Food
Apart from rent, we spend a large proportion of our income on food. We do not eat meat, but we do eat a lot of vegetables and fruits. Whenever we can, we choose to buy unpackaged, organic, and local fruits and vegetables. But it's not always possible. Often there are trade-offs. For example, oftentimes local, organic carrots are packaged in plastic, and bananas that come from South America are unpackaged. Most of the vegetables we buy are local, organic, and Danish: potatoes, carrots, celeriac, onions. We also buy Danish salad vegetables (tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers), but they are grown in greenhouses, so growing them is associated with a large energy expenditure. I emphasise Danish produce because we live in Denmark. When I lived in Sweden, I tried to buy Swedish produce. Many vegetables come here from Spain and the Netherlands.
The picture above is certainly not representative of what we usually buy. I was ill for a while and we wanted to get more diverse fruits and vegetables to help my body heal. The organic peppers come from Spain. They were packaged in plastic, but usually we buy unpackaged peppers. Due to Easter, many fruit and vegetable shelves in the supermarket were empty, so these peppers were the only ones we could get. The Danish apple comes from a food market. It was unpackaged. The bananas come from South America. They were unpackaged. Usually we have bananas at home because my partner's child loves them, and they are easy for her to peel and eat. The radishes come from the Netherlands. They were unpackaged. I eat their greens too. The mango came from Peru. We buy mangos very rarely, perhaps once or twice a year. The spring onions and asparagus came from somewhere in Europe. They were heavily discounted as they were about to be thrown away. The spring onions were DKK 5, and asparagus was DKK 10.
Apart from fruits and vegetables, we buy bread (usually from bakeries but also knäckebröd), pasta, organic pasta sauce, oats, dry and fresh herbs, oils (Danish rapeseed oil, coconut oil, at times olive oil), vinegar, jam. We often eat very simple food, such as pasta, soup, salads, smørrebrød. At times, we buy eggs, and very rarely we eat fish. I prefer plant-based food, and in the past I ate exclusively plant-based for 5 or so years. We buy plant milk. At times, we buy houmous and cheese, but I avoid eating cheese. We also eat nuts and dry fruits, but not very often. We use those to make a snack mix for my partner's child.
