FAQs

We thought we’d share some thoughts on some commonly asked questions. But we also want to stress that Eat the Change is not about being prescriptive - telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat - it’s about challenging people to try only eating ’sustainable’ food choices for a week - and to explore what challenges and questions it brings up.

We hope that your week will be a fruitful journey - uncovering actions for you to take: questions to ask your local retailers and requests to them for alternative products; writing to your MP or local newspaper to highlight some of the idiocies of food in your town; realisation that your town needs much more land allocated to food production - and contacting your Council about this … and much much more …

Question: What is sustainable food?

Answer: Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming - the UK’s umbrella body for food and farming - has produced some very useful information on what we mean by ’sustainable food’ - to help us make decisions on a daily basis.

visit www.sustainweb.org/sustainablefood

Question: Why have you chosen something that is so difficult? I support the need for sustainable food, but this is so hard!

Answer: The fact that it is so hard is the point - when challenged to reform our food system the Government shouts about ‘consumer choice’. Eat the change is about highlighting to Government that ‘consumers’* do want to make sustainable food choices, but that this is nigh-on impossible within the current globalised food system.

Name me one person who, everything else being equal, would not prefer to eat food that has been produced near to where they live, without nasty chemicals and without plastic packaging - and that will not be damaging to the future of communities and our environment.

*a word on ‘consumers’: we’re people actually, defined by myriad exciting things beyond what we buy! Like the music we love making and listening and dancing to, the types of food we love to grow, cook and eat, the books we love to read, the poetry we love to write, the things we love to make, create, draw, paint, sculpt, build, dream … and the multitude of adventures we love having in nature’s abundant garden.

Question: Can I eat organic food that is not from the UK?

Answer: Eat the Change is encouraging people to eat only organic food that has been grown in the UK. There exists a real shortage of UK grown organic food and the point of Eat the Change is to highlight to Government that they need to incentivize organic farming in the UK.

Non-organic farming has flourished over the last 50 years thanks to cheap oil (nitrogen fertilizer is heavily oil dependent). Now that oil prices are increasing people are beginning to realise that the days of oil-hungry food are limited.

However, farmers simply cannot afford to convert to sustainable farming. Whilst oil is still readily available there is no comparative advantage for farmers to spend the 3 years that it takes to convert their land to organic. So unless Government invests in making sustainable farming profitable before oil actually runs out, farmers will continue to farm unsustainably because they simply cannot afford to make the changes needed to farm sustainably.

Question: Can I eat local food that is not organic?

Answer: There exists a fair amount of food that is locally grown, but non-organic.

As explained above - Eat the change is about highlighting the need for the Government to incentivise sustainable organic farming in the UK, so we are encouraging people to not eat any food that is not organic.

Not only is non-organic food full of nasty chemicals, but it is also extremely damaging to our environment and the future of food and farming. By destroying the quality of our soils, non-organic farming is making it increasingly difficult for us to feed and nourish ourselves.

For more information about the benefits of organic food visit: www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/Living/10reasons.html

For specific health benefits visit:
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/4042794258a20f4280256a680046b77e/3cb9340698ed1f8f802571be0031e339!OpenDocument

Question: How do I know if it is organic or not?

Answer: The Soil Association is the UK’s official organic food certifier. If a product is claiming to be organic it should carry the soil Association’s certification stamp.

For more information on certification visit: http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/Living/howdoiknow.html

However, for small growers and producers, certification is an expensive process, and not necessarily one they can afford. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need certification because we would be connected with the people who produce our food by re-localising our food we are able to ensure we trust those who producing our food.

Without the profit motive there would be little incentive for companies to make false claims about being organic - by re-localising our food we would be able to start to have meaningful dialogues with those people producing our food to ensure that their motivation is driven by their contribution to the health and wellbeing of their community and the environment - not soley for their own profit gain.

This is likely to happen through the social enterprise model - whereby local food producers would decide on a fair salary to pay themselves and then any profits made would be reinvesting into the business for the benefit of the community, for example, improving their products or reducing costs to consumers. This is the exact opposite of what is currently happening - with the big food companies making growing profits, whilst prices to ‘consumers’ continue to soar.

Question: Can I buy from supermarkets?

Answer: We challenge you to find organic food that has been grown and produced locally and that is free from plastic packaging, at the supermarket! Supermarkets are the antithesis of sustainable food - they have made their obscene profits from all the aspects of our food system that are currently causing havoc for both our health and that of the environment.

Supermarkets have created a food culture in the UK that celebrates tasteless ready meals and homogenous fruit and vegetables.

Supermarkets drain money from our local economies, sourcing very little locally and siphoning profits to shareholders and CEOs rather than them benefiting local communities.

Supermarket efficiency and therefore profits derive from economies of scale and centralised distribution networks - running up outrageous food miles and the antithesis of local food. What’s more, even food grown locally, then travels to a central distribution hub for packaging etc

When food has to be transported like this, it requires far more packaging than if it was produced and consumed in the same area.

Needless to say, all this travel means that the nutritional value of our food has nigh-on disappeared by the time it reaches our bodies. What’s more, supermarket food is picked before it is ripe - and tasty and nutritious - so it lasts its long journey to our plates.

