I'm curious...how many of you make a conscious effort to buy Canadian when it comes to your grocery shopping? Even when it costs more? I know that, in my case, potatoes are, in order of preference...PEI, Quebec, Ontario and, oh wait..I don't touch American potatoes. Looks like rice again!
Less so lately but good reminder.
You might add "how many buy organic".
I noticed the organic prices are getting pretty close tho I ust admit organic bananas would take some explaining to me. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
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I make the attempt to buy local whenever I can. My ex managed the deli at a health food store- we'd eat organic all the time. Very hard for me to go back to chemically mangled foods now.
Every time I buy something, whether it be groceries, clothes, building supplies [doing a lot of renovations] etc.
In Powell River we have to be diligent with the stuff we buy, Safeway is the worst for dumping Canadian Products for U.S. made. But then Safeway is american, so what else is new!. My wife and I usually end up laughing our heads off at the prices they ask, especially for fruit from the US [usually double compared to local] . We will drive out of our way to get local produce or anything made locally even at the Open Air Market. Not the best way to stop using fossil fuels, but here in Powell River some farms are a good distance away.
If it doesn't say "Made in Canada" it usually isn't worth buying [unless it's the only thing you can find!]
OH! by the way, for those of you who buy Organic produce from Mexico or anywhere in South America, it NOT!
I worked with a lady that moved up here from Paraguay and we ended up talking about this very thing. One of the reasons she and her family moved up here was because of the corruption between farmers and Inspectors. The farmers would pay the Inspectors to turn a blind eye, having the "Certified Organic" label is lucrative for them.
I always try to buy Canadian products - food or otherwise. It's easier in the summer because I go to the local farmer's market for most of my food. While we're here, wasn't the clothing store Roots supposed to be all Canadian gear originally? All their stuff seems to be made in China these days.
I recall watching so-called "organic coffee" being grown in Colombia when I lived there. They sprayed the same sort of horribble stuff on the same plants each day...and birds actually fell out of the SKY when they did...and then when they were ready to harvest, they shoveled half of the beans into bags that said "Nabob" and half of it into bags that said "Certified Organic". What a crock!
People in North America are soooo terribly naieve about this sort of thing that it makes my teeth hurt. [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img]
When I eat organic food, I darn well KNOW it's organic because I grew it myself right here on the farm. Or bought it from one of my neighbors who also chooses to use no chemicals because THEY also care about what they eat and drink.
I only spend about fifty bucks a month at the local supermarket. Mostly for soap and cat food.
And less than that if I've been out fishing lately.
City life must be...how do I put this..."challenging". To say the least.
Bannanas are picked green...very green and then gassed with ethyline gas to ripen them to various degrees of ripeness in order to manage shelf life. A large grocery chain will have their own ripening chambers at their distribution center and import bananas either in temperature controlled containers or palletised by the truck load.
Think about the cycle. The bananas are picked, packed in boxes, palletised, stored and then put on a ship. The ship then travels to a port in the US and gets offloaded --either it's containerised or its bulk. The bananas then sit for a while --still green. They then get loaded on to trucks or the containers get picked up and delivered to a place for ripening. Temperature control is crucial throughout this whole process. The whole load must maintain a temperature of 57-58 degrees otherwise the ripening process will not produce uniform results.
The green bananas you'd buy at your local grocery store have already been gassed, but the process was limited to increase the shelf life due to natural ripening.
All bananas are treated in this way and I'd imagine the same goes for the so called "organic" ones.
Tomatoes are gassed as well.
Enjoy!
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Definitely. We buy local produce first, then stuff from elsewhere in Canada. We buy organic for certain things (lettuce, broccoli etc). How about meat- chicken/pork? Are people buying grain-fed? We are now grinding our own meat because there are too many horror stories about what really goes into ground beef
Bananas are an interesting case. When I lived in South America I was dazzled by the sheer variety of different bananas that were available down there. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
And most of them are sold with lots of black spots all over the outside skin and a withered top stem. That's how you tell if they're ripe (and sweet).
Nobody down there would ever buy a unripe green banana. Tree-ripened is sooo much sweeter, too.
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