Inspired by a rewatch of Food, Inc. (2009), the god-given right to shit on Nestlé, and an attempt to offset years of Fatty Lane-sponsored staff meals, Critic Te Ārohi spent five days living as an Ethical Consumer – cutting out anything even vaguely unethically sourced. Despite our best intentions, it turns out ethical consumption is harder than it looks. And there actually is such a thing as too many potatoes.
Unlike what your local café would have you believe, ethical consumption isn’t just about paying an extra dollar for oat milk or saving turtles one paper straw at a time. My take on “ethical” meant cancelling that duopoly of supermarkets (because those prices aren’t very fucking ethical towards the bank account). Dairies, restaurants, and fast-food chains were also cut out of the picture.
Some concessions had to be made. Ethical blinkers were on when it came to furniture, clothing, blankets and appliances, and although I would love to go without fossil fuel and power consumption, I have assignments to do. Still, everything else I consumed in the five-day period – food, household cleaners, toothpaste, toilet paper – had to meet some kind of ethical standard, with the overarching goal of completely eliminating single-use plastics, unfortunately ruling out the Glad-wrapped Miga Hako rice balls from the Link.
Without access to products like laundry powder and dishwashing detergent, I was forced to improvise: hand-washing clothes (boiling water will hopefully do the trick) and considering rendering animal fat into soap if nothing else can be found. Hell, I might even have to go full lockdown boredom mode and attempt to make sourdough. One could argue about the advent of agriculture and the stabilisation of society, but that's a debate for another time – we’re not going full Ted Kaczynski this week.
To address the elephant in the room: yes, I eat meat. However, animal rights considerations and slaughter methods will be considered in the purchasing of meat. For the purposes of finding ethically sourced meat, I should be able to identify where the meat was sourced from and how that animal has been raised and killed. Essentially this will limit myself to meat that is wild game, home kill, or meat that is halal.
All produce had to be organically grown in New Zealand, which will be supported by some sort of certification or ethical stamp of approval. The focus on local produce is mainly down to reducing unnecessary resources in transporting goods (think of all the packaging and carbon emissions involved) and the different labour laws which may induce the exploitation of overworked and underpaid workers. Also: no seed oils, no palm oil. Save the rainforest, baby.
DAY ONE – Saturday
Total Spend: $127.11
There are three things you immediately notice when you wake up in the morning with the moral code of a monk:
a) How am I going to wipe my ass?
b) How am I going to brush my teeth?
c) I really need a fair trade coffee.
In the hope of fixing these three issues, ethical consumption was purposefully started on a Saturday where I kicked things off at the Dunedin Railway Station farmers market. The aim for this trip was to find the basic necessities (soap, toothpaste and food) before coming to the realisation that I would be undertaking an involuntary diet of intermittent fasting throughout the week.
Unfortunately – but somewhat expectantly – I was only able to snag produce from the farmers market: a bag of potatoes, a bundle of radishes, spinach and a few bulbs of garlic from Oamaru Organics (allegedly spray-free and NZ certified organic). Next I grabbed plums and manuka honey from Earnscleugh Orchard, before already forgetting about ethically sourcing things and grabbing a punnet of cherry tomatoes from a mystery farm (don’t worry, the plastic punnet they came in was returned to the following market).
After the farmers market, I stopped by one of Dunedin’s hidden gems: Links Butchery on Princes Street. Links advertises itself as a “whole carcass butchery”, claiming to champion local farmers and source all their meat from local farms. I don’t know which ones, but I trust it. I spent a small fortune on a kilo of scotch fillets and a $10 litre of full-cream Windy Ridge Milk. I also collected some home-kill sausages from a friend and successfully peer-pressured my flatmate into doing all the house chores seeing as I had no chemically induced products to do so.
For lunch, flexing the freshly bought and vaguely ethical food, I cooked steaks and put together a make-shift salad. Now, this sounds like a great feed, until you realise not having butter, oil, salt and pepper or salad dressing really takes away from any type of satisfaction. After spending a total of $54.11 on the steaks and not wanting to completely butcher it (ha), the best course of action was to cut off some of the excess fat and render that down in the pan as a substitute for oil. The steak was bang average, slightly overcooked and not having salt and pepper was terrible. I now know why Columbus set off to find a new trade-route to get some spices, because at this point it was day one and I was already ready to do some bad things for some flavour. My neighbour’s Himalayan salt lamp is looking pretty lickable right now.
Starting a theme for the week, I had the exact same thing for dinner but added some baked potatoes to go with it. I was really feeling like Matt Damon in The Martian. Decided to chuck some manuka honey as a topping on the steak and potatoes. 4/10, would do again.
DAY TWO – Sunday
Total Spend: $44.14
Sunday morning began with some home-kill beef sausages, which weren’t bad but again, cooked with no oil or butter and without bread or condiments. For lunch, I went full Liver King mode – steak eaten straight off a cutting board. Expect me on Joe Rogan next week to talk about the benefits of elk meat.
