OK, I’m sorry, this post is not about how to eat loads of fat and sugar yet not lose your youthful slenderness (or indeed any other “first-world problems”) it’s about baking with reduced oppression.
Most trade allows the rich and powerful to oppress the poor and weak. Trade ensures that the rich get richer, and (being impersonal) does not care if the poor get poorer. It is quite clear if you track almost any product grown in the Majority World that the price paid to the producer is peanuts compared to the profit paid to the sales and distribution entrepreneurs (i.e. “middle men/women”), it’s even peanuts compared to the wages paid to factory workers in richer places that convert the product into goods we buy.
FairTrade (and other schemes but they are the best known) seek to redress this balance by ensuring a decent price gets paid to producers.
Now to the “guilt free baking” part 🙂 The Big Fair Bake is a competition that is promoting Fair Trade. Here’s what to do:
- If you are a baker – enter.
- If you eat and enjoy other people’s baking – get them to enter.
- If you have a blog, website, use Facebook, Google+ etc. – make a link so your ‘friends’ can see.
- If not – email a few people…
Thanks for drawing my attention to the competition. I entered yesterday, and blogged about my entry (and what I learned aboutt he sugar industry in the process) here.
Those Earl Grey biscuits sound interesting, I don’t like Earl Grey to drink, but can imagine the taste making interesting biscuits.