Supermarkets are also responsible for the demise of small shops and markets - if we don’t stop their spreading sprawl now, we will find ourselves with no alternative.

Question: If I get to day three and discover I’ve eaten non local etc is there any point in continuing?

Answer: Yes! This is the no failure diet. Just begin again. The important point is to reveal to both yourselves and others the challenges involved. Others would include not only family and friends but also those producing and selling foods. True we want to influence government, but real change can come about from the bottom up by increasing awareness and asking, sometimes, awkward questions. It will be useful, if you are having trouble sourcing the ingredients you want, to explain to shop keepers in a friendly way what you need and why it is important? Whether or not you manage to honour your pledge, the story of your week will be of immense value especially if you are able to keep a diary and share it with others through this site.

Question: Does skipping or freeganism count for the week?

Answer: Again - this is your call. Needless to say you’ll be hard pushed to find foods that adhere to the aims of Eat the Change - but there obviously exists an issue here that needs addressing: the vast quantities of food wasted by supermarkets on a daily basis.

We’d love to hear if any work is being done to tackle the supermarkets’ banning of skipping. Food that is being thrown out should be put to good use.

FareShare is a project that redistributes food that would otherwise be thrown out, to community food projects. Visit http://www.fareshare.org.uk/ and for Bristol distribution contact suzie.webster@fareshare.org.uk

Question: Why have you not included fair trade produce in Eat the Change?

Answer: Eat the Change is not about challenging people to eat the ultimate ‘ethical’ foods - it is about raising awareness around food and sustainability. Currently fair trade foods are receiving a great deal of exposure and support from decision-makers (it is trade justice that Government is more resistant to, as this will involve a complete overhaul of our international trading system - changing the trade rules that are keeping people poor - and big business rich. For more information on trade justice visit www.tradejusticemovement.org).

Eat the Change supports the purchasing of fair trade produce when the produce can not be produced closer to home. We need to start seeing imported food as treats and luxuries - not as staples. This is not only because we simply cannot sustain the vast amounts of energy needed to process, transport and package food imports, but also because developing country farmers need to be prioritising their land and labour for feeding themselves - not satisfying our demanding palates in rich countries.

What’s more, we need to start calling for the Government to support farming in the UK to become fair trade. Faced with the threats of fossil-fuel depletion and climate change, we have never needed more farmers in the UK. The Government therefore needs to incentivize sustainable farming as a profession. However, farmers in the UK are currently paid a pittance for their hard and important work. What’s more, unless we remunerate farmers more fairly for the vital role they play in feeding and nourishing us, we are going to see a continuation in the demise of UK farming.

Question: Is it okay to eat home grown vegetables that aren’t organic?

Answer: Growing your own veg is a great way of connecting with the food you eat. Very few people would choose to put chemicals on the food they are growing to eat themselves - as you only have to read the fertilizer / pesticide packet to see how scary the chemicals sound! If you are growing your own and are happy to put these chemicals in your body - on your health be it!

Check out to find out why organic food is so much better for your health and that of the environment.

Question: I can’t Eat the Change during the set period - does it count if I do it another time?

Answer: Of course you can - and please do still sign the pledge. We chose this time as it coincides with Organic Food Fortnight and is when food is at its most abundant in the UK.

Question: I’d like to include foraged wild food in my week - how can I find out more about this?

Answer: There is an absolute wealth of wild food out there. Nevertheless, you can’t really afford to be cavalier about identification - learning from mistakes works well in many walks of life but in terms of foraging can be dangerous - hence the classic fungi joke that all mushrooms are edible but some only once. Poisons abound so positive identification is essential. I would recommend getting a copy of the 2006 edition of The Wild Flower Key by Francis Rose, identify plants growing in abundance in your area, then check on their edibility on the following website:
http://www.pfaf.org/database/index.php
Recommended reading would be Mushrooms by John Wright; Wild Food by Roger Phillips and Wild Food by Ray Mears and Gordon Hillman. The Field Studies Council produce well illustrated and laminated fold out plant sheets (about 50 per sheet) organized according to habitat which are very useful. Like the Wild Flower Key these don’t mention edibility/toxicity but that info can be found on the website I mentioned. Experimenting with seaweed is fairly safe as long as you don’t pick in polluted waters or gather Desmarestia species. Check with the local council/environment agency if the sea is sufficiently clean in your area. Seaweeds take up radio nucleotides so be extremely careful. Contact British Energy and ask about the safety of seaweed consumption from material gathered around their sites.
The friendly folk on the It’s Not Easy Being Green website’s Foraging and Woodcraft discussion forum will help with identification of plants, seaweed and fungi (http://www.itsnoteasybeinggreen.org/forum/) as will the folks on the River Cottage foraging forum (http://www.rivercottage.net/)

Check out Fergus the Forager’s website www.wildmanwildfood.com and his links page for a wealth of information, recipes, courses etc and Richard Mallaby’s pocket Food for Free book is very helpful.

Question: What’s the point in doing this just for a week? That’s hardly going to make a difference to our food system in the long term.

Answer: The point of Eat the change is both to learn for yourself the shortfalls of our globalised food system and to highlight to government how hard it is to make the sustainable food choices it keeps saying are available and that consumers should make. See the Lobby section to find out how to let decision-makers know about what you are doing.