Food choices audit
Who did previous Challenges?
Food choices audit – What do your know about your food?
Check each items on your pantry shelf and in your fridge and inventory what you know about them – how far have they travelled to come to be with you.
You can use the spreadsheet, which also has an example of our household inventory. We suggest you look at each item, but if this seems like a big task, you might wish to select your top 10 items – those you either buy most frequently, or those you ‘like best’.
See if you can answer the following questions:
- Where have they come from? Or likely to have come from? Where were they grown or manufactured?
- Is there Country of origin information? What does this tell you about the product and ingredients?
- What is the item with the greatest transparency as to where it’s from?
- If you were eating from within 160kim radius from your home (100 mile diet) which of your products would you no longer eat?
Things to know
The place of manufacture – where the ingredients are put together – or where the actual ingredients are grown or sourced from is not shown. In most cases the address information on the label refers to where the brand owner has its primary offices (ie. Dairy Farmers Pty Ltd, 737 Bourke St, Docklands VIC 3008).
With fresh food, you’ll find some is labeled but for specifics you’ll often need to have a conversation with the retailer. This won’t be hard as they love talking about their produce!
Here’s some important things that will help you gather the information you need to know:
Next Step: Preparation
This can be as simple or as comprehensive as you want it to be and depends on the Challenge you decide to take up for the week.
- Ask ‘what do you want to eat for the week of the trial?’. Do up a menu. Try to make it seasonally appropriate.
- Identify the things that are ‘definitely not’ within your chosen radius, those that are ‘likely to be’ within, and those that ‘could possibly be’ within.
- Ask your the local grocer about their produce. What is local?
- Check the Local Harvest map. Use the keyword search.
- Make phone-calls where necessary to suppliers to find out where produce is from.
- Remember to ‘add listings’ on the Local Harvest website for new discoveries that you may make.
Learning from others – The 100 Mile Trial
In December 2008, a group of 8 households in Melbourne took on the 100 Mile Trial – eating for a week from only food grown within an 160 kilometre radius of their homes. They found that this experiment, starting as a challenge to reduce the travel miles and carbon footprint of our food, became the opening up of a whole world of discoveries about their food, the people who produce it and of course themselves.
Read about their experiences on the 100 Mile Trial. Also, see Kim’s reflection on the food audit process and the 100 mile trial.
Country of origin labeling
Country of origin labels are often the only indicators as to where ingredients are from, and where the main manufacturing processes occurred. They give some idea, in the broadest (national) sense, as to where a food product is grown, produced, made or packed. A revision of the country of origin food labeling system came into effect in 2016. As outlined on the ACCC government website, the key country of origin claims mean different things:
- Grown in is a claim about where the ingredients come from and is commonly used for fresh food. It can also be used for multi-ingredient products to show where the food was grown and processed.
- Produced in is a claim about where the ingredients come from and where processing has occurred. This claim is often used for processed, as well as fresh foods.
- Made in is a claim about the manufacturing process involved in making the food.
When a food has not been grown, produced or made in a single country, it needs to display a label identifying the country it was packed in.
Example
A loaf of bread that is labelled ‘Made in Australia from a least 80% Australian ingredients’ means that the bread was baked in Australia using predominately Australian ingredients.
See more examples here.
Premium claims
- To be labelled ‘Product of Australia‘, each significant ingredient must come from Australia, and all or almost all of the processing must happen here too.
- To be labelled ‘Made in Australia‘, the product must have been substantially transformed in Australia and at least 50% of the production costs have been incurred in Australia.
What’s in Season?
As a general rule, fruit and vegetables grown out of season travel a long distance to come to you, or if they’re grown close by in greenhouses, often take energy for this. You can find out what’s in season at different time of the year here (guide for all Australia).
More on ‘Eating seasonally‘.
Note, some guides refer to ‘seasonal availability’ – this means what items you can get, it includes items kept in cold storage.
Also see Gardening Australia’s fact sheet & video ‘Grow Local, Eat Fresh‘.
What’s grown in your area?
Australia produces a large variety of crops and food products for both export and domestic consumption. The top ten agricultural products by value are cattle and calves, wheat, milk, fruit and nuts, vegetables, wool, barley, poultry, lambs, and sugar cane.
Different produce and crops are grown in different areas of Australia. The tables and information below give a general idea of what is grown in each state.
Vegetables & Fruit
| NSW | VIC | QLD | SA | WA | TAS | |
| Potatoes | 12% | 24% | 13% | 19% | 11% | 20% |
| Pumpkins | 45% | 43% | 2% | 7% | ||
| Green peas | 15% | 33% | 6% | 7% | 39% | |
| Beans | 1% | 56% | 19% | 4% | 21% | |
| Tomatoes | 15% | 52% | 31% | 2% | ||
| Onions | 7% | 27% | 21% | 11% | 34% | |
| Carrots | 7% | 39% | 38% | 16% | ||
| Cauliflowers | 29% | 23% | 28% | 2% | 5% | 12% |
| Lettuce | 12% | 23% | 44% | 3% | 18% | |
| Broccoli | 13% | 69% | 11% | 7% | ||
| Cabbage | 19% | 15% | 60% | 1% | 5% | |
| Other vegetables | 11% | 30% | 41% | 6% | 9% | 1% |
From Australian vegetable growing farms – an economic survey, 2006-07, abare.gov.au
See information for fruit grown in each state at different times of the year here.
Consumers frequently assume all fresh vegetables and fruit must be Australian, however this is not the case as much produce is imported. For example, in 2005 McDonald’s Australia Ltd announced it would no longer source all its potatoes for fries from Tasmanian producers and announced a new deal with New Zealand suppliers.
Crops
| NSW | VIC | QLD | SA | WA | TAS | |
| Wheat | 33% | 11% | 6% | 16% | 34% | |
| Barley | 18% | 20% | 3% | 33% | 25% | |
| Sorghum | 39% | 60% | ||||
| Cottonseed | 37% | 63% | ||||
| Canola | 37% | 18% | 13% | 31% | ||
| Oats | 24% | 28% | 9% | 39% | 1% | |
| Lupins | 11% | 2% | 8% | 79% | ||
| Field peas | 5% | 39% | 45% | 11% | ||
| Maize | 51% | 2% | 46% | 2% | ||
| Chickpeas | 44% | 10% | 29% | 3% | 15% | |
| Lentils | 2% | 53% | 44% | 2% | ||
| Broad beans | 34% | 54% | 1% | 11% | ||
| Sunflower seed | 41% | 58% | 1% |
From Agriculture in Australia, Wkipedia.
Dairy
Although dairy farms can be found all over Australia, milk is produced mainly in the traditionally higher rainfall areas in the south-eastern corner of Australia (80% in the three states ofVictoria, South Australia and Tasmania). This is where most of the cheese, ice cream and other dairy products are produced. (Source)
