Food Miles is a Crock

[Terrasanct]

I think that sometimes we forget, in the fervor to eat "correctly," whatever that means, how much we've benefitted from canned goods and mass-produced things. They may not be in style now for various reasons, but people are getting fed. Sure, it's nice to grow a garden, given time, space, and energy. It's also nice to buy local things where they are available. But many of these solutions aren't feasible for some people. There are a LOT of people who work all day at a job just to try to provide for their families, and the last thing they want to do when they get home is work in a garden, or even have to think about what to make for dinner. For the vast majority of people in this country, the ability to buy good food for little money, quickly, is a godsend.

[saucée]

Keep hope alive, sister. (Edited to add: Or brother. Your username has a feminine ending which I'm not sure is required in all cases, which is the basis for my possibly erroneous initial assumption.)

We can and have changed the way we behave based on ideas time and time again, for good and for ill.  In fact, there's a famous cliche about this:

"More powerful than mighty armies is an idea whose time has come."

Always be equally conscious, however, that the Law of Unintended Consequences has yet to be repealed.

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I am actually male. My username is not a participle but a noun, la saucee, meaning, "downpour." It has no relation to cooking or sauces, I just thought it was a cool word. Also, as a teacher, the "Law of Unintended Consequences" is something I have quite a bit of experience with.

Also, to say that "everyone" should do something as expensive, time-consuming, and privileged as growing one's own food is a fantasy that seems to work along classist guidelines that don't even conceive of or seem to take into consideration people who have less economic power (think extreme rightishness,  ).  It's not very helpful to trade in absolutes such as this.

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Take a trip to Boston, to a community garden there, and ask yourself what you see. Do you see rich white yuppies or do you see recent immigrants from all parts of the world?

I know first hand that the community gardens in Boston are a fantastic melting pot of people who are growing food for themselves. They have skills such as 1) actually knowing how, when, where, to plant 2) how to harvest their crops 3) how to cook it in the best and most delicious way for them, 4) how to grow it intensively in an inner-urban landscape (if they do not know this right away, they learn it over a couple of seasons).

As they work their community ground, they are not dithering over food miles or what Pollan said or what was written about it all in the NYT or what a food blogger opined. They only care that their garden grows, that idiot neighborhood vandals dont torment their plot, and whether their garden will be taken from them so that the city can have one more gas station or highrise luxury condo complex built.

Growing food is not classist unless you feel you are not part of that "class".

Growing food can be simply a part of what you have always done or it can be new and empowering.

Either way, its about what you PUT in your mouth rather than what you spout with it.

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Believe you me, I am not against community gardens nor do I think they are classist. That would be quite silly. I live close to a community garden and would have a plot in it if I had the time, but I don't and won't for quite some time. About 10 months out of the year I work more than I thought humanly possible and don't get paid much. The other 2 months are spent doing more work. It's just not possible.

This problem can be understood fruitfully in terms of class, however, especially when it comes to unraveling some of the rhetoric that drives thinking and acting on the subject. It's of course not the only way but it certainly cannot be denied. What you put in your mouth is indeed important but so is what you "spout" with it because that's what in large part frames your thinking on it. I wish it were as easy as just acting, but there are as many minds out there as there are mouths and they need to be engaged as well. Shutting down discussion of a problem by advocating action over discourse doesn't make a problem go away; it makes the problem worse. Ethics is, in my opinion, more about thinking and arguing about acting than actually acting (the Greek root of this word is "character," meaning you change the character first and the change in action follows). Rhetoric is an important aspect of ethics.

I do think we very likely fundamentally agree in principle, but I don't agree with reductionist arguments that pare extraordinarily complex problems (that no one on earth can probably completely comprehend) down to what all people should do. I'm a bit hyper-sensitive to this, but rhetoric is a large part of the equation and I think it's very important. I think the "Law of Unintended Consequences" is in evidence here in my posts as well as yours.

Also, I should mention that I eat more than 90% local organic food (what's life without lemons, oranges, Burgundies, advocados, though), including meat, milk, etc. It's something I feel privileged and lucky to be able to do and it's all thanks to me living in the second largest organic food producing state in the union and having the time to research farms and make connections with farmers during the summer. I don't know if I'd be able to keep it up in many other places in the country.

