Do you know where your food comes from?

I was taking stock this weekend of our supplies in our cold store – jams, marmalades, chutneys, tomato sauce, tomato puree, salsa, root vegetables and winter squash, as well as soups, pies and vegetables in the freezer. We seem to have enough to see us into spring. All of this was picked, processed and preserved or stored at its best having been grown without pesticides. We did pretty well in our garden this year.

Of course our own produce cannot meet all of our needs so we have to visit the grocery stores, but we are picky about what we buy. We like to support local growers and have a chance of knowing a little about how the produce is grown, and we buy Canadian where we can – you could call us locavores.

We support our local cheese factory and we buy butter and other local produce there too. We have sourced local eggs, ice-cream, locally made perogies and pasta, flour, honey and so much more in local stores, and we buy Lake Winnipeg fish. I am prepared to pay a little bit more for the satisfaction of supporting local producers. Canadian food producers use marketing tools such as ‘buy Manitoba’, ‘made with Canadian Canola’, ‘Egg farmers of Canada’, ‘Manitoba Pork’ which benefits the consumer who wants to know. I was glad to see that Safeway is promoting Manitoba produce, and I just hope they can extend the range so that more local producers can benefit. Our local Bigway store has a fantastic range of local produce, and the price is good too.

But it strikes me that it is not so easy to buy local, Canadian or even North American. The worst area in the superstores is fresh loose fruit and vegetables, where unless the store wishes to promote the country of origin, it is often not displayed.

When it comes to the ‘Canadian’ label things get pretty confusing.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency produced a ‘Guide to Food Labelling and Advertising’, and this covers calling food ‘Canadian’. However, there is no standardization, just recommended terms, and I think they are pretty confusing for the consumer.

There’s ‘product of Canada’ or ‘made in Canada’ which can include fresh produce but also processed foods if either virtually all of the major ingredients, processing and labour came from Canada, or if the ingredients from elsewhere were transformed into another product at a processing plant in Canada.

But then there are a whole range of products some of which fly the Canadian flag, but are not produced here or transformed here. These include products packaged, canned, distilled, roasted and blended, prepared, and processed in Canada, which gets pretty confusing.

So my advice to anyone who does want to shop local – ask around and follow up recommendations. And don’t be afraid to ask where foods come – it’s a perfectly reasonable question. Or ask stores to consider stocking certain local products you like – grocery shopping is a tough market and your favourite box store wants you to be a loyal customer.

Selena Randall