Sunday, August 1, 2010

Not even George could find a hero in this dish

Master Chef has changed the shelves of one well known supermarket across the land. Pigeon breast, broccolini, cheeses I can't name, buckets of duck fat, can anyone find the milk -  full cream, from a cow... And then there's the other story from the other parts of the same land - 

Stores where the stock is out of date, prices are on average 4 times higher than what we in our comfy cities on our comfy incomes are used to. Stores that do not sell fresh fruit or vegetables, there is some frozen meat and a lot of sugar, salt and additives. These are the stores in Aboriginal communities across the NT -  and possibly other part of Australia - but it is the NT I know most about. Nutrition and children's health was meant to be a key deliverable of the Government's NT Intervention. So -  Aboriginal people get a BasicsCard to spend in these stores and to apparently take better care of themselves and their children. But the Federal Government has done nothing about subsidising fresh food to reach these stores, regulation for store owners on prices / contents or anything else. The individual has no say in how much of their money goes onto this BasicsCard, whether they even want a BasicsCard or not and not all stores accept the card so too bad -  buy what's on the shelf, oh yeah- and probably what is within reach (the store is a walk away, the supermarket could be 300km away!). 

Perhaps the Federal Government could look at a food revolution outside of Coles.