Boxing clever: We road-test favourite convenience meals
With climate change on her mind time-poor, food-loving Gordana Rodden considers meal delivery kits as the bane and the antidote.
The food box is not for me, but there are days when I’m tempted by it. The ease of it turning up on your porch is enticing. Not having to brave the aisles of the supermarket on a Sunday afternoon is freeing. When you live in the city and don’t have a vehicle, grocery shopping can knock out half a day of your weekend.
Truthfully, I enjoy the independence of writing my own meal plan for the week. Seeing what plastic-free produce I can find at the vege market is a fun game. Visiting the different refilleries around town has become a hobby. I chat with like-minded people and learn tips from them. Cooking can be therapeutic, and learning more about it on my own terms, rather than having it decided for me, has healed my relationship with food.
I know I’m privileged to even think about these options; 19 percent of Kiwi kids face food insecurity every day. My parents worked over-time for barely above minimum wage, struggled to make ends meet, just to propel me into this luxurious world of choice.
So I try and slow down, appreciate my position and the food on my plate, divorcing capitalism and the fastpaced convenience it throws me. Food boxes remove the fulfilling exchanges sourcing your own food provides. In this increasingly disconnected world, I’ll hold on to what I have left.
I’ve been raised amid what I hope is the tail end of convenience culture. We live in an age where consumers now realise their most valuable asset is time. ‘‘People avoid chores that in the past were just part of daily life,’’ University of Auckland business marketing lecturer Dr Carlos Diaz Ruiz says. ‘‘Subscription boxes are proliferating because they offer convenience paired with novelty – little surprises to everyday routines.’’
Enter food box delivery services. First-time offers, promo codes and Christmas specials make them even more enticing.
There are downsides, though. The true cost of convenience culture is the environment. The Earth has no say in the plastic-wrapped luxury of Western lifestyles and despite our ‘‘clean green’’ image, we are guilty contributors to the planet’s demise. New Zealand is one of the highest producers of waste per capita in the OECD, according to the Ministry for the Environment.
Obesity rates here are high, too, and they come entwined with issues of structural violence and poverty. According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Health last year, 34 per cent of adults in this country are obese. I’m one of many who have struggled with their weight, meeting with a dietician regularly from age seven to 13. I’ve continued to fluctuate since.
Everyone’s relationship with food is unique. In 2014 I became a vegetarian after binge-watching documentaries that pointed to classes of agriculture such as dairy farming as the leading contributor of methane and nitrous oxide, the main catalysts for climate change. I had wanted to cut out meat and dairy since I was 15, but living under my parent’s roof and growing up in a dairy farming community slowed that transition considerably.
These days I do my best to eat mostly plantbased, but don’t beat myself up at the odd bit of cheese. It’s the main way I reduce my carbon footprint. But, while trying to balance my feelings for climate change and the value of my spare time, I set out to road-test some convenient food delivery services .
My boyfriend Will and I arrive back to our apartment at 8.30pm. We’re tired, brains at capacity after our first two-hour Spanish class and a full day of work. He has been volunteered by me to trial the Woop meal kit: miso seared beef sirloin with ponzu carrots and courgette rice. The company doesn’t offer any vegetarian options, so I can’t partake. Looking at the instructions, Will reckons it will take him about 20 minutes.
I call Will a part-time vegetarian: he eats and cooks like one at least half the week. He says I’ve rubbed off on him, turning him into that nagging workmate who laments any single-use plastic at the office.
Sitting with my bowl of corn chips and