Guilt

Lunch, something most of us eat daily, contains limitless opportunities to make the wrong choice.  There’s the calories issue, a thorny debate that’s plagued us for decades.  If I skip lunch, I feel oh so noble but oh so hungry.  This leads to a gorge fest at around 6 pm, so guilt catches up anyway.  My theory used to be to eat chocolate and get the calorie guilt over early, the alternative being to fight the cravings all day, then lose the battle in the evening, going to bed feeling both ill and guilt-ridden.  

There’s another problem with chocolate: fair-trade.  It’s difficult to enjoy a luscious chocolate treat, knowing it’s a product of slave labour[1].  More and more coffee shops are making it easy to buy fair-trade coffee and tick that box for noble choices; however, quite a bit of the chocolate available in Australia today remains the wrong choice on an ethical and maintaining a curve-free body front. 

On the face of it, a simple sandwich is less fat-laden and less controversial.  Or is it?  With this one meal we are faced with a myriad of opportunities for a wrong choice.  

Bread is frequently packed full of preservatives.  It’s been suspected for years that preservatives have a detrimental effect on health[2].  Some mass produced bread has up to 15 ingredients and is so good at staying soft that I defy anyone to make breadcrumbs out of it even when it’s a week old.  It just won’t dry out.  I wish my moisturiser worked as well.  It takes effort to find bread that is made with just the essentials: flour, yeast, water and a dash of salt.  

Oops, there’s another guilt factor: salt.  In the 1980s salt was the most evil condiment on the planet.  If we put so much as a pinch on our food, we were going to be struck down with high blood pressure and be lucky to make it to the end of the day without having a heart attack.  With the amount of salt in some processed foods, adding a pinch to a salad sandwich is like adding a spoonful to the sea.  I can feel my arteries straining at the thought.  

Putting salad in between the slices helps not at all.    It just opens up several new cans of worms.  A salad sandwich amounts to only one serve of vegetables a day.  I still have to find another four serves and the eating day is two thirds over.  Anything I put in my mouth from now until bed had better be fruit or vegetable or I won’t stand a chance against osteoporosis, diabetes, anemia, heart attack and numerous other illnesses. 

Then there’s the struggling farmer versus retailer oligopoly jar of maggots.  An entire book could be written on the domination of supermarket chains and their alleged exploitation of food producers.  A hypothetical plot: grower puts heart and soul into producing quality crop, huge retailer barely pays enough for farmer to survive, grower fights on bravely, but unscrupulous retailer wins.  This isn’t that book and my sandwich is only half made.

Food miles bring another set of uncomfortable truths.  In WA, if a vegetable wasn’t grown locally it’s used a great deal of fossil fuel to get here.  If it’s not in season, chances are it’s been stored in a temperature controlled environment and artificially ripened: more fossil fuel.

With all this guilt a little comfort is just what’s needed.  Egg and salad sandwiches are delicious comfort food.  Unfortunately I’m faced with the high cholesterol dilemma.  Eggs are bursting with vitamins and minerals but also jam-packed with cholesterol.  I can feel that emergency department visit getting closer. 

As I understand it, a quick peek at some poultry or egg farms would ensure I previewed hell.  Since 2007, in parts of Australia, things have improved.  Caged laying hens have had their living space increased from 440 square centimeters to 550 and steps must be taken to protect them from the excreta of chooks housed above[3].  It reminds me of a shared house I used to live in.  The hens’ lives remain so abnormal, uncomfortable and boring that they have to be de-beaked so they can’t take it out on each other[4].

I like chicken breast on a sandwich and producers know this.  Broiler hens have an area similar to an A4 piece of paper to live on for their entire lives[5].  Thankfully, this is short as they are bred to grow fast.  They get to sit down for their last few days because their breasts grow so large that their legs can’t support them.   

What about a tuna sandwich?  As long as it’s not southern bluefin: an endangered species that has been over fished for decades.  Although canned tuna (unlike southern bluefin) is not considered a high mercury fish, there is always that danger lurking in our best source of omega-3[6].

Let’s try ham and salad.  Maybe not, it’s tricky working out where the pig was raised.  Even if the ham’s label says made in Australia, the pig itself could’ve been farmed in another country and we’re back to the ethical debate of food miles and farming practices.  How do I know if poor little piggy had enough room to take a step during her life, how many antibiotics she was given to help her grow or what she was fed? Genetically modified corn is a possibility.

While some sources[7] say that genetically modified (GM) food is labelled in Australia, highly processed foods containing GM products and meat from animals fed GM feed don’t have to be labelled as GM[8].   The government is currently reviewing our labelling laws.  Let’s hope they don’t make these easier to get round than they already are.  Genetically engineered canola, corn and their derivates are beautifully flexible and useful in creating processed foods.  One look at genes used to engineer food and images of witches’ brews spring to mind: anti-biotic resistant marker genes, herbicide resistant genes, genes from viruses and bacteria.  No one knows the long term effects of GM food, but it’s well and truly in the food chain.

Choice can mean guilt but it also means power, the power to do good.   A guilt-free sandwich is possible.  It takes self-education.  Farmers’ markets and shops specializing in organic produce know the provenance of what they sell.  If we ask questions about where food comes from and how it was produced, suppliers will know we are serious.  If we demand food with a transparent history, that is good for us and the planet, retailers will stock it.  It’s consumer demand that has encouraged Cadbury to start selling fair trade chocolate,[9] supermarkets to stock organic lines and bread makers to phase out their use of preservative 282[10]. Knowing the provenance of food, reading labels and buying from shops with a conscience is a powerful choice on a personal and a global level.  It is possible make each meal a powerful choice.

[1] http://www.fta.org.au/news/470 

[2] http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/

[3] www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/livestock/animal-welfare/general/other/livestock/faq-layer-hen-cages

[4] http://www.animalliberation.org.au/henbeak.php

[5] Peter Singer and Jim Mason: The Ethics of What We Eat: Text Publishing Company, 2006

[6] http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Mercury_in_fish

[7] http://www.foodstandards.gov.au

[8] http://www.truefood.org.au/newsandevents/?news=43

[9] http://www.fta.org.au/cadbury-announcement

[10] http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/features/breadresearch/bread1.htm

About the author: Marianne Robins is a Western Australian food writer, inspired by excellent local produce and quality cuisine. 

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