So there we go, my rambling rant is over, and if you'd like to contributeLast month I visited Biofach, the world's biggest organic food and wellness fair, in Nuremburg. It's my favourite trade show as I get to meet many old friends and suppliers and find new sources of inspiration from people who more often than not understand the value of growing and producing sustainable good energy food.Every year I go and every year I evolve my understanding of how to source, make and sell the right food, food that sustains us and sustains the planet. And I use this information to inform and guide decisions we make at Rude Health.My first train of thought is all about the value of organic and the meaning of organic: when we started the business it was relatively easy to create an organic food business in the UK, because consumers would pay a premium for what was seen as a worthwhile kite mark. Now, in the UK, they will not. In fact there's been a backlash against organic, and many retailers will actively select foods that are not organic, particularly if they already have an organic equivalent in their selection - whether it's good food or not. The press, big food, even the government have had a high old time quashing any health and nutritional claims for organic foods…and, to make matters worse, the Soil Association and the more recently established Organic Trade Board, rather than focusing on nutritional research, send out an endless chain of fluffy and confusing messages about the meaning of organic. There's a strong chance that when you ask a Swiss citizen what organic food provides, they're likely to reply: 'sustainable farming'. Ask many a British yummy mummy and they they're more inclined to think a while before coming up with a confusing and conflicting raft of health, taste, welfare and personal claims.My second series of thoughts are all about good nutrition and good provenance: since when should an organic pop tart be allowed to be sold as organic? Why can milk be sold as organic when it has being processed to oblivion and its good fats pulverised? How is it that a Chorleywood process loaf of sliced brown bread be labelled organic just because it contains highly refined flour of an organic origin, probably from Canada or even worse, from far way Australia? Who can justify selling organic snap peas in December from East Africa grown using wholly unsustainable ancient ground water? What regulatory organisation would condone issuing derogations in an instant to allow the use of conventional seed grain for organic arable farming? Did you know that despite all the cost and effort and paperwork around being organic certified came to nothing when there was an oat contamination scandal a few years ago - when, would you believe it - the regulators could not trace the producer...It's no surprise therefore, that I've now come to approach the sourcing of food with a more realistic understanding of who to trust and what's important.I look for foods that come from a sustainable, local (at worst regional) sources, from farmers or primary processors I can meet in person and get to know their practices, that grow and produce food that's not been chemically treated, contains no preservatives, is not fortified, is not refined or over-processed, is not extruded and is not sweetened with some sneaky sugars such as fruit juice, barley malt or fruit infusions. If the best tasting foods I find meet these criteria and are affordable and are also organic certified, then I'll choose them. If they're not organic certified but meet the above criteria, then I'll consider them too. I do not compromise on these values.This is why we switched SuperFruity Muesli, No Flamin' Raisins Muesli, Morning Glory Porridge and Fruity Date Porridge from organic to conventional recently. We've not raised our prices for these foods for years. Why not? We can't! If we do, we'll lose sales catastrophically. If we cheapen the ingredients we'll lose our faith and our values and our customers. So, we took the decision to maintain and indeed at times to reduce our prices by sourcing some of the ingredients without organic certification. All the ingredients come from the same suppliers and growers and many of the ingredients remain organic. All meet the criteria above. Many of the ingredients are now of better quality as we can choose our ingredients more widely from the same supplier/region.You will also see that in our range of breakfast foods, a high percentage remain and will always be organic certified (and award winning too). This includes 2 granolas, 2 mueslis and 3 porridge - that's more than any other well distributed producer. This year we will be launching more new organic foods and drinks than conventional.
to the debate, please come and rant with us at the Abergavenny food festival
this year!
For some further reading I highly recommend:
This NYT article inspired by pioneering farmers and growers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/californias-central-valley-land-of-a-
billion-vegetables.html?WT.mc_id=NYT-I-P-FOOD-MAG-101412-L1&_r=0
Or the evangelical logic of Joel Salatin:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Folks-This-Aint-Normal
Healthier/dp/0892968192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339393890&sr=8-1
