Not really. Apples are seasonal, I haven't seen them on trees in England in December have you? They'd have to be put in cold storage for 3 months... which uses energy. OK New Zealand is as far away as it gets, but if they ship stuff from NZ to Oz, and boats go from Oz to the UK anyway it doesn't make a great deal of difference if they are stored for 3 months in a fridge, or in a fridge on a boat for 6 weeks or flown in fresh from NZ.penelope wrote:I was gob-smacked in the UK at Xmas when I saw the huge amounts of imported food for sale in the supermarkets. Apples from New Zealand.... in Somerset!!!!
There are far crazier examples like Young's shipping UK prawns to Thailand to be hand peeled and sent back again. It supposedly uses the same carbon footprint as storing them in the UK. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/business/t ... prints.htm
I don't mind paying top dollar for niche products, nowadays we can get many more things here than when I arrived 8 years ago, almost everywhere sells some sort of UK marmalade, usually Baxters, peanut butter widely available, tinned soup has taken off. Cheddar is available everywhere and we can now get Famous Five out in the sticks (previously only available in Stockmann) ... although our local S-Market seem to think it is a bit too thick and chop it into chunks of Famous Two and an Half.

The variety of fresh veg is usually passable, but if you want mange-tout we still have to buy them from Helsinki or Tampere. I used to complain about the rotten onions outside of the short period when you can buy decent "jättisipuli", I gave up... the locals seem to think mould is acceptable, so I only buy frozen chopped onion these days.
There are still a few other examples where the local products are a bit crap ... stock cubes are always Knorr/Maggi which are gross (or is that gras?)... I assume BSE is the reason that they don't market Oxo here.
Decent fresh bread other than rye would be nice, cooking apples and chocolate Easter eggs have room for improvement. Also don't understand why there is no double cream but you can buy smetana, but all in all nothing worth complaining about.