I applaud you and your farm and part of me wishes I could do it too, but I can't so I get food from someone else. I also recognize that many people live in war torn areas of the world, in ghettos, or simply in places where certain products are not available or desirable. I'm certainly not a rich white yuppy and neither is anyone else I know who's concerned with these issues, so I'm not trying to claim that you're one either. I wouldn't know and wouldn't assume to know.

[NikaBoyce]

Keep hope alive, sister. (Edited to add: Or brother. Your username has a feminine ending which I'm not sure is required in all cases, which is the basis for my possibly erroneous initial assumption.)

We can and have changed the way we behave based on ideas time and time again, for good and for ill.  In fact, there's a famous cliche about this:

"More powerful than mighty armies is an idea whose time has come."

Always be equally conscious, however, that the Law of Unintended Consequences has yet to be repealed.

←

I am actually male. My username is not a participle but a noun, la saucee, meaning, "downpour." It has no relation to cooking or sauces, I just thought it was a cool word. Also, as a teacher, the "Law of Unintended Consequences" is something I have quite a bit of experience with.

Also, to say that "everyone" should do something as expensive, time-consuming, and privileged as growing one's own food is a fantasy that seems to work along classist guidelines that don't even conceive of or seem to take into consideration people who have less economic power (think extreme rightishness,  ).  It's not very helpful to trade in absolutes such as this.

←

Take a trip to Boston, to a community garden there, and ask yourself what you see. Do you see rich white yuppies or do you see recent immigrants from all parts of the world?

I know first hand that the community gardens in Boston are a fantastic melting pot of people who are growing food for themselves. They have skills such as 1) actually knowing how, when, where, to plant 2) how to harvest their crops 3) how to cook it in the best and most delicious way for them, 4) how to grow it intensively in an inner-urban landscape (if they do not know this right away, they learn it over a couple of seasons).

As they work their community ground, they are not dithering over food miles or what Pollan said or what was written about it all in the NYT or what a food blogger opined. They only care that their garden grows, that idiot neighborhood vandals dont torment their plot, and whether their garden will be taken from them so that the city can have one more gas station or highrise luxury condo complex built.

Growing food is not classist unless you feel you are not part of that "class".

Growing food can be simply a part of what you have always done or it can be new and empowering.

Either way, its about what you PUT in your mouth rather than what you spout with it.

←

Believe you me, I am not against community gardens nor do I think they are classist. That would be quite silly. I live close to a community garden and would have a plot in it if I had the time, but I don't and won't for quite some time. About 10 months out of the year I work more than I thought humanly possible and don't get paid much. The other 2 months are spent doing more work. It's just not possible.

This problem can be understood fruitfully in terms of class, however, especially when it comes to unraveling some of the rhetoric that drives thinking and acting on the subject. It's of course not the only way but it certainly cannot be denied. What you put in your mouth is indeed important but so is what you "spout" with it because that's what in large part frames your thinking on it. I wish it were as easy as just acting, but there are as many minds out there as there are mouths and they need to be engaged as well. Shutting down discussion of a problem by advocating action over discourse doesn't make a problem go away; it makes the problem worse. Ethics is, in my opinion, more about thinking and arguing about acting than actually acting (the Greek root of this word is "character," meaning you change the character first and the change in action follows). Rhetoric is an important aspect of ethics.

I do think we very likely fundamentally agree in principle, but I don't agree with reductionist arguments that pare extraordinarily complex problems (that no one on earth can probably completely comprehend) down to what all people should do. I'm a bit hyper-sensitive to this, but rhetoric is a large part of the equation and I think it's very important. I think the "Law of Unintended Consequences" is in evidence here in my posts as well as yours.

Also, I should mention that I eat more than 90% local organic food (what's life without lemons, oranges, Burgundies, advocados, though), including meat, milk, etc. It's something I feel privileged and lucky to be able to do and it's all thanks to me living in the second largest organic food producing state in the union and having the time to research farms and make connections with farmers during the summer. I don't know if I'd be able to keep it up in many other places in the country.

I applaud you and your farm and part of me wishes I could do it too, but I can't so I get food from someone else. I also recognize that many people live in war torn areas of the world, in ghettos, or simply in places where certain products are not available or desirable. I'm certainly not a rich white yuppy and neither is anyone else I know who's concerned with these issues, so I'm not trying to claim that you're one either. I wouldn't know and wouldn't assume to know.

