“A woman should wear fragrance wherever she expects to be kissed”-Coco Chanel
Laura Reynolds looks at some of the cheapest beauty products available
Being a vegetarian, this is problematic enough, but it’s even more of an issue when the weather suddenly gets hot and I have no desire to turn on ovens, hobs, or kettles.
But while I’m out scrounging for vegetables in the deep, dark suburbs of Osbaldwick, the fruit and veg industry elsewhere is having a field day. Possibly because it comes from fields anyway, but that’s not really the point. Bad jokes aside, the fruit and vegetable industry is a fairly essential part of our economy – we need our five a day, after all – and a lot of it is imported. 95% of fruit comes from overseas, and the same applies to about 50% of vegetables.
Additionally, once it gets here, that’s not the end of the story for your bag of salad. They have to be carted from ports and airports to every region all over the UK. According to the Big Green Switch, the levels of food we move around the UK by heavy goods lorry has gone up by 23% since 1978, and the distance travelled to get the food to your local shop has doubled in the same period. That means more CO2 emissions, and no-one wants that.
So, what other options do you have? Well, first of all, you could try growing your own vegetables. ‘Try’ being the operative word in my case – I never got very far planting my carrots seeds in the cracks of the patio when I was younger. Starting your own allotment means that once you’ve got the knack for it, you can get actual broccoli instead of the mutant kind, and you won’t have to involve planes, trains and automobiles in getting them home from the garden. I’ve also been told that it’s quite a satisfying accomplishment.
If, though, you’re like me and just don’t have the patience or skill required to nourish your own little potato or cauliflower friends, then maybe a farmer’s market is the way forward. I mentioned this last week with flowers, but it’s worth saying it again – particularly at this time of year, you’ve got to love a good market. The sun is out, everyone is dripping ice-cream all over everything, and there’s nothing better than a punnet of raspberries or strawberries when you’re wandering around town. They’re not too expensive and, undoubtedly the best part, they didn’t get here by plane.
Also, you can be absolutely sure you know what you’re eating. If you want to know how the carrots you’re buying were grown, you can ask the sellers at the stalls, and if you’ve grown them yourself, you’ll probably remember doing it. Well, I would hope you would. If you don’t, you probably have bigger things to worry about than how your rhubarb was grown. I’m fairly certain the Tesco cashier won’t know anything about where their fruit and veg are produced. Particularly not if you’re buying things that appear to only have a spurious relation to the veg in question i.e. gnarled “carrots” that just about pass as orange. Homegrown and organic has got to be an improvement, because it can hardly get worse. In this case, the grass really is greener - and better treated - on the other side.
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