The nine biggest sins of packaged food

T.Chong says:

06:19am | 11/01/10

Nola, despite the laudable back to nature pitch of your article, all these less than ideal products and wrappings are there because that is what the average consumer wants, for better or worse.
The big retailers do everything due to cosumer demand, they are not about leading, unlesss their research shows potential profit is to be had.
Capitalist society: the consumer demands, and the retailers (who want to stay in business) deliver.
Agree pot noodles are less than ideal, but what would uni students live on without them?

persephone says:

07:06am | 11/01/10

Is this anti packaging or anti junk food?

You seem to be having two rants at once, which is confusing.

For example, fruit wrapped in plastic is still real food, with the same nutritional benefits as fruit not wrapped in plastic (arguably more, as many nutrients leach out into the air and non wrapped fruit is prone to bruising).

BTW, you can get bread wrapped just in paper (my local bakery only uses plastic for the sliced stuff) and milk used to come in billies.

I don’t disagree with the points you’re trying to make, but arguing two different things and using inappropriate examples undermines your arguments.

Liz says:

07:45am | 11/01/10

And what’s wrong with not wearing shoes and bartering? Aren’t shoes packaging for feet which use a large number of resources to manufacture?
Bartering is a long established, time honour way to swap food,goods and skills.It exists in an organised way through LETS groups across the world.
If you’ve got time to watch cooking shows you’ve got time to peel garlic and make real food meals haven’t you?

Craig Lambie says:

07:59am | 11/01/10

As much as I agree @T.Chong the demand is obviously there, sometimes you simply have no choice at all.  My local supermarket is 100m from my front door, why would I choose to go to another one that doesn’t wrap up Avo’s.  Mind I simply choose not to buy that item usually.  I buy my carrots loose each week, even though it is cheaper to buy them in the pre wrapped packet!
It all comes down to time!
The time it takes at the Checkout, at home to prepare, anywhere.
Given the very small amount of time we allow for the preparation of food, the enjoyment of cooking, lavishing of our dishes, it seems it is all down to the commercial breaks.
2 min to prepare the meal, 7m to cook it in the microwave, sit in front of the tv as we don’t have much care for one another to sit and talk about our day, or live alone, so sit and watch the box we do!
Or even the laptop! I don’t go far from the laptop screen!
On coffee cups, take away containers etc… BYO can always suffice.
I take my own bowl when I go for Asian, take my own Cup for coffee, take my own sealable, re-usable container when I get Take-away for the bicycle ride home.  One of the issues with this is the shop is taking a risk letting you use your own cup/ bowl/ container - hygiene.  I feel an adequate system could be put in place and more people and shops would start to use this environmental and cost saving BYO method! BYOBowl, bag, Bottle ...com.

Tim says:

08:18am | 11/01/10

Yes, it’s driven by consumer demand, but I think the point here is that consumers need to STOP demanding it. Seriously, avocados cling-wrapped to a styrofoam tray? We’re smarter than that, people. (Avocados are already pre-wrapped - it’s called skin and you have to peel that off before eating it, anyway. You won’t die). That being said, I’m sitting here with a cardboard takeaway coffee cup on my desk and I’m feeling a little guilty right now…

Steve Smith says:

08:22am | 11/01/10

Most points are great, we over package alot of these items and more. No. 7 Bottled water is easily the greatest marketing scam in the world. Not that it isn’t a product we need on shelves but the popularity is just amazing.

Peter Thornton says:

08:43am | 11/01/10

Regardless of their status or financial ability to buy better, every fat (and correspondingly ugly) person I know is a slave to overly packaged convenience food. Ditto for bogans, who typically model their lives on the price of any given item rather than its cost to their body or their environment.

Laziness stemming from uninformed stupidity is the primary driving force behind the wide range of overly packaged foods available. Generally, we’re a dumb lot, but some are dumber than others.

Nice one, Nola!

marley says:

08:53am | 11/01/10

Let’s face it, some packaging is essential.  I’m trying to visualize buying frozen peas or dried beans that weren’t in a plastic bag or ground cumin or paprika that wasn’t in a jar (messy, very messy).  And some packaged food is part of a good healthy diet -  tinned tomatoes for pasta sauces, paella, stews, etc. being just one example (but a very fine one).

That being said, I am particularly hostile to those little packages of deli-meats (ham, etc - paper thin slices at an inflated price, with more packaging than meat)  - I buy a much superior product from the butcher, at a better price,  and wrapped only in a bit of waxed paper.  I also hate the fact that you can now buy lunch packs containing a piece of cheese, some raw carrot and celery, and crackers.  Are people so lazy these days that they can’t even slice a piece of cheese or pare a carrot?  And I always worry about prepared foods in the frozen food section, or “fresh” noodles in the cool section,  that have a longer expectancy than most pregnancies. 

