which the whole fruit goes, I buy organic, similarly if using lemons for peel. Happy to buy organic stuff, especially animal products because of the welfare standards, but am not insistent upon it.

[Joanbunting Profile]

I think there is perhaps some confusion with Spanish, French and indeed English meanings of Bio.

In France bio always refers to organic. What is called bio fuel in English would be called ecco here.

Because i don't like the way most sugar avaikable in French supermarkets is made I tend to buy bio, equitable (fair trade) which is cane sugar rather than beet. You only have to
drive past some of the huge sugar refineries further north the smell the reason for not being happy using it!

[Alexandria Profile]

Joan Bunting,

Bio here is natural or ecological and is "on protected lands" with the Protocol of grass grazing and cage free ..

Organic is more restrictive and is predominately sold in specialty departments or specialty shops, such as Health Food Stores, in English and are quite a bit higher in price. Government Department of Agriculture Controlled ..

All foods are labelled here, and state "no transgenéticos" = No Gmos if they are not Gmos. They are also completely labelled to each and every ingredient as well ..


Joan: Yes, I agree about the sugar .. Definitely ..

Have a lovely holiday .. Back to work now ..

[jeral Profile]

Interestingly re sugar, this weekend I kept coming across "Florida Crystals" in US recipes, so maybe cane sugar is gaining popularity.

[mark111757 Profile]

Jeral

This might help some

https://www.floridacrystals.com/products

Walmart and .com carry some of the stuff


https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=f ... 20crystals

[Rainbow Profile]

Because i don't like the way most sugar avaikable in French supermarkets is made I tend to buy bio, equitable (fair trade) which is cane sugar rather than beet. You only have to
drive past some of the huge sugar refineries further north the smell the reason for not being happy using it!

I think all our sugar in Aust. is cane sugar - huge quantities are grown in Queensland and they also export a lot - so I never think about it's origins.
Mind you, thinking of food miles it's a long way from North Queensland to the South - about 3,000k - so it isn't very good in that regard!

[jeral Profile]

Thanks very much mark111757. It looks like it costs about twice as much as ordinary refined granulated sugar here, although it would be a lot dearer once shipped here as those "neck" bottles/shakers and pouches would be lousy for best utilisation of space in a shipping container, unless brought in in bulk and bottled here. It probably already is, but as I don't eat sugar (like 4lbs lasts me a year) I don't know a darned thing about it.

We have some Agave liquid in the cupboard and it is staggeringly sweet to me. I know there's a sort of Scoville scale of perception of sweetness by which artificial sweeteners like aspartame tend to taste sweeter, so maybe cane sugar as a whole tastes sweeter than refined so less is needed.

@ Rainbow: How generally are goods transported across long distances within in Australia?

[Joanbunting Profile]

Alexandra,

We have to smile everytime we drive into town. There is a large plaque on each road in declaring it to be an OGM free zone. How this can be ensured is not clear.

When I worked for a local authority in the UK they declared themselves a nuclear free zone. Unfortunately the circular logo on the official paper informed the world it was an unclear free zone - which was much nearer the truth.

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

I leave absolutely everything in the hands of the supermarket.
I shop mostly at Waitrose.

And feel they are pretty sound.

[Alexandria Profile]

@ Joan Bunting,


Cataluna is burning many of these unwanted Gmos / transgenetics ..

The Basque Country has outlawed the growth of Gmos as Mallorca as well and the 7 Canary Islands ..

Hungary is on a war path and has burnt uncountable Gmo plots of land ..

The Czek Republic as well ..

Russia forbids it 1.000 % ..

So, this is surely a war on our world´s food supply ..

India has also rejected this method of farming .. They had uncountable farmers dying from these Gmos ..

Truly a horror ..

Have a lovely day ..

[Stokey Sue Profile]

A few points
Sugar refineries stink, all of them even small scale ones, it is intrinsicto the process. On the other hand the smell of catalytic hydrogenation of oils to make margarine explains why I never ate the stuff, even before they told us about trans fats (I do use fats made from unhardened oils for baking sometimes; the trouble there is avoiding unsustainable palm oil )

Bleaching flour or sugar has been illegal in the UK and EU for a long time, but (much like labelling organic eggs as free range) the producers of artisan or organic flours tend to label their products unbleached and recipe writers don't seem to have noticed. David (Dan Lepard's partner) explained this on the old BBC board once when someone was askinng about unbleached flour as a recipe specified it; I hadn't been aware of it until then.

I am lucky enough to have the UK's only 100% organic farmer's market just near here, and will buy my Christmas veg there on Saturday. However it's worth noting that the wonderful organic butchers went broke, they farmed and butchered the meat, doing both well. Not people just couldn't or wouldn't pay the extra cost compared to the High Street and supermarket butchers, they did well here but couldn't make enough money through put the week.

I'm glad we have cleared up the Bio / Organic / Eco terminology, it was worrying me a bit!

Edited to remove some spell checker abuse - unhardened owls anyone?

[Rainbow Profile]

@ Rainbow: How generally are goods transported across long distances within in Australia?

By road in trucks and also some in freight trains.

There are also 'Road trains' which are like semi-trailers but with more trailers attached - they can be up to 50metres long!! They are mainly on outback roads - not in the more populated areas. Quite scary for ordinary cars on the same road and a nightmare to over-take!!

[Badger's Mate Profile]

Bleaching flour or sugar has been illegal in the UK and EU for a long time, but (much like labelling organic eggs as free range) the producers of artisan or organic flours tend to label their products unbleached and recipe writers don't seem to have noticed. David (Dan Lepard's partner) explained this on the old BBC board once when someone was askinng about unbleached flour as a recipe specified it; I hadn't been aware of it until then.

I wasn't aware of this until yesterday!

Interestingly, Redbournbury Mill white flour - sold as unbleached - is less white than normal white flour. Whether a marketing ploy or just inefficient sieving is anyone's guess

[Alexandria Profile]

@Badger,

Unbleached flour is not snow white ..

It is an "off white" extremely pale pale icy beige wheat color ..


Have a lovely lovely holiday ..

[Stokey Sue Profile]

The colour will depend on the extraction rate, as Badger's Mate says, how much of the offal (not just the bran but also the germ) is sieved out in the boulting process, also I suspect on the actual variety of wheat used

[Badger's Mate Profile]

@ Alexandria,

Happy Christmas to you too, and everyone else here, for that matter.

My point was that normal white flour in the UK is white, but is unbleached, as I have just discovered.

The stuff I use from my local(ish) flour mill in Ponders End, using modern roller mills, is white, whereas the one I buy from the local(ish) watermill in Hertfordshire is pale beige, probably for the reasons Sue mentioned.