One thing leads to another

Today the path to the ice-cream shop leads me to a gum tree. A Gum Tree with capital letters.

The Gum Tree is a rather fancy food store in Albert Park, stocking a vast range of goods that might appeal to those lucky enough to have a vast amount of disposable income. The disposable suggestion was prompted by the startling difference in the price of Murray River Salt Flakes as compared with prices in supermarkets.

In my search for Australian produced/grown food there is no limit to the upper or lower end of the price scale. Any produce vendor is fair game as far as I am concerned.

I head in the door in a brisk and businesslike manner and start the usual search. My first inspection stop is just inside the front door, where the fruit and vegetables are displayed. I speak to Ben who is stacking the shelves and generally making the display look appealing. In answer to my question about Australian grown produce he tells me that their produce is always labelled. I look along the rows and see little evidence, apart from pre-packaged goods, that this is the case.

I always find this disappointing but by now I know the inevitable answer to a question about lack of labelling. Invariably the answer is framed, more or less, about the time and cost taken to label the produce. An answer, which is more often than not, is delivered in a defensive and irritated manner.

I must make it quite clear this was not the response at the Gum Tree today.

My main mission in this store is to enquire about the availability of compressed yeast. I think my chances of this product being available are zero and in this respect I am not disappointed. Ben does suggest I might make enquiries at the South Melbourne market and I am very pleased to at least have a pointer in some direction.

It’s always a good thing to have a search prospect ahead of me.

Sultanas, yes. Apricots, no

Just when you thought you had heard the last on the subject of breakfast muesli, it makes a return.

Yes folks, I am revisiting the muesli jar and the last two bothersome items. Sultanas and dried apricots.

Both sultanas and dried apricots fall under the heading of dried fruit and although you might think either of these would be readily available on the supermarket shelves as an Australian product, this is not so.

Sultanas are more easily found than apricots. At the moment imported dried apricots rule on the supermarket shelves; it might be possible to find some Australian dried apricots but the ingredient labels will invariably read ‘local and imported ingredients’. How much is local content and how much is imported is anybody’s guess. Turkey seems to lead the way with the imported products and Turkish dried apricots are easily identifiable by their plump shape and bright golden colour.

All of the above has led to dried apricots being moved to the too-hard basket for the moment. And being temporarily removed from the breakfast muesli ingredient list. I use the word temporarily; I am at my optimistic best today and like Mr Micawber, I live in hope that “something will turn up” in the local dried apricot line.

Sultanas on the other hand may be imported or they may be marked ‘Australian sultanas’ on the packaging but sitting right next to those two words it will be the words canola oil, with no country of origin identification. Vegetable oil of one type or another often appears as part of the ingredients description on dried fruit packaging. While the consumer may think they are buying only sultanas (or currants, or raisins) they will invariably find they are buying an extra such as the vegetable oil, which is used to glaze the fruit, reducing its moisture loss and maintaining product quality.

I’m not interested in whether oil has been added to my sultanas and I am less than impressed to find yet another ingredient whose origin cannot be traced.

Yet another cause to get the magnifying glass out and run it over the labelling.

Wandering in the Ausfood wilderness

I've now spent nearly eight weeks reading labels and putting together the foundation of my Ausfood cupboard.

While on the one hand I am greatly encouraged about the availability and labelling of some Australian food products I am now becoming aware of certain confusing aspects of food labelling that needs to be approached with some caution.

A particular item, let’s say for the argument, might be tomato paste or might be canola oil, will have the same brand name but will be labelled product of Australia on one size container and labelled as an imported product in another. Or it might be a combination of imported and local products. This makes life difficult and means that every time you buy this item you need to read the label if you want to be sure you are buying Australian.

What really irks me is tomato paste; I have found that multiples of two or four packs may have no identifying country of origin at all. Multiple packs of tomato paste require a great deal of application when reading the labels, even for some-one dedicated to the cause!!. I fail to understand all the discrepancies but I am sure the food manufacture has a perfectly good reason for stuffing around with the labelling process regarding country of origin.

There – I've got all that off my chest. Now I can move on to another grouch because Grouchland is where I am headed today.

