Making deliberate choices

When I prepared this journey I watched a documentary about food and the wellbeing of people. In it there was a man who said the legendary words: “Customers are no civilians anymore, but customers are consumers. We have to go back to the time that customers are civilians with a choice again”. A quote I will never forget.

Today we have to spend the whole day in the train by travelling from Amiens to Lyon. So it is time for some background information about food, customers and the choices we make. With the quote above the man indicates that we can’t make real choices anymore when we buy and eat our daily food. But what is the reason that we are inclined to buy cheap meat and not the biological meat?

If I think about the concept of fair trade and organic food I like it. I don’t want to buy the products with the low prices because of the exploitation of people at the other side of the world. But sometimes even I don’t choose for the products that are, according to me, the best products.

If we go to the supermarket there are sales and we mostly buy products we know; we don’t want to eat green oranges or red bananas. Also prices and commercials are important and even the music and decvice of the supermarket influences our daily choices. If we make these daily choices we can make two kinds of choices. The first are the moral choices. With these moral choices we will choose for the fair trade chocolate and the seasonal vegetables. The other choices, which are more usual, are the choices of association. Mostly, if we buy chocolate we first think about the taste and later about the farmers in Brazil. In the supermarket we associate the products we buy with how we use these products. We eat the food, so the first thing we think about is if and how we like to eat it, then maybe if it is healthy and after that we think about the source of the products and the economic and social justice of the growers from the products. If we even think about it when we just do our daily shopping.

So if we buy our daily products it is hard to make the moral choices, because we first associate it with the situation where we use these products. Later if we have the time and think about it again, we can make a visualization of the other aspects of the product. The aspects that aren’t visible or important in the way of using the products. According to the quote we have to lead our choices again by the things that are important for us and not by markets and profits, no matter how hard it is.