Flutterby™! : Food random

Charlene has been on a diet that involves her going through a lot of vegetables. It ain't cheap, but she probably peaked around a size 18, she's down to a size 8 now, so I can't complain. What it has done, however, is change how I think of the food portion of our budget. Groceries are now a big portion of the pie chart, which means that things that used to be extravagances in the food budget are now noise. When we're spending that much on kale and chard every week, does it really matter how much the olive oil that we buy every few months costs?

As China's food system experiences systemic breakdown (and do you know how much Chinese cream is in your butter? How about your candy bars?), and that olive oil is increasingly suspect, this is letting me get in touch with our food supply chain a little bit more. I eat less cheese, but it tastes a lot better, and I think I know which fields those cows graze. Today the Press Democrat has an article on the local olive oil business.

In general, I think this is the trend of the libertarian thinking on food safety: We can't trust governments to keep our food supplies safe, we have to start rebuilding those personal relationships ourselves. This is going to cost a lot. The costs of food as a percent of our budget are going to go back up to the proportions that they were earlier in the last century, possibly even higher. And this will have an impact on the rest of our spending...