Creamy stuff

The government budget talks have now agreed upon a cutback on the VAT on food in October 2009 with 5 % of the current rate of today’s 17 %.

I really wonder if that makes any difference to the consumer retail prices anyway, the shops and supermarkets tend to hike the prices up before such changes in order to be able to afford the prices going down with the tax reduction. Another thing that recently has been up for discussion is the origin of food, what it contains and where it comes from as many producers just refine what they have bought elsewhere and mostly not even locally or nationally.

Just recently one of the Finnish dairy manufacturers had to withdraw one type of food cream, which is a cream with lower percentage of fat than average cream, from the supermarkets. This cream in question was not even real cream made out of cow’s milk but instead a concoction made of vegetal fats with preservatives and other additives making it cream-like and said to be healthier than ordinary cream as it contains more vegetable oil, thus also containing more unsaturated and healthier fatty acids.

The reason for the manufacturer being obliged to withdraw the creamy stuff was that the guar gum used as emulsifier in the product was discovered containing too high levels of dioxin and according to the cream manufacturer the dioxin containing guar gum in question originating from abroad as it does of course not grow in Finland. Even when food is made organically, grown locally here in Finland, how do you know it is not grown next to the most trafficked roads in the country, right in the middle of a big city or next to a chemical plant? Even though the food is grown without fertilizers and pesticides, according to my logic it is not organically grown with nearby sources of pollution.

Where does our food come from originally?
How healthy is it ?
Anyway, it snowed yesterday in the most northern parts of Finland and snow is quite rare this early in the year and up in the north people woke up with 5 cms of snow that had fallen during the nightIt is currently colder than it usually is in the rest of the country as well and the fall is well on its way. Funny you always look for the migrating birds to arrive in the spring and especially for the swallows to return to Finland, but you hardly ever see them leave, they just disappear every fall over night like they have done it one more time. Of course you see the other migrating birds flying to the south for the winter in long rows, singing as they leave.