With
globalisation and a high demand for products all year round, much of
the food in the UK is now imported from other countries all around the
world. In ancient times, people would have eaten off the land so their
diets would have been very seasonal, eating root vegetables in the
cooler months and feasting on juicy fruits and vibrant berries when the
weather is warmer.
The same would have applied for fish and meat as
some animals hibernate throughout the winter where others may disappear
completely, migrating to warmer regions further south until the spring
arrives. Mating and birthing seasons in the animal kingdom would also
have had an enormous impact on people's seasonal diets, where produce
would be almost entirely grown or hunted very locally.
Now
however, with complex new methods of transport, technology and access to
food that is grown or produced on the other side of the world diets are
hardly seasonal at all as we are able to get any produce at any time of
year just by popping down to the local supermarket. Where though does
all this food come from though as we begin to think about what impact
our demanding diets are having on the world as a whole.
Depending
on the product, food is flying into the UK from numerous different
countries such as Denmark, Colombia, Thailand, Italy, China, Canada and
New Zealand with many other countries also producing produce that is
then sold in the UK. Food from more than 160 countries is brought into
the UK meaning that we really have developed tastes that come from every
corner of the world.
Although the UK is one of the world's
leading producers of meat and dairy products, we import a vast amount of
the rest of our food from chocolate and coffee, to enormous quanities
of fruit and vegetables that due to our very seasonal climate, cannot be
grown all year round. And indeed, foods that we cannot grow here at all
such as tropical fruits including pineapples, oranges and bananas all
of which often make up our fruit bowls. By shopping locally at your
butchers and greengrocers, you will be offered more seasonal choices as
well as possibly trying things that you maybe had not considered before.