At this stage I am becoming more aware of the number of ingredients that might be found in something as simple as flour, especially when you move away from plain flour. These are usually additives which keep the flour fresh and easy to use, no sifting and in the case of SR flour the raising agents are numbers. As for buying plain flour and adding the raising agents yourself – forget it – I am yet to find on any supermarket shelves any raising agents manufactured in Australia. Only bi-carb soda is a product of Australia; cream of tartar and baking soda come from some other place.

Meat is labelled in the duopoly supermarkets because it is packaged but even this rule of thumb cannot be applied to all other supermarkets where labelling is haphazard and in the case of the butchers shop with meat cut and displayed in cases no mention is made of country of origin at all.

Any questions about this bring the curt response of all our meat is Australian. I am mystified why supermarkets seem to have one labelling system for meat but this doesn't seem to apply to your standard butcher shop. Huh?

As I could go on at length on this topic I will close off by putting fruit and veggie vendors under the label magnifying glass. Once again the duopoly labels their products but not all the other supermarkets follow this practice. The more consumer oriented green grocers will identify their products but the only products easily identified in the smaller shops will be the packaged products.

Country of origin product labelling? What a confusing tangle for the ordinary shopper.

Impulse buying

I must be more careful in future when I spy some new item on the supermarket shelves.

Looking to expand the selection of oils in the Ausfood cupboard from its single current occupant, the bottle of olive oil, I set out in supermarket search mode for another oil product.

What excitement !! There sitting on the shelves at the Eastern IGA was a lovely bottle of Australian peanut oil. The map of Australia with the words 100% Australian hooked me right away; the ingredient description left me in no doubt about the contents of the bottle. It’s a smaller sized bottle which is good; small sizes are best when trying out something new.

This is just what I am looking for these days; it ticks all the Ausfood boxes.

The bottle is off the shelf, in the shopping basket and out through the register in the blink of an eye.

I’m about to put it in the Ausfood cupboard at home and it dawns on me that I have very hastily bought a bottle of oil most often used in Asian recipes. Ah, I see problems here with ingredients for an Asian recipe. I’m thinking soy sauce, Chinese rice wine and chilli paste just for starters.

A sober moment arrives in the Trash Palace kitchen as I contemplate how I will use up this lovely oil.

Billabong Apple Crunchy

One of the products I discovered yesterday while in Clementine’s, was a small packet of dried organic apple.

I found it on the bargain/reduction shelf and took advantage of the price to try it out. I liked it so much I went right back in my class break to get a couple more packets.

Dried apple is a good snack food although it's possible that some prospective buyers might think there is not enough quantity for the price paid.

The labelling gets the Big Tick from me, it states the apple is 100% Australian Made, Owned an Grown. These packets of dried apple come from Yarrawalla in Victoria. I had no idea where Yarrawalla was so what do you think I did?

Yes, I Googled the map. And this is what I found when I typed in Smiths Road, Yarrawalla and zoomed in using the Earth version.


Does this look like a bird’s eye view an apple orchard to you?

More reading about labelling laws and label reading

Because this is an area which is fraught with difficulty I am including this link which will take you to the ACCC page where you can read the ACCC definitions straight off your computer screen - or whatever happens to be your choice of screen.

It ties in with this previous post here and explains what the consumer's expectations should be when they read these words on a food product label.

When I am reading labels for country of origin, I look for "Grown In" and "Product Of" first of all; with fresh produce this should be a straight forward exercise. 

However, I am wary when reading labels where the words "Made In" appear and I check the ingredients to see whether they are likely to be grown in Australia or not.

 All products labelled with the words "Made In " are treated with great caution.

Refining salt

I have returned to the supermarkets take another look at ingredients listed on salt product labels.
You may think this a rather strange thing to do and you may be asking the question “Isn’t it just salt? What else can there be?”

I’m here to tell you there are other ingredients in with some of the salt products. I’m sure you will know about iodine and it is stated quite clearly on the label if the salt is iodised.

However there are anti-caking agents; the infamous numbers who make up part of our diet whether we are aware of it or not. The numbers here are 535/536, and 554. These will be found in the ‘pouring’ salts; the table variety and the cooking variety.

