Where’s your FOOD from?

When you buy that lusciously green bunch of spinach or a plump chicken, do you think about where it came from? We look at why provenance is such a buzzword in food these days

Most of us want to eat the best-quality food possible. At one time, that just meant fresh and nutritious. But these days you might also think about its provenance. That refers to where a food has actually come from, and more of us are taking an interest. In fact, a recent report by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) found nearly three-quarters of us try to buy locally-produced produce.

However, it’s hard to know what exactly has happened to your food before it actually reaches your plate. We’ve lost a lot of our knowledge – a BBC poll found fewer than one in 10 of us knows when fruit and veg are in season, and when you’re rushing around the supermarket, you may not always stop to check a food’s origin before you buy. In fact, half of the UK’s food is sourced from abroad, according to the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

DOES IT MATTER?

So your bagged salad was picked a few days ago in Spain and washed with chlorine to keep it crisp? Does it actually cause any problems?

For starters, safety shouldn’t be an issue, says Melanie Hargraves, a registered dietician and nutrition scientist for the British Nutrition Foundation. ‘The UK food chain has regulations in place, which should ensure the foods we buy are safe to eat.’ That not-so-fresh fish may not be quite as firm or tasty as it should – but it’s unlikely to do you any harm.

However, from a nutritional perspective, there may be an impact. ‘Once picked, the content of some micronutrients can start to decline in fruits and vegetables, so the nutrient content of foods from abroad may be lower,’ says Hargraves. But what’s most important is to get enough – only 31% of adults in the UK are consuming the five recommended daily portions of fruit and vegetables, she points out, which is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. So if eating out-of-season produce helps you get there, fine.

But it’s also about ethics. The more local your food, the fewer miles it’s clocked up to get to you. Then there are welfare concerns. Supermarkets should be able to provide information about, for example, the farms their chickens and eggs come from, and how the birds are looked after. You can check websites or ask store managers. But it can be trickier with foods such as readymeals, as ingredients may be sourced from different places. And we don’t always know what we should be looking for. One campaign drew attention to the use of slave labour in the supply chain of cheap Thai prawns, urging consumers to choose North Atlantic instead.