Ideas to Describe Foods That Aren`t Local – But Want to Be
As a bit of background – in Canada we have a lot of food labelled as `Product of Canada.` The legislation is often criticized for confusing the origins of food – i.e food grown on the other side of the world and then shipped here can be labelled `Product of Canada` if the packaging costs more than the actual food. Other food grown here and shipped to the Southern US or Russia to be produced comes back as this same label. We also confuse wine purchasers with terms like `cellared in Canada.` It`s a frequent topic amongst many I know…
I spent a few minutes with a friend today who I find ever-inspiring. She recently spent hours going through a pile of produce trying to figure out where it`s from. She quoted some of the terms on the packaging that would be so funny if they weren`t actually really on foreign food trying to appear to be more local.
There`s a lot of attention to locally-grown food these days and many people are interested in being included in those conversations. Perhaps this is why some labeling is confusing.
I thought I`d provide some tongue-in-cheek ideas to help companies who want to make their far-away food seem more local – the comments in the parenthesis are the fine print:
- Grown locally (somewhere else)
- Grown with Love in Canada (only the love part has to be Canadian, technically)
- Contains Canadian Water (that evaporated and fell somewhere else)
- Grown on Canadian Soil (why not just ship some of our soil somewhere else and farm with it)
- 100% Canadian Seeds made these veggies
- Inspired by Canada
- Mae while thinking of Canada
- pollinated by Canadian Bees
- Made in Cda. (Just rename a town somewhere else)
- Made While Thinking of Canada
- Made on (a map of) Canada
- Made Near Canada
- Canadian Bacon (Made somewhere else)
I understand that the truth is that most of our mass-produced food simply can`t tell us where it`s from because of their scale (that`s scary enough) – but I just wish my food would tell me where it was from and then I could make my own decision from there…
Happy Saturday to all!
Comments
here are some others i found particularly hilarious:
-packaged for…
-proudly distributed by…
-contains fresh tomatoes
and my particular favourite:
-licensed by…
It’s actually worse than you’re describing. Related to wine, many people don’t know that they don’t have an understanding of the situation. Many are committed to buying local wine, but are tricked by “Cellared in Canada”. They may be aware of VQA, and don’t realize that Cellared in Canada is not VQA. Even people who have taken wine courses, and local food activists, are being fooled. Wine educators need to talk more about bulk wine, so that people are more aware of how to spot local wine, and quality wine from other regions as well.