According to the information I found, when searching on the internet, 535 and 536 are sodium and potassium ferrocyanides respectively and are used as an anti-caking agent. Cyanides are found in some seeds and fruit stones and now you can have it in your salt. How good is that? The additive 554 sounds almost likeable – it is produced from a natural mineral making it almost acceptable. As I have lived a relatively salt-free life for some 30 years now none of this bothers me too much.

These additives are introduced to make our lives easier. Who wants lumpy cooking salt or a salt shaker that is clogged up every time you want to use it? We are very busy people these days; we want salt which pours instantly. Long gone are the days of solving the clogged shaker problem by putting a few grains of rice in the salt shaker.

Of course if you use the sea salt or rock salt varieties, without added iodine, there are no additives and the grinder in which most of this salt is packaged is free of any pouring problems.

And for all you people who have read to this point here is a link which will tell you a whole lot more about the history and use of salt in Australia.

I’m taking the easy road here and will be using Australian sea salt without any additives of any kind – my choice is McKenzie’s Australian natural sea salt. This way I don't have to concern myself about the country of origin for the additives - taking the additives out of the equation reduces the work load.

I’m off to the supermarket to get another addition to my Ausfood cupboard.

Bread

I previously posted about bread and its country of origin labelling exemption here. This labelling exemption places bread ingredients and their country of origin in the realm of the Great Unknown as far as this Ausfood blog is concerned.

In my naiveté and enthusiasm I considered making my own bread would be the next best and easiest thing to do. I’ve made bread on a small scale at the Trash Palace, an enterprise I’ve always enjoyed. I even know where my favoured bread recipes are - in the loose leaf piling system, of course. These are recipes which have always turned out a reliable result.

So, full of the business of getting down to the prospect of toast at breakfast time, I scurried off to the supermarket.

I came home a very disappointed person.

The item on the shopping list which caused me the greatest disappointment was yeast.

I searched in every supermarket in my locality, within walking distance of the Trash Palace, and drew a blank. Four blanks to be exact, one for every supermarket whose shelves I inspected.

The only yeast available, as you might expect, is the dried variety. The great disappointment was finding, of the three brands available, two were imported products and the third brand was disinclined to disclose the origins of their yeast product. To pass muster in the great Ausfood ingredient search the packaging must clearly state the country of origin, with Australia is the preferable country of origin; on all counts none of these products qualify.

Compressed, or fresh yeast, is an alternative, but in this 21st century, where speed and ease of preparation prevails in the kitchen, it is highly unlikely I will be able to find this product anywhere, let alone on supermarket shelves.

I see a big search project looming.

Look out for this logo

This is a logo I have come across in my early searches for Australian grown produce.  It is an image to keep in mind when looking for Australian produced food, especially in supermarkets where it is often seen in the fruit and vegetable sections.

Here it is - the Australian Grown logo.

For further reading about the history and application of the Australian Grown logo have a look at this website, suited to students, but good reading for anyone interested in Australian products and labelling.

It is often linked with another logo of a similar design which uses the words Australian Made but for the purposes of this blog which revolves around food, I am specifically interested in Australian Grown. The lines between the words grown and made are sometimes blurred and close attention has to be paid when reading labels on food products.

Welcome to the challenges of label reading.

Last minute find

I doubt very much that finding a packet of Australian grown sunflower seeds in the supermarket would move too many people to a state of excitement.

So I can lay claim to being both surprised and delighted to find, after very careful searching for the umpteenth time, a packet of sunflower seeds with those all-important words Product of Australia printed on the packaging, in one of my local IGA supermarkets.

This will give a much needed boost to my breakfast cereal come the next Ausfood day, which is just around the corner.

As well as the sunflower seeds, sometime called kernels – and probably a more accurate description – I had another find in a Red Supermarket. I found Australian grown peanuts in their shells, packaged under the store label, and I promptly bought a packet.

These will serve me well as snacks throughout the day and although it may be seen as a time consuming and messy approach to snack food, the end result is 100% peanuts and no other ingredient to blur the issue.