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indeed, you and I definitely close on principle and i appreciate where you are coming from.

I have spent more time than I care to admit on process related discussions in real life. i agree that it is important to process and frame and generally farm out the meme.

i guess i am coming more from a zen place than an impulsive close-down the discussion place.

in zen, it is supremely easy to get attached to the idea of enlightenment. attached to the search for it. attached to non-attachment etc. to move beyond this takes the ability to release the attachment.. practice for the moment and not enlightenment.

same thing with local food. dont talk about growing or reasons not to, simply grow, something.

I know people who are growing tomatoes and other yummies in containers on stolen space on the roof of their building in Amsterdam. its a beginning. they yearn for more, they find a way.

i know people who do the same all across the globe, in big cities. next step for them is out the door to the community garden.

its a process and it takes trial error to find a way to grow enough to be significant.

i do not have a farm. we didnt really have topsoil.. we saved 10 years to make raised beds and bring in the soil. its not that expensive but on academic salaries and unemployment, its something you have to plan for.

I am a scientist, not a farmer. I have three kids, one is ten months old. my days are not idle.

We have integrated the garden into our lives, its not that much work. it pays us back 10 fold at least.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

BTW, I've noticed that the "'eat local' people are full of hooey!" stories are coming from agricultural areas that stand to lose if people do, in fact, eat locally.  Please, if I'm wrong about this, tell me!  

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Specify the stories, Fabby, so we can see. I'll give it a shot. (Ha, ha, I just hit the wrong letter and wrote "shit" instead of "shot". A fine morning it is. )

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All I meant was, the pieces I'm seeing are coming out of agricultural regions. I can do more investigating myself, and have. I don't trust things when I can't find out who is backing the "studies."

[FabulousFoodBabe]

I think that sometimes we forget, in the fervor to eat "correctly," whatever that means, how much we've benefitted from canned goods and mass-produced things.  [snip]

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So true, terra! And it wasn't too many generations ago, that people canned and froze and mass produced on their own, both to not waste and to free up time later on. Of course, they did this with stuff they produced on their own ..

If growing and cooking food wasn't complete drudgery to so many people, convenience foods would have never caught on.

Any change is wrenching for most people. One step at a time.

[Kouign Aman]

Its kinda like exercising. Figure out what you can do that isnt burdensome to you. Ideally, its enjoyable. Take that small step.

Every little bit helps. Feeling guilty about what's not going to work for you, isnt going to help.

[Carrot Top]

I'm all for locavores doing the locavore thing. It's one way, one valid way.

If it's about food quality or reducing carbon footprints (gotta love whoever invented that phrase - it's a beaut, both musically and rhetorically) it's an excellent thing in ways.

My philosophic stance remains that global interdependence is a good thing. Regardless of carbon footprints. My reasoning behind this is the belief that if we were not reliant on each other globally for many items we all consider to be neccesities, human nature being what it is we would likely just try to destroy each other.

Moreso, that is, than we already do.

Edited August 9, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[MarketStEl]

Nika and saucée:

Since both of you display concern for the class/socioeconomic aspects of the whole locavore argument, perhaps the two of you might want to contemplate/chew on this?

--Sandy, who chronicled this program's earliest days for his co-workers at Penn

[saucée]

Nika and saucée:

Since both of you display concern for the class/socioeconomic aspects of the whole locavore argument, perhaps the two of you might want to contemplate/chew on this?

--Sandy, who chronicled this program's earliest days for his co-workers at Penn

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Very cool; thanks for the info.

[John Whiting]

Feeding one’s family responsibly, even growing one’s own food, is an admirable activity, but within the context of what homo non sapiens is doing to the planet, it amounts to growing a vegetable patch in New Orleans in the summer of 2005. Putting together a paper on sustainable agriculture (Eating the Earth) for this year’s Oxford Food Symposium left me thankful to have reached the three-quarter-century mark.

[NikaBoyce]

Nika and saucée:

Since both of you display concern for the class/socioeconomic aspects of the whole locavore argument, perhaps the two of you might want to contemplate/chew on this?

--Sandy, who chronicled this program's earliest days for his co-workers at Penn

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love it! will look deeper.

we homeschool - we are a bit left of the spectrum for public schools here in MA - and one important thing is food and culinary education here at home.

