Kale - good in smoothies, great on pizza. |
Now that Linda and I are ordering groceries online we have more information available to us about the products we buy. We are information junkies, so have been enjoying the additional data at our fingertips.
When researching where the local grocery store sourced their oranges, this is what we found:
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN (Oranges)Due to the nature of this product, the country of origin can vary in order to maintain availability.Your product will be sourced from one of the following countries:Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cyprus, Spain, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam or South Africa.
What? That is quite the list, which happens to include a few countries that we are not buying anything from. And the rest are really far away. Do we need oranges that bad?
We decided that we did not want to give our money to oppressive regimes, or to a wasteful, ecocidal system that throws out all common sense and efficiency in favour of profit.
So, no oranges from far away or corrupted lands.
It is not that big of a deal for us, because the kale we are growing just outside our door has more vitamin C than oranges, plus a whole bunch of other very good stuff. Just look at this writeup from a health promotion website:
In addition to twice your recommended daily intake of vitamin A and seven times the recommended amount of vitamin K, a one-cup serving of kale provides 80.4 mg of vitamin C. The nutrition powerhouse also delivers a sizeable dose of minerals and fatty acids.
And our kale is free and organic.
Plus, no shipping required. No lending our support to nasty regimes. No middlemen siphoning off profits and adding nothing. No participating in an insanely wasteful global trade situation.
Conclusion?
Kale wins!
Hi Gregg,
ReplyDeletewow, that was quite a list! One could spend every waking moment just trying to find out where things come from and how they were really produced. I had the same issue with adzuki beans. It turns out that bulk (ie not pre-packaged) adzuki beans from Mongolia or China can be sprayed with chemicals when they come into Australia and still labelled 'organic' - yep, it's a green wash. So then I spent a few weeks looking for chemical-free Australian grown beans. My solution - just eats beans I grow in future.
Here's a link to a blog post I was invited to write on a simple living blog, please delete if not deemed appropriate! In in I am talking about how to choose food that is appropriate and healthy :-)
http://alltheblueday.blogspot.com/2020/07/macrobiotics-ideal-foundation-for.html
Madeleine
Madeleine, not only is it appropriate, we LOVED reading your post on the All The Blue Day Blog (which we were already familiar with). Wow - it is filled with excellent information that is helping me answer a question I have been wondering about for a long time now, and that is, "What is the most simple, most healthy diet possible?"
DeleteWonderful. Thank you so much for leaving the link here. I would recommend all my readers to take the time to check out Madeleine's superb post. You will learn a lot that will help boost your health.
Kale is one of my favourite veg. Currently rubbing butterfly eggs off mine every morning. I need to plant a sacrifice Kale plant away from my veg plot for them to enjoy
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