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English vs English


deanb
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How big is greenwashing over there? As in an attempt to make everything see environmentally friendly even when it's really not. We also have a gluten free fad going on over here so we see tons of food labeled as gluten free even when it's unbelievably obvious. You mean this apple is gluten free? Holy shit! Anything like that?

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Well most stores have the "Bags for Life" and Tesco offer Green points if you bring your own bags. Sainburies made a point of reducing the packaging in their products too. Beyond that not much.

As for Gluten-free I'm not gluten intolerant so I wouldn't know. They did recently agree to pick a single labelling system though (but that's more for health levels of a food). Not yet fully formalised. Unsure if it would include marking products as gluten free though. Apples (and most fruit) just tend to be labelled with the type (As in granny smith) and price.

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I'm not gluten intolerant either, that's how rampant it is. Which is good for them, but it's stupid that it took a fad diet to put that on more packaging, and then they went too extreme and started putting it on stuff that obviously is GF.

 

So over there there's no blatantly obvious attempts to sell things that are "natural" and "organic" and "earth friendly" when they clearly aren't?

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Well we have DEFRA and organic labelling/production is under EU regulations. Generally no GM crops or chemical pesticides(there's a couple of exceptions in that though) and fertilisers(so use manure n such instead). The usual.

 

And I don't buy organic, so it can't be "working on just you".

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I'm guessing what FDS is getting at is that we have a lot of labelling that suggests environmentally friendly/sustainable/pesticide-free/fair-trade etc practices, but if the wording is not just right, then it doesn't necessarily have to be certified to claim it. Also, lots of taking advantage of ignorance, like the assumption that organic crops wouldn't have had pesticides used, when it really just restricts it to certain ones and so on.

 

Or maybe things like "and $0.10 from every purchase goes to plant trees in Brazil" making little overall difference compared to the product itself, but giving the consumers something to feel good about for "making a difference."

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I get what FDS is getting at, just pointing it out doesn't really happen much, regulation is pretty strict around these parts. We do have Fairtrade products though, especially in Co-Op. Sustainability regulation and certification is provided by FSC. And so on so forth for all kinds of food and product claims. We can get pretty stingy if you lie about your product. If you make a claim you better be able to back it up; not allowed to mislead or deceive consumers. Not that most folks care what environmental perks there are, especially over past few years. Regular is cheaper than organic & co so organic & co sales fall.

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In the UK, there was something in the news this last week about mainstream chocolate (e.g., kit kats and the like rather than 'posh' chocolates) with fairtrade labels plastered all over them. They're designed for people to think the chocolate is fairtrade, but are using something called the mass balance system, which means if a large company buys 90% normal cocoa beans, and 10% fairtrade, mix them all together, they can label 10% of their products as fairtrade even though the particular product they label as fairtrade will have hardly any fairtrade chocolate in it and indeed no more than the other 90% of the products they cannot label fairtrade. That makes it pretty hard for people to make an informed decision so I'd guess that is an example of UK greenwashing.

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Raisins and sultanas are both from white grapes - sultanas are less dried out so lighter in colour, softer and juicier.

 

Currants are from red grapes and are the driest of the three being smaller and quite hard.

 

That's all in the UK.

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The yellow raisins are referred to as goldens or golden raisins by the main producer (Sun-Maid) in the US. The hard, small dark raisins are called raisins.

 

I have both in my pantry for baking, and I live 20 minutes from the raisin capital of the world. I can find raisins at all of the farmer's markets around here.

 

 

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