Its my goal to raise kids who WANT to cook and WANT to raise their own foods so that they have control over that aspect of their lives. This is wholly lacking in public schools (not sure if private schools do anything around this either)

[NikaBoyce]

Feeding one’s family responsibly, even growing one’s own food, is an admirable activity, but within the context of what homo non sapiens is doing to the planet, it amounts to growing a vegetable patch in New Orleans in the summer of 2005. Putting together a paper on sustainable agriculture (Eating the Earth)  for this year’s Oxford Food Symposium left me thankful to have reached the three-quarter-century mark.

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Its a large piece you link to and I will definitely take a look.

I was raised in this ethic that people are having too many kids (my dad came from Roman Catholic Colombia where large families used to be the norm) and that we are using too many resources, and I agree. This is the case yesterday, now, and as long as we homo consumerus continue to dominate the world.

If someone grew a veg patch in New Orleans then that is 100% fantastic and should NOT be minimized. Each of us can grow our own food, we each can not grow for the whole world. If we choose to become overwhelmed by the global picture then we will never look out our own door.

The more that people learn to practice sustainable permaculture on their own little turf, no matter how impoverished initially, then we get closer and closer to a sustainable future for our children.

At the base of it, all I am saying is that it is worth it to grow some of your own food. You are not going to solve Darfur, you will not solve the problems in Siberia or New Orleans.

You will lock up some carbon, you will create some chemical free food for yourself and others, and you may share your bounty and your hope for a better way. That is honestly about the most that we can hope for on the individual basis and it is huge.

[Carrot Top]

Feeding one’s family responsibly, even growing one’s own food, is an admirable activity, but within the context of what homo non sapiens is doing to the planet, it amounts to growing a vegetable patch in New Orleans in the summer of 2005. Putting together a paper on sustainable agriculture (Eating the Earth)  for this year’s Oxford Food Symposium left me thankful to have reached the three-quarter-century mark.

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One vegetable patch is good, constructive global thinking is better.

Mmm. Isn't there a saying about the preservatives in the food making one live longer, John? You may have more time to worry about all this than even you anticipated.

[John Whiting]

Isn't there a saying about the preservatives in the food making one live longer, John?

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No doubt there is--and launched by the same PR firm that told us our bodies would be better preserved by smoke curing.

P.S. My point about growing a vegetable patch in New Orleans in the summer of 2005 was that it would have been wiped out as a result of the larger measures that weren't taken.

Edited August 9, 2007 by John Whiting (log)

[NikaBoyce]

P.S. My point about growing a vegetable patch in New Orleans in the summer of 2005 was that it would have been wiped out as a result of the larger measures that weren't taken.

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funny, I had assumed you meant "after the flood" :-)

[Carrot Top]

No doubt there is--and launched by the same PR firm that told us our bodies would be better preserved by smoke curing. 

P.S. My point about growing a vegetable patch in New Orleans in the summer of 2005 was that it would have been wiped out as a result of the larger measures that weren't taken.

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Mmm. Nonsense everywhere.

The only times in life I've seen things work in a passable manner is when people need each other for something.

In the workplace, how often do you hear: "Yeah, he sucks but we need him because he can do-this-or-that or get-us-this-or-that."

Most marriages survive on this basis. Always did.

...............................................

In terms of earlier discussion, there are other people aside from urban dwellers or those who prefer to put their minds to other tasks that are excluded from the locavore movement. The rural poor. The ones who come from generations previous who had to stop farming because the farming was not making them a living or even providing for enough food to live on.

(Edited to alter the word "exist" to "survive" in the marriage sentence because it seemed to fit better. )

Edited August 9, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[NikaBoyce]

No doubt there is--and launched by the same PR firm that told us our bodies would be better preserved by smoke curing. 

P.S. My point about growing a vegetable patch in New Orleans in the summer of 2005 was that it would have been wiped out as a result of the larger measures that weren't taken.

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Mmm. Nonsense everywhere.

The only times in life I've seen things work in a passable manner is when people need each other for something.

In the workplace, how often do you hear: "Yeah, he sucks but we need him because he can do-this-or-that or get-us-this-or-that."

Most marriages survive on this basis. Always did.

...............................................

In terms of earlier discussion, there are other people aside from urban dwellers or those who prefer to put their minds to other tasks that are excluded from the locavore movement. The rural poor. The ones who come from generations previous who had to stop farming because the farming was not making them a living or even providing for enough food to live on.

