Green lights are go

It must be my age.

I've all of a sudden become obsessed with labels on food. For the first 35 years of my life I didn't care about fat content, country of origin, gda's and saturated fats. For three and a half decades shopping consisted of a straight flat sprint with trolley from car park into store happily chucking everything in, through the tills and back out the door in less than 20 minutes (17 minutes 37 seconds was my all time personal best for the weekly shop - you do that sort of thing when single.)

Now such innocent pleasures are gone.

I'm scarcely in the fruit and veg section before I'm tutting over the back of a packet of green beans having spotted they're the produce of Kenya. I mean I've got nothing against Kenya and to be fair it's got enough troubles at the moment without me disapproving of their greens - but there I am fretting that somehow by supporting it's economy I'm killing the planet.

To be honest I'm not even that fussed about green beans but now every shop has turned into a moral maze. And so something that would have taken mere seconds, now takes minutes and the shop that used to take minutes now drags on for more than an hour. There are traffic lights to be read, percentages to be translated, hidden sugars to find and the latest health scare ingredients to spot.

By the time you've done the vegetables you need a lie down with a damp tea towel on your head.

(fair-trade, organic cotton, naturally)
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Jon Cuthill is a presenter on BBC Radio Solent. You can listen to him every weekday from 9am-12.30pm, or listen again online at his website.