After another mediocre meat experience (that’s what she said), I decided to go full-holistic trad wife and make my own butter. It was easier than you’d think; just pour milk in a bowl, scrape off the cream and blend the shit out of it. Easy enough to do if you have access to a bottle of full cream. I didn’t. I had a $10 bottle of milk with barely any cream in it. Results were fine, a mix between butter and really whipped cream that was slightly smaller than the single use butter packets you get with cheese rolls. Utilising this luxury, I cooked the second last steak, this time melting whatever butter I had in the pan and attempting to baste the steak with it and a few cloves of garlic. Great success.
If you’re wondering what happened to that toilet paper and toothpaste I couldn’t find, Saturday was rough. I had contemplated taking a shower instead of using toilet paper, but I held strong. Sunday morning, desperately trying to amend some immediate needs, I went to this organic shop called Taste Nature (found on the bougie side of the Octagon) which makes you feel like you’re spending a small fortune to fund a middle-aged woman's spiritual adventure and top of the line dream-catcher before they explain the health benefits of mushrooms to you. Basically like Lottie from Yellowjackets, except without the psychosis. Or maybe with the psychosis. Either way, they aren’t wearing shoes in public.
Scratching the itch, I managed to purchase some overpriced manuka honey and milk soap, bamboo toilet paper, and natural fluoride-free toothpaste. While in Rome. I also bought a $12 loaf of gluten free bread. It was awful. I ate three slices of it before giving up and going full paleo diet – which may in fact be less ethical than what I normally eat, but I digress.
DAY THREE - Monday
Total Spend: $0.00
Monday was the first day I was forced to be on campus and it very quickly taught me a few lessons about ethical consumption. One: If you don’t pack a lunch, you’re not going to eat. Two: I had to bring my own toilet paper and soap to campus, meaning that to avoid the embarrassment of whipping out a bar of soap in the Central toilets you have to use the ones on the second floor of the Business School where no one will see you. Three: Not eating anything isn’t a good way to be productive. And if you haven't bought anything to cook before 5:30pm, good luck Charlie.
This was by far the worst day of the challenge. I missed breakfast, and had only brought a few plums and a leftover steak wrapped in the paper bag the plums came in which ended up sticking to the steak completely. Yes, I still ate it. Yes, I enjoyed the cold steak eaten straight from my hands in the Business School. If you saw this, no you didn’t. At this point, staying on campus too late to buy anything and not eating nearly enough, I had one last steak and continued to dig into the 2kg bag of potatoes and the last remaining radishes. The rest of the well-rounded diet included eating honey straight from the jar and a few mugs of honey and boiling water to make a make-shift tea. Simply lovely.
DAY FOUR – Tuesday
Total Spend: $33.47
Another rough day for the metabolism. All that was eaten before 5pm was a singular slice of gluten-free bread with honey. Running off fumes, I gave in on the ethical consumption and put back at least three black coffees on campus (drank in one of those Univeristy bamboo cups, so at least there was no rubbish).
Despite the start, the rest of the day was a godsend. Learning about the 5:30pm cut-off the previous day, I decided to stop by Links before they closed. Morals becoming slightly skewed, I purchased some steak and onion sausages, justified by my belief (and not backed up by any research whatsoever) that cows are raised more ethically than pigs. These were cooked up with the remaining cherry tomatoes and garlic to make a makeshift sauce that wasn’t very thick but decently enjoyable. After making dinner and no longer feeling lightheaded, my parents arrived in town from Southland, where they dropped off some produce from their garden: pickled jalapenos, courgette, tomatoes, garlic, chillies, a fresh baked half-loaf of bread (gluten included), and an industrial amount of green beans which were mostly eaten raw after having withdrawal symptoms from a lack of snacking.
DAY FIVE – Wednesday
Total Spend: $0.00
On Wednesday I actually managed to eat throughout the day, and at this point the flag had already been thrown in for coffee, which made me realise that I might have a dependency on it. Everyone has their vices. On a side note, I still hadn’t done any washing up to this point and thankfully had enough clean clothes to get me through the week. Although just using bar soap with no shampoo or deodorant couldn’t have been a pleasant experience for those around me. But I had bigger fish to fry (metaphorically, didn’t feel like fishing in the Leith). Despite starting to get the hang of ethical consumption, I got asked to go out for pizza Wednesday night so I folded. Grease has never tasted so good and I think my body was craving salt.
Cumulative Spend: $204.72
If these five days taught me anything, it’s that ethical consumption is pretty fucking hard. Massive props to those who manage it, but without some level of masochism it feels like a challenge designed to make you fail. And maybe that’s the point.
It would be great if we could all live ethically, conscious of the environment and where our products come from, but that only feels achievable if you have the time to churn your own butter or can fork out $12 on loaves of sad bread. Living as a student already feels a bit like being a caveman at the best of times. I don’t know if the costs (in all meanings of the word) associated with ethical consumption are worth it right now. Plus, I really don’t want to increase my risk of getting scurvy.