And people actually buy this stuff - that’s the real worry.  Will future generations actually believe that milk comes from a carton, and garlic from a bottle?  Or that for hygenic reasons celery must be shrink-wrapped and spinach sold only in cellophane bags?

Lisa says:

09:15am | 11/01/10

The funniest thing I see at a supermarket is when people bring or buy the green enviro-bags but then package up their vegetables in twenty of the smaller plastic bags that come on those rolls.  Especially those people who pick up something like a single cucumber and put it in its own little plastic bag.  Hilarious.

Greypower says:

10:00am | 11/01/10

About bottled water - I agree that it’s ridulous, just use tap water -  I’m 73 and when I was young there was no such thing for sale as B W - if you needed to quench your thirst when out and a bubbler was not in sight, you HAD to buy lemonade or similar - full of sugar (but nonGM!) and other nasties. However the lemonade was in a glass bottle and would have come from a local soft drink factory.

Was plastic even invented then? Not for general use anyway - icecream came in cardboard.

So in this day and age -  buy a nonplastic container and fill it with tap water - save money, save the planet, save the whales— and live longer!

H of SA says:

10:33am | 11/01/10

Lisa I individually wrap the cucumber….I’m a germaphobe

ben says:

10:52am | 11/01/10

No, T Chong. They’re not on the shelves because that’s what people want - they’re on the shelves because they’re put on the shelves. Then people get to choose from what is on the shelves. Who was it that demanded access to mushrooms in a package that somehow made them twice as expensive as the same mushrooms unpackaged and sitting adjacent? No-one. People buy them because they are tricked or in a rush.

Seth Brundle says:

11:34am | 11/01/10

I buy pot noodles because they are cheap, tasty and easy.  I use plastic shopping bags because I then re-use them to carry my lunch to work, or use as garbage bags in my kitchen bin.  I get carboard taweaway cups for my morning coffee because I dont want to have to wash my own mug every day.  Basically, I really dont care about the environment when I am shopping because I know that in relation to other things that are happening the small impact I make is of no consequence whatsoever.  I guess you can convince yourself you are a good person because you take your own shopping bags, or you recycle your garbage, but the only purpose for these tiny scale solutions is to keep you from persuing genuine change in the ways industry and government pollute the world and exploit it’s resources. 
So just keep on wheeling out your recycling bin each week and enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling you get from the knowledge that you are saving the world, without ever having to genuinely sacrifice your way of life for the planet.

Ernest says:

11:50am | 11/01/10

In addition to Ben (11:52am), we are also so well sold and marketed to that we are so desperately time-poor that we can not possibly spare the time to peel some garlic and chop it up—even when one minute act yields a much tastier result than simply shovelling out vinegar-laden goop (they call garlic).

Heaven forbid cooking a wholesome healthy meal from scratch, versus reaching for a jar/packet full of preservatives and chemicals, and an essence of something real padded out with soy product.

One only has to look at the process involved in producing these types of “foods” to see how ridiculous things have become. No amount of fortifying processed foods with supplemental nutrients is going to do you any good. It’s dead food and only wastes energy as your body tries its best to digest and process it. Fresh is always best!

Eve says:

12:10pm | 11/01/10

S. Brundle, how can you attack other’s desire to reduce their footprint (even if it may have only a small impact) when you yourself do not appear to be pursuing any genuine change in the industry or government, nor are you willing to make small adjustments in your life to reduce your impact on this earth? There are at least 20 million people in Australia, I don’t see why we can’t make an impact through the way we consume.

Basil obsessor says:

12:28pm | 11/01/10

Yes bottles of water are wasteful, but I disagree with the herbs in tubes.  Ok, they might not taste as good as real herbs, but there are certain times of the year that it’s near impossible to get herbs such as fresh basil in states such as Tasmania. 

Have you ever tried to grow the annual Basil over winter? It’s bloody hard. 
When it does grow (inside of course because the frost will kill it), there’s no way that you can get enough for a basily tomato sauce, because it just doesn’t thrive well enough.  If shops do sell imported fresh basil, even if it doesn’t come wrapped in cling wrap (which it usually does), then you have to take into account the petrol consumption in transporting the herbs, and the fact that its probably been gassed with preservatives of some sort.

I often do the dried herb thing over winter (the remnants of last summer’s crop), but the basil in the tube packs a punch (no pun intended), is convenient, lasts long enough to use the entire tube (whereas it’s not always possible to use an entire bunch of basil in one go), and costs a lot less than the equivalent number of basil bunches.

