after a walk through rainy amsterdam, away from the tourists congregating outside madam toussad's, across the canals, a pampered haircut by a girl who might have a bigger identity crisis than me and an obligatory introducing-arina-to-wagamama's meal, we came across a market right up our alley: biological, organic, ecological, sustainable. the fruits and vegetables were all labeled with their place of origin. there were beautiful cheeses. floor to ceiling wines. aisles of gourmet olive oils, crackers, pasta, baby food...all of it though had some sort of label that shouted biological, organic, eco-friendly, fair trade, 100% this, 100% that. it was overwhelming. it proved what we had learned in the EU about the problem with labels - there are too many of them that eventually they will lose their proof of certification or meaning. some of the products looked really nice, but maybe it was just the packaging. we even found drinks made from slow food presidias - la vera gazzosa - presidio del limone sfusato di amalfi and il vero chinotto - presidio del chinotto di savona. we asked the manager if he had any other slow food presidia products and he had no idea what we were talking about. after a brief explanation of all we've learned over the last 5 months about slow food and it's presidia, a blank look confirmed that he still had nothing to offer us. we bought asher a bag of bio-organic chips, but after a closer inspection of the packaging flashing "fertile" "family-run" "organic" "traditional" "100%" but nothing about where the potatoes actually came from. the label's company was from the netherlands, but then it said it was imported by bioliving australia. that's a lot of food carbon footprints. and what does bio-organic mean? not biological. not organic. but bio-organic. so regardless of all the labels and stamps, does it really make it any better, any more worth the extra euro's, any healthier for us or for the environment or do these words just make us feel better about the purchase?
the baby food looked quite scrumptious.
organic and bio. 200%.
fanatic about organic.
fairtrade cola?
i like the name.
even fairtrade and bio chocolade hagelslag!
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