© Sven Menschel
University life and a healthy and balanced diet are quite often difficult to combine. The same goes for tight schedules and proper grocery shopping. But this is not a good reason to give it all up. Let’s not forget that, after all, the whole point of what we’re all doing is “to improve the quality of life”.
Time: the big limitation and enemy. Motivation: its shy counterpart. I know this dilemma very well. The easiest way to fill your belly and get enough calories for your day – or maybe just the most common – is to grab bread and spread (or cheese) at the supermarket. Efficient. But sad. Don’t get me wrong. I’m Italian – and this may play a role – but, although I don’t like cooking, I really enjoy having proper lunches, which entail some time to prepare some fresh food, sit down, relax, enjoy my meal, and only then get back to work. I also have a sort of repulsion for crowded university spaces at lunch (I call it “lunch hell”) – but that is another story.
Groceries
Eating well often goes hand in hand with doing groceries well. I personally hate doing groceries at the supermarket. At the supermarket, I feel overwhelmed, I get lost, I lose a lot of time searching things, I worry so much about what to buy that I spend minutes reading ingredients and information, and I get mad every time when I try to avoid plastic packaged fresh stuff – which translates, 99 percent of the times, simply (and sadly) in not buying veggies.
At the supermarket, I worry so much about what to buy that I spend minutes reading ingredients and information.
When I’m organised enough to go to the organic farm shop once a week, my day lights up. My week has a different light, and a different taste too. Choosing my greens from those grown on farm, buying eggs of happy organic chickens that I can see right there, looking at the fields, filling my bike basket with lettuce and biking home smiling: it all makes me so happy! And I get home without plastic! How nice!
Foodscape
This blog is a reminder for me and for you to make time to buy good and fair food and to pay attention to what we eat and how. We’re not merely passive users of a given foodscape: we have the chance to choose and influence it. Our daily choices matter. Especially if they can make us feel better!
Donatella Gasparro is a master’s student in Organic Agriculture; she hails from Italy.