(Edited to alter the word "exist" to "survive" in the marriage sentence because it seemed to fit better. )

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One of the biggest lessons one has to learn in permaculture or simply organic growing is that everything is interconnected. Not sure how growing or farming is a manifestation of disconnectedness?

[Carrot Top]

Never said it was, Nika.

But one of the things that I do see in the overall movement is a focus on self, a focus on smallness, a focus on sufficiency without the need of the outside world. A turning of the back towards many complex issues, combined with a zealous missionary flag that others should be doing this too.

[Margo]

BTW, I've noticed that the "'eat local' people are full of hooey!" stories are coming from agricultural areas that stand to lose if people do, in fact, eat locally.  Please, if I'm wrong about this, tell me! 

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Specify the stories, Fabby, so we can see. I'll give it a shot. (Ha, ha, I just hit the wrong letter and wrote "shit" instead of "shot". A fine morning it is. )

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All I meant was, the pieces I'm seeing are coming out of agricultural regions. I can do more investigating myself, and have. I don't trust things when I can't find out who is backing the "studies."

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Here are some quotes from an editorial this past Monday in the St. Albans (VT) Messenger (which isn't available on-line as best I can tell). He's riffing off (Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' wife) Elizabeth Edwards' comment that as her family was going to be eating local, she'd likely never buy a tangerine again:

"There are many instances in which locally produced food does reduce our environmental footprint, but there are many instances in which it does not ... small-scale production almost always consumes more fuel than large-scale production--even when it's shipped all the way from Florida."

"There are not enough Vermonters to consume all the cheese we produce. We want other people--all over the world--to eat our cheese, and to drink our milk, and to pour maple syrup on their waffles. We don't want folks in Florida figuring out ways to make their own cheese. Our farmers depend on others to NOT eat locally."

He continues by touting buying local for the freshness and taste, and because it supports the local community of farmers. He points out that we've been conditioned to appreciate food that's cheap but less tasty. The editorial is positive in the end, and points to the fact that small measures are also worthwhile:

"It's doubly difficult in Vermont [to commit to eating local], where our per capita incomes are a shade less than the national average, our food and fuel costs are a touch higher, and locally produced food is scarce for more than half the year.

"But it doesn't take much to make a difference. If the governor iis correct, that a shift of 10 percent of our food purchases would add $100 million to the state's economy, then all sorts of economic/social opportunities could materialize. (The governor, however, should share the math behind that calculation....)"

I think the point about surplus food in underpopulated areas, and the 10 percent solution are constructive complications in this discussion.

[Kouign Aman]

Think if everyone were growing their own wheat, then firing up their own trucks to take it to the mill. I think it would use more fuel for that trip alone, than the fuel used by agribusiness to get their wheat to the mill. Plus, the mill would have to do small runs, to keep the product separate. Wonderful for artisanal use, but not fuel efficient.

Efficiency has been broadening our definition of 'local' for as long as people have been forming communities.

[John Whiting]

Efficiency has been broadening our definition of 'local' for as long as people have been forming communities.

In practice, "local" is flexibly defined in a series of concentric circles. In at least one instance, it can be applied agriculturally to a rather large island. This is from my Oxford Symposium paper:

In the late 1980s Cuba’s agriculture and economy were essentially like those of its capitalist Caribbean neighbors. It monocropped sugar cane and citrus which the Soviets bought at inflated prices; in exchange it received 63 percent of its food imports and 90 percent of its petrol.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, this cosy arrangement ceased virtually overnight. The daily caloric intake rapidly fell by half, from about 2,600 calories a day in the late 1980s to between 1,000 and 1,500 by 1993.

Cuba’s government chose to make a virtue of necessity. Deprived of Soviet oil for tractors, they reverted to oxen; with no chemical fertilisers or pesticides, they used compost, biopesticides, beneficial insects and manure (of which they now had a ready supply). In other words, they went organic.

Today Cuba is fed by more than 7,000 urban allotments or ‘organoponicos’, which fill about 81,000 acres. Many of them occupy tiny plots of urban land—more than 200 gardens in Havana supply more than 90 per cent of the city’s fruit and vegetables. These look and taste as if they’d been picked that morning, which they probably have.

