Shopping for food

It’s in the shopping aisle we make our biggest decisions – either to stick with the usual food choices or switch to a more ethical eating pattern. This is where we decide how to use our money – to withdraw it from certain products so as not to give oxygen to the producers or to continue sponsoring them, so they can continue supplying us.
When we give in to food seduction, to foods that trigger “biochemical effects not unlike those of addictive drugs” like sugar, chocolate, cheese or meat, we do so without giving it a second thought. We let our taste buds do our decision-making for us - if it’s yummy we eat it. Salivation says it all – we response to that gland. On the way home from the shops, if we savour certain foods, we visualise the meal to come. We look forward to certain dishes for which we’ve just bought the contents.
When we deliberately go cruelty-free shopping it’s another story. We quite consciously replace animal-based foods with plant-based foods (and that also means replacing leather and woollen goods with non-animal footwear and fabrics). Whatever items we choose to boycott it’s pretty much a straight forward, matter – simply give no support to animal-food producers. After that position has been taken up, then it’s just a matter of reading the fine print on the ingredient lists and switching over to alternative products.
If we make a conscious decision NOT to change it’s a decision to keep to a habit pattern which then prevents us from making any genuine contribution to animal rights. If we’d like to express sympathy with these animals we’re faced with an ethical dilemma – either we shop with animal rights in mind or we continue to ‘screw the animals’; we either do the right thing or we do what others do.
What usually happens is that we refuse to even discuss this subject, treating it like a taboo. Who’d have ever thought that one day we’d be confused about food unless we were considering health matters? Who’d have thought that our every-day shopping could put us to such a test?