Three ingredients make up my cup of tea.
Tea. Water. Milk.
I’ll get water out of the way immediately; as you might well guess, the water comes out of the tap and is supplied from nearby reservoirs. The word imported does not apply to any mention of the water in this blog.
Good. I’ve got that matter out of the way.
Now let’s move on to one of the other two ingredients. Milk.
Milk appears in supermarkets and other shops in many guises but today in the world of Ausfood the band is narrowed to the variety produced by cows; whole milk and reduced fat milk. The fat may be reduced slightly or it may be reduced altogether, though strictly speaking the words there should be removed altogether. Or fat free.
In the Green Supermarket, my first research area, I find four major brands of milk; Pura, Pauls, a2 and the store brand. Within those four brands there is a multiplicity of varieties – Tone No Fat, Light Start, Smarter White, Rev, and lactose free, just to name a few.
The list could go on but I am interested only in milk which is a product of Australia and to which nothing has been added. No vitamins, for example. Where do the vitamins come from? In drums or are they freeze dried and arrive as air cargo on freight planes from distant parts of the world?
I am only interested in the ingredient milk, whose components may be milk and milk solids.
I find the Green Supermarket sets the standard for the other three supermarkets in my research area; the only changes being the brand names for the store brands, according to whichever supermarket I am researching. I do notice that an overwhelming amount of milk on the shelves in the Red Supermarket is the store brand. It is invariably cheaper and is the dominant presence on the shelves. In addition the Red Supermarket has Great Ocean Road milk, produced at Warrnambool; this brand is also cheaper than the regular brands.
At the IGA supermarkets the milk shelves follow the same general pattern as the duopoly but with the usual variations in the store affiliated milk products.
Happily, as might be expected, all milk bears the stamp Product of Australia.