Scientists who have seen it in action report that the system has worked. Caloric intake is up to about 2,600 a day, undernourishment has fallen from 8 per cent of the population in 1990-2 to about 3 per cent in 2000-2. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is lower than that of the US; life expectancy is the same.

This remarkable success story demonstrates not only the viability of organic agrotechnology, but also the feasibility of a localised, low-energy economy.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

I don't really understand the concept of food miles, but I've come to the conclusion that shopping at the farmers market doesn't necessarily mean that the produce I'm getting is any more local than the same types of produce that I'd get at the supermarkets at any given time of year.

At the farmers market I go to, the local vendors are the prepared food vendors, the guy that sells honey, the florists and an olive stand. The vast majority of the produce vendors are coming from 35 to 215 miles away.

[rancho_gordo]

I try and stay out of these conversations because they always bring out the worst in me but the suggestion about local wheat makes me cringe. Do you honestly think we're talking about wheat? Seriously?

You certainly have extremists and they're the ones that are making this an issue and causing the discussion but think in terms of strawberries. You may have a short season and California may have a much, much longer one, but does it make sense to ship them across the country? Maybe it does but I think you learn to live with your short season. You do what you can.

But Fedex'ing squash blossoms from Fresno to NY is not the same issue as local wheat. Or grains. Or even beans.

I think the point is you do what you can, you ask questions, you encourage local agriculture over suburban sprawl and you discover your own local food traditions.

  I don't really understand the concept of food miles, but I've come to the conclusion that shopping at the farmers market doesn't necessarily mean that the produce I'm getting is any more local than the same types of produce that I'd get at the supermarkets at any given time of year.

At the farmers market I go to, the local vendors are the prepared food vendors, the guy that sells honey, the florists and an olive stand. The vast majority of the produce vendors are coming from 35 to 215 miles away.

And how far does the Isreali grapefruit in Safeway travel or the chilean grapes and cherries or the Chinese garlic? Say your lettuce comes from Salinas. It's probably not from a small, organic farmer, picked that morning on land that probably is adjacent to his home. I'm not saying you shouldn't shop the supermarket if that's what works for you, but it's not the same thing.

[Kouign Aman]

the suggestion about local wheat makes me cringe. Do you honestly think we're talking about wheat? Seriously?

.......

I think the point is you do what you can, you ask questions, you encourage local agriculture over suburban sprawl and you discover your own local food traditions.

No. I dont think this is about wheat. My point was in response to the claim that buying locally produced food necessarily saves on the difficult-to-measure 'carbon footprint'. I think 'it aint necessarily so'. This was an example designed to point out the absurdity and naivete in making that assumption blindly and across the board.

I enjoy seasonal foods. I enjoy growing some food in my yard. I dont think I'm making much of an impact on the carbon footprint by doing so. I still go to the grocery or other outside source for most fruit, all meat, grain products etc. So MY footprint is not reduced. Is there a reduction in that the veggie producers ship that much less product to the grocery? Maybe.

My point, made earlier, is much the same as your point, below the .... in the quote. One can figure out what one can & is willing to do, and do it.

Walk more, drive less (which in fact, means get your food from one location, not several, unless you can walk to them). Eat raw food. Cooking burns electricity which is generated how??????? Oh yeah - mostly by burning carbon-containing fuels.... oh wait, but we like to cook.... Do you see how it can get absurd, and fast?

Anna with the long name makes the point very clearly - how do you weigh in the cost of trucking fertilizer to your local store, etc.

Where does the detergent come from, for spraying the bugs off the home grown organic garden?

Garden. Its fun. But before deciding something IS going to reduce carbon emissions, consider all the factors. Efficiency is an amazing thing. Sometimes many small units are indeed more efficient than one large one. And sometimes not. And sometimes we do things because we like to (like buy specialty products from many vendors).

[NikaBoyce]

Anna with the long name makes the point very clearly - how do you weigh in the cost of trucking fertilizer to your local store, etc.

Where does the detergent come from, for spraying the bugs off the home grown organic garden?

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detergent doesnt really work... best is picking and killing. that only requires me to burn my own ATP.

this entire conversation has been wearifying ..

you all choose what you wish to do, never expected anyone to do otherwise.

I am not certain really why i chimed to begin with (simply wanted to say there is another way than dithering over the least evil choice at your big box supermarket).

I chalk this up to a lack of experience with this venue and will be calibrating my comments accordingly in the future.