Two new finds on one week. Good result eh?

Ingredient Traceability

In my role as trainee label reader, every day brings something new to my attention in the wonderful world of label reading.

Today I am standing in the supermarket, very carefully reading the label on a jar of Dick Smith’s OzEnuts, turning it slowly in order to find the words Product of Australia.

When I find these words they are set inside a box entitled Dick Smith’s 5 Way Test. This is a ‘ticking the box’ box; it ticks highest quality. It ticks Australian grown, made and owned and it ticks Aussie made = lower food miles. The fifth tick is against jobs and profits stay in Australia; all of these ticks take important points into consideration regarding Australian food production, manufacturing and distribution.

However it is the second last item getting a tick that grabs my attention.

Ingredient traceability.

What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that all the ingredients listed on the label, and there are five of them, can be traced back to their origin? Or does it mean that only the major ingredient – the freshly roasted Australian peanuts – can be traced back to their origin?

I will investigate this further. I might have to pay a visit to the Dick Smith Foods website.

Australian almonds always available

Australian almonds are always available.

However you need to take care when picking the packet off the shelf as things are not always as they seem.  There are almonds from other countries and it is possible to find as I did, that one particular brand night have, say almond meal, in one supermarket as an Australian product and in another supermarket as an Australian and imported product.

Australian almonds come in many different forms; some suited to snacking and others suited to the requirements of busy cooks.

Here's what I found in my search:

Natural almonds
Flaked almonds
Slivered Almonds
Blanched almonds
Natural sliced almonds
Almond meal

In my local quartet of supermarkets I found two main brands, together with the supermarkets' house brand.

My choice for my breakfast muesli will be natural almonds.

Australian sultanas are available but not in nearly the same quantity as almonds. They come in two types: Australian Grown and Australian Grown Natural. I'm intrigued by the labelling. Is there some unnatural way of growing sultanas?  In the local supermarket foursome, sultanas are pretty well limited to one brand and maybe a house brand.

They are also available at my local deli, which is where I usually buy them and where they are clearly labelled Australian sultanas.

The Condiments - Part One: Salt

Salt and pepper.  In everything.

Today I'm looking at one of the condiments.

Salt; found in mostly every kitchen cupboard and on the table at meal times. According to Wikipedia, salt has not always been used just as a condiment;  there are biblical references, it has played a part in creating and destroying empires, salt was taxed by the French over many centuries and in American history it was a major factor in the outcome of wars.

Closer to home, here in Victoria, the history of salt production began in 1888 when Richard Cheetham - a manufacturing chemist from the UK - began construction on a saltfield near Geelong; six years later the first salt was produced. The Cheetham Salt Co Pty Ltd was set up in 1903 and the company expansion included new works at Laverton and in South Australia. Ongoing business expansion and joint ventures, both here and in New Zealand continued until the latter half of 2012 when this article in Deal Journal Australia covered the sale of the Cheetham salt business to Hong Kong company CK Life Science International. This purchase was  driven by the increasing demand in Asian markets for soy sauce, of which salt is one of the major ingredients.

And so to the local supermarkets and a close look at salt available for home use. If you think salt is just salt, you will have to think again. Here is are some of the choices you will find:

                                       Table salt 
                                       Cooking salt
                                       Iodised table salt
                                       Iodised cooking salt
                                       Sea salt flakes
                                       Iodised sea salt flakes
                                       Iodised sea salt
                                       Natural rock salt.

Is your head spinning yet?

In my quartet of local of supermarkets I found five different suppliers; an Australian company which has both local and imported salt, the supermarkets with their own house brands and a salt which is packed in South Africa from local and  imported ingredients.The latter is the cheapest in its line.

And then there is SAXA. In the mid 1960s Salpak, a joint venture between Cerebos and Cheetham Salt saw the beginning of SAXA and Cerebos salt manufacturing in Australia. Many of the different types of salt listed above are on the shelf under the SAXA brand. Each SAXA package or container was clearly marked with the logo "from the seas of Australia" which makes it eligible for the Ausfood list.

