So four new messages in the news this week to affect the terrible guilt I feel about what sort of food I should be buying...

1) Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has called for restaurants that are not using locally-sourced seasonal vegetables to be fined http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7390959.stm  
2) Food prices, especially for staples like wheat and rice have rocketed hitting the poorest (see the article on crazy B's blog for one way of looking at that) http://www.thoughts.com/crazyb/blog/global-food-crisis-and-g overnment-neglect-91708/
3) UK consumers throw away about a third of their food untouched http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1545785/Householders- throw-away-third-of-all-food.html  
4) Part of the looming food crisis might be being caused by the shift to producing crops for biofuels http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7186380.stm  

Taking one at a time... I've posted before on the ethical dilemmas that we in the Western world can face
http://www.thoughts.com/rose22/blog/organic-v-food-miles-whi ch-is-the-way-to-go-81469/  

Needless to say, I think Ramsay is really going about this the wrong way. Sure to make a statement like this guarantees him nice headlines and a debate on the Radio 4 today programme, but he's just not living in the real world.
There's this thing called the World Trade Organisation. If we started to ban imports from, say, the developing world (he cites Kenyan beans) then not only are we potentially condemning their farmers to poverty, we are also potentially breaking international trade laws. Even if we allowed the imports but banned their use in restaurants I think we'd be sailing pretty close to the wind.

The other problem with what he says is what we might call the Delia Smith dilemma. Launching her new cook book (an update of her 1970s classic "How to cheat at cooking") Delia Smith (who is the UK's bestselling food writer) strayed onto politics noting the above point on how organic can affect poverty in developing countries but also saying that the standards set by chefs (such as free range and only the best ingredients) just weren't affordable for the ordinary family.
Now, I disagree with her on free range - surely every chicken has the right to a happy life before being killed for food? - but what she says really brings home the point of my second message above.

There are families in the Western world who are already affected by the credit crunch, by below-inflation wage increases (that's a paycut in real terms), by mortgage payments increasing as a proportion of salary, and by the world wide increase in food prices. Telling them that they should "only" be having the most expensive foods as anything else is unethical is a pressure that they probably don't need.
(Actually I'm well aware that it's a pressure that many just don't heed - the UK is the junk food and ready meal capital of Europe! We watch a huge number of cookery shows while waiting for the microwave to ping... It's a sad reality that everything really is a world of contradiction...)

Waht do you think?