Your Local Food and Drink Producers
Supporting Local Food Producers Deborah Monshin With restrictions on travel and many businesses closed, our dependency on supermarkets is at an all-time high. But now could be the perfect opportunity to support our local businesses as they adapt to click and collect, takeaway or delivery practises in the struggle to survive.
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t's certainly easy to sit in a cosy chair, click a few dozen buttons, and by the miracle of modern technology, our food rolls up in a chilled van a few days later. Hurrah! I'm all for simplicity, but what is the price on our health and local economy? It's time to give something back to our community, support the local shops, farm shops, and produce markets as much as possible and continue to support them when they open as usual. I have been very disappointed with the quality of supermarket fruit and veg for some now. A classic example is a Savoy
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cabbage. The large deep dark green, vitamin-rich outer leaves are perfect steamed, served with a little salted butter and black pepper. But wait, when did you last see a Savoy cabbage at a supermarket with the large dark green leaves? I can’t remember. What passes as a Savoy cabbage, nowadays, is a pathetic pale leaved little thing. So what's happened? The sorry little cabbage in the supermarket is old, so the dark green vitamin-rich leaves have been removed as they've deteriorated, leaving the heart of the cabbage. It's not news that the fruit and vegetables in our supermarkets have been
sprayed with wax, injected, chilled, and buffed to keep it 'looking' fresh and inviting (and to a lesser extent, fish and meat). But the glossy looking apples are just a show. The only benefit of buying fruit and veg from a supermarket is that we have access to foods outside our seasonal varieties, and everything is under one roof. But supermarket produce is often picked before they are ripe, which results in a loss of nutrients. Produce has travelled halfway around the world and is kept in cold storage long before it appears on the shelves, which is appalling for the environment. So much edible food is rejected to conform to strict size and
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