My choice of salt for the Ausfood cupboard is Kooka, another Australian salt from the seas of Australia. As well, there are other more specialised types of Australian salt but here I am dealing with the common or sea shore variety found on almost all supermarket shelves and available to everyone.

 Now the salt shaker/grinder/cellar has been filled, we will move on the other half of the condiment pair, the pepper shaker/grinder/pot.

The Condiments - Part Two: Pepper

 Part two of the condiment story is short and to the point.

Basic black pepper comes to my local supermarket shelves courtesy a handful of companies and is available in ground, cracked, packaged peppercorns and peppercorns in their very own grinder.

All of them are imported.

It troubles me to think I might have to forgo pepper if I am to take up the Ausfood Challenge.  I will give this matter some serious thought and maybe run a few words through a search engine and see if I come up with a home-grown product.

I am not very hopeful about my prospects of finding Australian pepper of the black peppercorn variety.

Not happy, Jan.

The 400 series

Curious about the 400 series of numbers appearing on the Gundowring ice-cream label list of additives, I made further investigations.

And at this website I found the following:

412 Natural stabiliser

Guar gum Derived from the Seeds of Cyamoposis tetragonolobus of Indian origin; fed to cattle in the US; can cause nausea, flatulence and cramps, may reduced cholesterol levels. See 410.

415 Xanthin gum

Derived from the fermentation of corn sugar with a bacterium. Improves 'flow'.

410 Locust bean (Carob gum)

Derived from Carob or Locust bean tree Ceratonia siliqua. As a thickener, vegetable gum, artificial sweetener base, modifying agent or stabiliser, it is used in lollies, cordials, essences, some flour products, dressings, fruit juice drinks; frequently used as a caffeine-free chocolate substitute; may lower cholesterol levels.

407 Carrageenan 'Irish Moss'

Fibre extracted from seaweed, used as a setting agent. It has recently been linked with cancer because it may become contaminated when ethylene oxide is added to an inferior product, this results in ethylene chlorohydrins forming, a highly carcinogenic compound; linked to toxic hazards, including ulcers and cancer; the most serious concerns relate to degraded carrageenan, which is not a permitted additive; however, native carrageenan, which is used, may become degraded in the gut.

The above fall under the headings of Vegetable Gums, Emulsifiers and stabilisers. According to this source of information, emulsifiers help prevent separation of oil and water mixtures and stabilisers maintain the uniform dispersal of substances in food.

In other words, no nasty lumps in the finished product.

An ideal always aimed for in the home kitchen, where the rectification of problems are not achieved with the help of additives, but by falling back on tried and true methods of putting wrongs right in the bowl or saucepan as the cook prepares the dish or meal.

Bran Cereal Options

Standing in the local Green Supermarket, beside a conveniently positioned flat top trolley piled high with empty bread racks, I take out my trusty notebook and pen, pick down the two boxes of cereal I need to examine and place them under the Ausfood magnifying glass.

This is what I see.

First the box of Vogel Ultra Bran.

It is Australian made; there is a logo, a map of Australia. It’s not the Australian Made logo with kangaroo and no country of origin is to be found. There are many, many words of varying shapes, sizes and colours on every side of this box and I spend some minutes searching. I cannot find any words telling me this product is made from local and imported ingredients.

I look at the ingredients list; it’s lengthy.

Wheat bran (39%)

Wholemeal wheat flour (Vitamins (thiamin & folate)

Wheat flour

Sugar

Hi-maize TM cornstarch

Linola (linseed meal 8% soy (2%) (Soy flour& isoflavone concentrate)

Minerals (tricalcium carbonate, zinc oxide)

Salt

Natural colour (annatto)

Vitamins (E & folate)

Food acid (citric acid)

An exhausting, if not exhaustive list.

I turn to the Kellogg’s All-Bran box; it has the Australian Made logo but once again, no information about the origin of the ingredients. I’m greatly relieved to find this ingredient list is shorter.

Wheat bran (85%)

sugar

barley malt extract

vitamins (riboflavin, folate, thiamin)

As far as being bran cereals options eligible for the Ausfood list, these two have fallen at the first hurdle. No country of origin on the packaging, no eligibility for the list. Simple.

