{"id":36058,"date":"2018-07-19T09:21:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T14:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36058"},"modified":"2018-07-19T09:21:03","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T14:21:03","slug":"ten-ways-to-avoid-shopping-for-food-in-supermarkets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36058","title":{"rendered":"Ten ways to avoid shopping for food in supermarkets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ten ways to avoid shopping for food in supermarkets<\/a><\/h3>\n
Who can resist the siren call of the supermarkets \u2013 open till late, filled with food catering to most tastes, often at bargain prices? But if we widen the lens to take in the bigger picture, we find society is paying a huge price for this convenience. Our food system is controlled by forces which may not have our good health at heart. And their power is growing globally, with a relatively small number of corporations monopolising the food system at every stage of the food chain, and at an ever-increasing rate<\/a>. In the UK, four supermarket chains control over 80% of food retail<\/a>, with the Asda\/Walmart and Sainsbury merger<\/a>tightening the grip.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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The problem with monopolies is their power to abuse much of what is under their dominion. The results are: unfair contracts for suppliers, poor work practices in countries with substandard regulations (one distressing example are slave ships<\/a>), inhumane conditions for animals in factory farms, and a system geared to producing cheap, high-fat, high-sugar foods, generating an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Another casualty is biodiversity: modern food systems are dominated by five animal species and twelve crops according to Biodiversity International<\/a>. \u201cThe supermarket chains play the role of gatekeeper, deciding how food is produced and what fills the shelves,\u201d says Oxfam\u2019s Marita Wiggerthale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Everything is scaled up \u2013 including waste. Eight of Britain\u2019s leading supermarkets create more than 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year, according to an investigation<\/a> by The Guardian<\/em> in January, this year. To add insult to injury, supermarkets spend millions on marketing to misinform the public about where and how their food is produced. Fake farm names<\/a> make imported food appear British, while \u2018country of origin<\/a>\u2019 labelling claims British status for products which originated from abroad but were processed and packed in the UK.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten ways to avoid shopping for food in supermarkets Who can resist the siren call of the supermarkets \u2013 open till late, filled with food catering to most tastes, often at bargain prices? But if we widen the lens to take in the bigger picture, we find society is paying a huge price for this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[16929,7276,16243,6867],"class_list":["post-36058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-elisabeth-winkler","tag-food-systems","tag-supermarkets","tag-sustainable-food-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36059,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36058\/revisions\/36059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}