International Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Organic, free range, grass fed, etc.
What are your preferences/shopping habits?
Are they different in your home country?
Re: Organic, free range, grass fed, etc.
I would love to be able to buy organic/free range/local in general, but it's just not possible here! Qatar imports over 90% of it's food supply, so not much here is local. I buy local eggs and lettuce - I think that is it!
If we were home, we would definitely try to buy organic, local produce and meats, if we could afford it. I think we'd even go back to eating meat at home every now and then, if we knew it was being locally sourced and treated humanely, unlike the big factories.
Dave & Jennifer 10.18.08
My Doha Adventures
I am not sure if the other Aussies are the same, but groceries are so expensive in Australia that my first port of call is usually cheap. At home I go to some markets every week and buy from there, it is mostly local farmers selling there so that helps.
Here I take whatever I can get, we have a pretty good range but the local stuff doesn't keep well so a lot of our produce is from overseas, currently I have apples from the US, AUS and South Africa!
I try to buy fruit & veg at our local market but I'll be damned if I stop eating avocadoes and they're far from local... I'm more enclined to buy organic & local if it's a delicate fruit (like berries). Of course it also comes down to price, so I pick my battles.
Ever since watching a documentary on chicken farms we buy free range organic eggs. If I can't find those, I'll drop the organic part. We also always buy free range chicken.
For other meats, we tend to go with registered labels/taste too, so I'll often get Irish beef, Scottish lamb and local pork (free range/bred in the forest). It means paying 15? for a steak so we don't have steak often...
ETA: we also often go to an arab butcher for lamb. The above applies to supermarket shopping.
I try to buy as much local produce as possible. Like Valerie, I only buy free-range organic eggs and chicken.
I get meat at a small Arab butcher (his prices are even better than the supermarket and the meat is local), in season fruit and veggies at the local farmer's market.
Rambley Blog
We only buy free-range whenever possible. I don't typically eat meat unless it's organic, particularly now that I'm TTC. I use only organic milk too but I am struggling with cheese - there just isn't that much organic cheese available and cheese is my favourite food. My favourite yogurt isn't organic so that's another fail!
We go to the farmers' market when we can and get free-range local meat (pheasant and pigeon and all kinds of random stuff). We watch our food miles, although I compromise on fair trade bananas as it's something I'm not willing to live without! If we went with only local fruit and veg, we'd have scurvy in Scotland :-) We try and stick with organic for the 'Dirty Dozen'
Fair trade / free-range is really important to me and since I'm watching my chemical intake in general now (cutting out parabens, etc), I eat more carefully than DH. We do still eat out regularly although I tend to stay vegetarian if I don't know where the meat came from, a lot of restaurants here are going towards organic meat anyway.
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
I prefer local for what I can get local. But I'll buy non-local for things that aren't available or in season. I don't worry much with organic or anything else, especially with the prices.
Not so much of an option here since almost everything is imported. I pretty much just go for price and sanitation. In Italy there was plenty of local options at the open-air markets and small produce shops, but the produce was usually fully dirty straight from the field and in varying degrees of handling. Regarding meat, in both countries it's get what I can get and go for the mid-point of price/sanitation. Just because there is a local butcher doesn't mean the meat is 1) local or that 2) a certain level of sanitation is followed. I usually get meat on base because I'm there or at an actual supermarket since their refrigeration and handling can be well observed
This. While I love the idea of Organic, free Range, etc, the prices here make it out of the question. Heck, in the US, "local" usually meant slightly less expensive. Here it seems to mean a LOT more expensive. As in, I expect to crack it open and find gold inside, expensive.
I tend to not even buy Australia grown when an import is available to me. The price difference is just too great to stand on any principles. The latest example I remember is imported lemons $1.98 kg; Australian lemons $4.98 kg.
We buy local eggs and vegetables at our market here in Japan, but I supplement our produce at the grocery store since I am not familiar with some of the plants they sell at the market. DH buys local meat when we are back home, but here he buys basically what we can afford or what we can recognize.
I buy organic dairy and focus on 'the dirty dozen' in terms of organic produce. Otherwise we buy what is most affordable.
My Blog
Holy crap! That's expensive. I get my local lemons for 0.40 euro a kg!
Sure, rub it in ;-)
When we say it's expensive down here, we mean EXPENSIVE.
I wouldn't buy local or organic if it were way more expensive than regular food, it just isn't in the budget.
How are salaries there in relation to cost of living?
I think it really depends on location and profession. My atty in Brisbane makes about what a DC lawyer makes per hour. Imported mine workers are getting contracts of $110k for 6 months.
Up here in the boondocks, we need to make about $135k to live like we did on $60k in the states (mortgage is bigger). We don't come near the $135 mark :-(.
I was reading an article in the newspaper regarding the Sparboe scandal and McDonald's removing them from their list of suppliers. The article was actually going beyond saying America demands cheap food and the only way to get it is to have chickens live on surfaces equal to a piece of paper. Basically, have those horrible factory farms. They were comparing it to Europe, Germany more specifically, where most chickens are raised cage free.
So yes things are cheap in America but it's because business is done in horrible conditions. I have no problem paying more for organic chicken raised outside and living a happy life. And we don't need to eat so much animal product everyday.
I wouldn't expect to pay US food prices since I'm no longer in the US. But the price I'm will to pay still holds true.
Am I going to pay $2.68 for a dozen Australian cage raised eggs, or well over $6.00 for Australian cage free eggs? Organic, free range, local is still out of the budget regardless of which country I'm in.
This.
I also bake organic bread - I can't buy organic here locally, so just buy the flour and use my bread machine. Other bread products (if I buy muffins, for ex), aren't organic.
I'd like to buy organic meat but there is no way our income would allow that. We have meat 2-3 times a week. Cheese is organic where poss - mostsly two types (I feel your pain Pitt!), and non-organic for the rest of it. I buy free-range eggs (easy here apparently aIl eggs are freerange at most supermarkets?) and sometimes organic, depending on my budget that week.
We do get an organic veg box delivered, and that's relatively local (almost all is within the UK or maybe France) as well as organic. But I only have it delivered every other week, and buy locally here.
I try to buy local (as in British or without airmiles), cheap but good quality. I will seldom buy 'value' veg as I think the taste isn't as good, and I worry about the provenance. But cost is a huge factor for me, if that makes sense?