However, among all those listed ingredients there is a couple that attracted my attention and I may, on a day when time is passing very slowly and I have absolutely nothing better to do, investigate them further. Not because I consider they may be products of Australia but I am curious about their real make-up.

These two are Hi-maize TM cornstarch and isoflavone concentrate. They might be considered as red herrings, though I suspect that neither of them will have anything to do with fish, more to do with sugar and spice I’m thinking.

I’ll put them on the back-burner. Oh no!! I‘ve said that word……

I’ll regret that, you can be sure.

Labelling Laws

I wait in the motel reception this afternoon while the owner takes what turns out to be a long winded telephone call. I’m waiting to finalise my account as I will be leaving very early in the morning; I pick up a motel brochure and commence reading. This brochure is in the room but on reading it again I see I have missed something important. Something of great interest to me. I can hire a tablet for a nominal sum; I get it immediately, along with a few instructions and I find it more user friendly than similiar devices I have used in the past.

After playing around on the tablet for a while I settle down to do some serious research. I decide to look for some labelling information. I look at two sites: www.foodstandards.gov.au and another belonging to the ACCC  and consider them both useful sites for defining words on labels.

However, nothing is ever as simple as you might like it to be. The ACCC is a transition website and this publication here concerning country of origin and Australian Consumer Law is being reviewed. Enough said – especially when I see the publication was last published in 2011. I do look at the current electronic version and make a note of information around the words Made in Australia which might be useful in the future.

The Fsanz site offers a little more about unpackaged foods and country of origin labelling. I read and I am bewildered; each sentence is more bewildering than the last. I move on to the paragraph about exemptions from country of origin labelling and find this:

Are there any exemptions from country of origin labelling?

There are some exemptions for country of origin labelling. For example it is not required when food is sold to the public for immediate consumption, for example food sold in cafes, restaurants and canteens, or where a food is made and packaged on the premises it is sold, such as a bakery where the bread is baked and sold on site.

Now there’s something to think about.

 Bread. Eating out in cafes and restaurants.

 If I am going to take on the challenge of eating Australian only food it will certainly need to be modified to a part time challenge.

It’s after midnight now and I am too tired to read any more. I need a few hours sleep before I leave town on the 6.30 a.m. bus -  when the sun will hardly be above the horizon.

Ice-cream, you-scream, we-all-scream

Earlier this morning I was not quite screaming but very close to it. This screaming near-miss came about when I discovered I had been sold a ticket at Melbourne’s Southern Cross station for a bus service not operating in Rutherglen though the school holidays. As a result I was left to amuse myself for another day in lovely downtown Rutherglen. I threw myself on the kindness of strangers and spent most of the day in the cool of the library, only venturing out a couple of times into the blistering heat.

It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow some good somewhere. My extended stay allowed me to sample the pies for which this town is well-known, to drink some more of the best coffee in town and to carry out some serious taste and labelling research on Gundowring ice-cream.

Back at the tourist information centre in the afternoon I buy a small cardboard cup of the flavour of the day – Toasted Honey and Walnut ice-cream. I look at that wording and decide I would alter the words to read Toasted Walnut and Honey; maybe I’m being even more pedantic than usual today , as a spin–off from the bus debacle, but the idea of toasted honey seems rather odd. I toss around possibilities such as clever marketing, the actual process of toasting honey and walnuts, either separately or together, while I walk outside to sit at an outdoor table.

  Sitting at a table, under the shade of an enormous old peppercorn tree, I peel off the lid. This ice-cream is made in the Kiewa Valley in north-eastern Victoria, using a combination of farm fresh milk, cream, sucrose, walnuts, stringy bark honey, skim milk powder, wheat glucose, egg yolk, natural stabiliser 412, 415,410,407.

  All those numbers. What can they mean? They will be there for a very good reason, from the maker’s point of view, but are they (apart from the natural stabiliser 412) natural or chemical and where is their country of origin? There’s another item to add to the to-do list: investigate the numbers game, or maybe if a number appears on the ingredient part of the label simply place the product in the too-hard basket.




