While some aspects of being a consumer are optional, we've all gotta EAT. And unless you're lucky enough to be completely self-sufficient in a 'good-life' style small holding, taking a few minutes to think about the impact your food choices have on our environment, local economy, local agriculture, third world farmers, health & local communities can go a long way to building a sustainable lifestyle.

Here are some of the main things to consider when choosing your sustainable supper ...

(This is just for starters, if you'll pardon the pun, more info, yummy recipes & local suppliers all coming soon!)

Food Miles

WHERE? However yummy a kiwi fruit & strawberry salad in the middle of winter might sound, check to see how far it has travelled to end up in your tummy! A kiwi fruit from New Zealand will produce up to 10 times its weight in carbon emissions to get to you. Not such an appealling thought now. If you choose LOCAL & SEASONAL food your personal impact on climate change will significantly improve, immediately. If there are some things you can't live without just yet, give yourself a limit, Spain is a good one, and try for a month to buy nothing from beyond that limit. That way you can still get tomatoes in winter & oranges all year round, but avoid the carbon emissions from importing these items from Israel or South Africa!

Production Methods 

HOW? The next thing to think about is how your food is produced. Intensive farming methods can have a devastating impact on the environment & local economies. Always, always choose free range eggs & poultry & look for ORGANIC produce where possible. The trade-off here can sometimes be the choice between local or organic. A local farmers' market will often have a much wider range of local organic produce than a supermarket. Is buying 'organic' mange tout from a country like Zimbabwe, where there is known to be slave labour used on some of the 'organic' farms which supply major supermarket chains, really worth it? Also remember that there are very different standards employed in different countries for what counts as 'organic', and the more local a product is, the more you can be confident that the 'organic' label means what it says on the tin (or packet, or whatever!).

WHO? If you're buying a product which we can't produce in the UK or Ireland, then always choose a FAIRTRADE brand (but please see our rant on Nestle before being fooled by tokenism from multinationals!). Fairtrade means that the farmers who produce the raw ingredients are not kept in poverty by the crippling buying power of western nations. Fairtrade farmers are normally small-scale co-operatives, so do not use intensive farming methods.

Retailer Behaviour

FROM WHOM? Where you choose to spend your money can make the biggest difference. Just because all major supermarket chains now stock a token amount of local, organic & fairtrade produce DOES NOT make them an ethical choice! Your local economy is suffering because so many of us think that buying more than we need at artificially low prices is convenient. Choose your local farmers' market, independent retailers, or local food co-ops for as much of your shopping as possible. Supermarket shoppers will throw out about 20% of what they buy, which creates more waste, greenhouse gases from food stuffs in landfill sites, and increases the crippling buying power of the big chains. Shopping locally may cost a few extra pence, but you probably spend that in fuel driving to your out of town supermarket & on things you didn't need anyway!

Health & Nutrition

WHAT? Avoid processed food, anything that needs 5 layers of packaging to prevent you seeing what you're buying, and anything that has an ingredients list so long you need a magnifying glass to read & a degree in chemistry to understand. You want healthy, nutritious, REAL food so you can live to a ripe old age and annoy your children properly. A processed meal here & there is not going to kill you, but a diet high in salt, fat, refined sugars and artificial anything is not a good idea.