Seth Brundle says:

12:32pm | 11/01/10

Eve, I can attack the average persons efforts at evironmentalism because they are at best “deluded” and at worst “hypocritical”.  I don’t make any change in lifestyle because I openly admit that my luxuries are more important to me.  Meanwhile, people (probably much like yourself) frown at me for using a plastic bag even though they themselves are running their air-conditioning for 10 hours a day, or driving their cars 1km to the local shops.  When someone like myself who doesnt care has the same footprint as people who supposedly do care, it’s time for those people to ask themselves exactly how much they are willing to sacrifice.

SLF says:

12:43pm | 11/01/10

What is wrong with packaging?

Someone work out a resource equation for food sent to retail without packaging versus packaged food, because I imagine that with the wastage that packaging prevents against it is a good thing we have it.

Given that the majority of packaging is recyclable then surely the above is even more ture. The food gets to you in a consumable state and the packaging it came is has protected it, meant that the resources used in production are not wasted, and then get recycled.

Schmavo says:

01:11pm | 11/01/10

Fascinating how a couple of people think it’s about consumer demand. I’d be more convinced that things like Avocados, sold in pairs and pre-wrapped, would avoid wastage for the retailer as you can’t personally select the best two. I’d be amazed if it was because of consumer demand and not maximising profits.

Blondie says:

01:36pm | 11/01/10

Some of us do not have access to food preparation facilities at work for example. It is far easier to regulate portions with individual packaging. I also find that portion packaging of things like rice crackers for example prevents wastage of food as you don’t have a whole pack going stale at once. Don’t get me wrong, I do try to use fresh and unpackaged food when I can - but even then you don’t know how “fresh” the item really is anyway.

Also, you’re wrong about the herbs in tubes. You can freeze them and they last for months. If I could grow my own herbs without them wilting or getting eaten alive by insects I would!

Carl Palmer says:

02:36pm | 11/01/10

I was looking fwd to reading an article about fresh food and cooking it but it ended up talking about food packaging. It’was a bit strange.

So I’ll cover both.

Yes I’m all for fresh food over canned wherever possible. I’m also lucky to have two cooks in the house that love to cook – even after a day at work – well most days.

As for packaging – all for reducing to save resources, reduce pollution, save whales etc etc. My only concern is the health bit, I always feel very uncomfortable when people serve themselves……

Packaging is used to speed the checkout process and to make it more accurate – scanning wise. Packaging usually has a barcode so you either have a tray with a barcode or a plastic bag to weigh - carry your avocados. It stores easier in containers when transported and probably reduces the incidents of “damage”. So it is fulfilling a function.

At my supermarket you have the option of placing your apples, oranges etc in plastic bag and shops now ask you if you need want a bag. So we are slowly reducing but I don’t it will be completely eliminated – well not any time soon..

Jimbo Jones says:

02:46pm | 11/01/10

@Seth Brundle - Dude, you’re a fly! How enviro is that! You just spew on everything you want to eat and then suck it up (impressive). How you survived the shotgun blast to the head is beyond me though (crafty flies…).  How is your girlfriend Geena Davis?

re: Avocado’s in plastic - I always thought they did this when they were desperate to get rid of them.  Never buy an avo unless you can inspect it.

re: Bottled Water - I see the point but until you’ve had gastro from drinking your tap water you don’t fully appreciate just how good it is to have clean water available in bottles in supermarkets (go bottled water!)

@Peter Thornton - dude, seriously you don’t get out much.  I know ultra thin people who subsist only on fried (and thereby ‘yellowed’) foods - I believe it has something to do with a thing called ‘metabolism’ (blah, blah, blah - other health factors etc blah, blah, blah). And ‘correspondingly ugly’ - sheesh, sounds like a personal vendetta (yeah, all the ‘thin’ folk I know are ugly too).  And come to think of it, I know even more ‘average weight’ people who should permanently cover their heads with up-turned paper bags (the divinely gorgeous such as myself can only dream of such an occurance…)  Back to the Milan catwalk for me… toodles!

Interloper says:

02:52pm | 11/01/10

An interesting mix of commentary and prejudice. If you want to tell me that because of ‘preservatives’ pre-packaged food is inherently less healthy than fresh food, I would ask you to show some evidence to this effect. If you want to tell me that pre-packaged food is less ‘sustainable’ than fresh food, I would generally agree with you ... although noting that fresh foods are often transported over large distances while being refrigerated, only to perish and be thrown out anyway.
As previous posters have noted, you should figure out exactly what and why you’re objecting to, and provide real arguments against it.

persephone says:

03:21pm | 11/01/10

Preserving food has a history as old as mankind’s. Pre farming people dried meat. Farmers dried, salted, smoked and treated food to preserve it in dozens of ways - salami, bacon, sauerkraut, pickled herrings, cheese etc etc.