I’m not big fan of ice-cream at the best of times but I was keen to try this local product. I’ve tried it now and for me it lacks the wow factor. It is expensive, and while prospective buyers might be expected to place quality above price, for me in this case, the price is too high.

Overwhelmed by labels

I spend a lot of time this afternoon at the Tourist Information Centre which, apart from providing tourist information, provides a café with excellent coffee, a small gallery with a range of local handcrafts and a shop with a wide range of regional produce, packaged in and many shapes and forms.

I spend a lot of time in this regional produce area, to the point that I suspect the staff and volunteers think I am a prospective shop lifter. The only things I am lifting are the various bottles and jars of produce; onion jam, chutneys, fruit jams, vinegars, olive oils. The result of all this lifting and label reading makes me tired; my arms ache, my shoulders droop and together with my shoulders, my spirits droop.

There are so many variations in label details; although the labels list ingredients, there are few that adopt the ‘grown in Australia’ label or ‘produce of Australia’. Mostly, it is simply ‘Made in Australia’ – nothing wrong with that I can assure you, but it doesn’t tell me what I want to know about Australian ingredients.

This label reading caper is getting the better of me today. I am quitting it right now. Totally dispirited, I take my aching arms and drooping shoulders over to the café, where I revive my drooping spirits with another cup of the best coffee in town.

In the Heat of the Afternoon

In the heat of the afternoon, when every right thinking person in town is indoors, away from the furnace like heat, I am wandering down the main street of Rutherglen in northern Victoria, searching for something to eat. I am lucky enough to discover a café where a young lad is outside stacking the pavement chairs and tables prior to closing; I slip in the door and place the last order of the day.
 
While I am waiting for my lunch order to arrive I take a drink from the fridge and return to the counter. Sitting at eye level on the counter in front of me is a display of some attractively presented bottles of fruit juice. I pick one up and examine it. There is a lot of printed detail on the bottle and after glancing at the front labelling which tells me I am holding a bottle of Noah’s Creative Juices, which in this case is an orange, apple, guava, banana, pineapple and paw paw juice Smoothie, I turn the bottle around and read the back.

In the list of ingredients the words Australia and Australian appear six times. I think I’m onto something here. When I ask the woman behind the counter where this juice is made she only knows that the people who own this café have another in Wodonga and the stock comes over to Rutherglen and they put it into the fridge. I walk across to the fridge, replace my first choice of drink and take a bottle of Noah’s Creative Juices.

Taking my lunch order, the drink and a straw I walk back out into the blazing sun. This not only allows the woman to finally close up the café, it allows me time to peruse the label at my leisure. Nearby, in an area set back a little from the street, I find a seat and a small patch of shade. There’s plenty to peruse on the label; so much in fact, that I wonder whether anyone ever reads all of it. I read all of it; every word, even the figures in the nutrition information block. I am impressed with the detail set out in the ingredients list; each ingredient is listed as either Australian or imported and the percentage of each ingredient is also listed. I discover there is Australian Valencia orange juice; Australian crushed apple juice; imported guava puree and imported banana puree; Australian carrot juice and Australian paw paw puree. And last but not least Vitamin C and flavour.

While this may not be the bottled fruit juice of my dreams, when it comes to all Australian content it is far ahead of those labels where the description simply reads ‘made from local and imported ingredients’. On this label you can identify the amount of local and the amount of imported ingredients. Well done in that regard Noah; I’m not too sure who Noah might be, as the company identified on the label is Baca Pty Ltd and the address is in Hawthorn Road Caulfield Victoria.

I eventually peel the label back, as is suggested on the bottle, and drink the juice. I like it, but then again, in temperatures like today, I’d probably like any drinks, whether they were juices or not. The 260 ml is about as much juice as I can drink in one sitting and I have only one minor quibble; it is about the peel off lid. Once you remove the lid you are not easily able, without the prospect of mishap, to stow the partly finished bottle in your handbag and drink the balance later.

According to the display pack on the counter in the café, there were two or three varieties and I will be on the lookout to see if I can find this brand somewhere when I return to Melbourne. Maybe they have a line that has fewer mixes of the juices and I might find one that has 100% Australian content.

I can always live in hope.