Do you buy British fresh food?

[GloriaSnockers]

I’ll start with an apology, I’m new to mumsnet and am sure that this must have been asked before but......
I’ve been chatting with DH this evening and we always look at the packaging on fresh food and will buy British where we can e.g. tomatoes in our summer and apples in our autumn.
I also go as far as reading the packaging and if there is a choice I’ll select the fruit or veg or meat from our county.
I don’t buy strawberries in winter.
I sound like a right old do gooder but I’m not, I’ll eat mango and pineapple all year!
My question is, do you read packaging or labels in aisles and make a conscious decision to buy British?
Hubby came up with an idea earlier that our supermarkets should have ‘British Aisles’ for all of our British Isles home grown food.
I also appreciate that nearly all buying decisions are money based so this question is probably ridiculous to many people.

Always buy local where I can. Scottish lamb, British beef and chicken, local honey etc.. British veg and fruit etc.. we do try and buy in season. Not always possible but we do try

I generally try to buy fresh food that is grown in Britain, Europe or the Mediterranean fringes such as Morocco or Israel. So no apples at the moment, as at this time of year they're nearly all grown in Chile, South Africa or New Zealand, but I can buy French apricots, English strawberries or Spanish grapes. It's harder in winter but you can still get Europe-grown oranges, kiwis and persimmons as well as apples.

And we get British meat and chicken where possible.

Does anyone buy British in season food and then freeze it for the winter or other seasons? We usually grow a lot of veg in the summer but haven’t this year, if we had done we would probably have enough to see us through a winter (there are only two of us).
We still have plenty of last years strawberries and raspberries in the freezer. At the end of the summer if they haven’t been eaten then they will be turned into jam or ice cream.

I try to, but was once caught out by a mango with "Kent" on the label, thinking it had been grown in Kent.
Nope, it was from Peru. The variety was "Kent".

Yes. I like to support local businesses. The meat from the butcher is local and free range. Some of the vegetables at the farm shop are home grown. I do read the packaging on vegetables and veer towards British produce. I actively avoid tomatoes from Holland, for example, because they are tasteless. They aren't called Dutch water bombs for nothing.

Yes, I try to when I can. Our butcher sells mostly local meat. The greengrocer sells a lot of local (and many UK) products. I try to buy seasonal as much as possible.

Yes, as much as possible. We're quite fortunate to be able to do this as, despite being fairly broke at present, we have a Morrisons locally, who do source a lot of fresh food from the UK (as well as abroad). We also have a very good farm shop that's actually fairly good value for certain things.

I have also started growing my own veg recently (in pots etc - we have a yard, no proper garden). Hopefully it will reduce costs in the long term. I also forage for wild food, especially blackberries, we have miles of hedgerows of them locally, all well away from roads. And the odd apple tree, hazelnuts, bilberries, sloes etc. I must stock up on sugar for making jam...

It’s so good to hear that some people are seeking out home grown produce.
One friend of mine has a small holding and every year offers us a pig (of course we have to pay for it) either a half or whole, it’s all butchered into bacon, chops etc but for some reason I’ve never taken that offer. I think because a) my freezer is too small and b) with just the two of us we would be restricted to eating pork all year!

@AwdBovril nearly everything we grow at home is in pots, ignore this year but last year we grew, in pots..
A years worth of potatoes - we harvested Christmas dinner spuds from pots on the morning of 25th Dec. We are still eating last year’s potatoes, they are in their pots and we harvest them as we need them.
Sugar snap peas
Mange tout
French beans
Broad beans

In beds we had....
Broad beans
Runner beans, yum!
Bloody courgettes, never again, they are like freaking monsters and turn to marrows overnight!
Salad leaves

I think it's great to eat locally.

But

We get a veg box delivered (Riverford) and it comes with a little newsletter. A while ago we had peppers in the box from Spain and a really interesting article that explained why. Apparently to grow them in the UK at that point in the year would mean growing them under heated glass, which would create lots more carbon than growing them organically in Spain and transporting them here. I thought that was interesting!