Up until the invention of refrigeration, the staple foods which got most of Europe through winter were preserved. (And some of the preservatives used did a lot more damage to your health than modern day preservatives).

So ‘preserved food’ can be just as ‘real’ as ‘real’ food - and many of the foods that I’m sure Nola finds perfectly acceptable are probably preserved.

Peter Thornton says:

03:49pm | 11/01/10

@ Jimbo Jones - BA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Gawd, I laughed.

Cuppa says:

03:58pm | 11/01/10

I hate to Say it, but you make a good point Seth Brundle…...

utsicafe says:

05:33pm | 11/01/10

Yes he does (apart from the pot noodle bit).

DocBud says:

08:02pm | 11/01/10

The whole article rests on the premise that landfill is bad. While that may be true if lots of people live on itty bitty islands where land is a premium, it is not the case in Australia. Properly managed, landfills should have negligible environmental impact and can generate electricity. If the holes are deep enough, not a great deal of area is required. There are a few opencast mines that could be used as well. Australia could be charging other nations to send us their waste and then using that waste to generate power. The alternative to landfills is waste incineration, again a source of power.

I do like this sort of article, it provides the sanctimonious with a great opportunity to go to town in judging others.

I’m with you Seth, but we have to keep wheeling out the recycling bin every fortnight because of the amount of waste we generate is too great for just the normal bin. The recycling bin goes clink-clink as it goes down the drive, testament to our determination not to be advised by Anna Bligh how much we should drink.

davido says:

12:59am | 12/01/10

I agree - overpackaging is a complete waste of resources.

And I dont think it is sanctimonious to wonder if all that packaging is good for the environment or the economy.

All the whingers here sound like the people who complained about the lead being taken out of petrol. History has not judged them well at all… has it?

Guylian says:

04:36am | 12/01/10

Basil obsessor, I’m right there with you. I grow ‘perennial basil’ (seedling pot from Bunnings about $4) - which isn’t quite the same but keeps growing all winter - just so I can get my fix. If I had a sunny windowsill I’d grow the good stuff there during the cold, but I don’t.

Nola, I agree with most of your list there, but when it comes to bulk buying pet food, my cats refuse to eat it - the kangaroo meat goes bad too quickly and they get bored being served up the same thing four times in a row from one of those big whiskas tins. If I buy the bulk food to split up at home and freeze, I’m just using plastic bags at home instead. I wouldn’t mind having the choice of a 200g tin though, half the size of a big can but twice those little tins - two or three flavours in a row they’d probably eat.  Bulk dry food (1-2kg) is no problem, especially if it comes in one of those self-seal bags.

One big packaging thing you left out is all those individual ‘lunchbox’ serves on the deli shelves. Often there’s more volume in the packaging than the product itself. And if I had two jobs and six kids, you’d better believe those kids of mine would be taught how to prepare stuff like crushed garlic from a very young age.

DocBud says:

08:26am | 12/01/10

Absolute classic strawman argument, davido:

“All the whingers here sound like the people who complained about the lead being taken out of petrol. History has not judged them well at all… has it?”

SL says:

08:39am | 12/01/10

Unfortunately a lot of people do what they’re told by advertising and think that prepackaged stuff, packet mix etc will help them in their busy lives because that’s what the ads tell them.  I don’t doubt people have busy lives but considering it takes about 20minutes to chops some vegetables and throw them in a wok with a splash of soy sauce and a couple of herbs while the rice is boiling to make a fresh meal instead of 15 minutes to put together 3 or 4 packets of over salted &/or sugared stuff kind of ruins that argument

david says:

12:28pm | 12/01/10

DocBud, no strawman here. No misrepresentation of the whingers argument. Just observing that they sound like the people who objected to lead being removed from petrol.

DocBud says:

04:57pm | 12/01/10

davd,

Apart from the fact that those actually whinging are those moaning about excess packaging whereas you are clearly referring to those of us who don’t see it as a big problem, you clearly have used a strawman argument. You have not tried to engage in debate and discuss any of the points made, you have simply tried to devalue other people’s arguments by suggesting that those you disagree with sound like those who complained about lead being taken out of petrol and weren’t they silly people.

Ziggy says:

05:13pm | 29/04/10

Ah, are you all not aware that the so called fresh unwrapped stuff like f&v is usually months old and preserved with a little SO2? Fresh food people my arse!