Fudge.
Surely the most ubiquitous method of separating a tourist from his, or her, hard earned Obols.
Given the basic recipe;
· 4 cups of white sugar
· 1 cup of whole milk
· 2tbs of butter
The most obvious question is: How does fudge, ‘hand crafted’ and sold by ‘discerning patrons’ from ‘a recipe handed down from father to son since the time of the druids’ at a roadside barrow in Camden, London differ from a similar offering you might come across in oh-I-don’t-know Addis Ababa?
Considering fudge is mostly made from sugar (the two largest producers are India and Brazil, followed by Australia and Thailand); just about the cheapest ingredient you can get, apart from water, how then does the ‘epicurean purveyor’, gloriously attired in his finest jeans and T-shirt, standing across the hinged serving aperture from you, imbue his product with that quintessential essence of Britain? Does he have a bottle marked ‘tincture of Ye Olde London’ that he ladles in at the appropriate moment?*
The answer dear reader is; “Of course he f**cking doesn’t”.
However, as a tourist you’ve found your holy grail, a small, light, tasty gift for friends and family that just oozes [insert name of city, country, principality here]
. The complex cultures and landscapes just leach out of every mouthful, the postcard attached to the tastefully designed cardboard box is just icing on the cake really.
The import thing to remember is; you’ve bought them something, they’ve eaten it, it was good (how can sugar and fat be anything but tasty?), it’s gone and now all they have is a fond memory that you brought them something nice back from Addis Ababa.
So, just blank your memory to the obvious truth; that this box of fudge now has a carbon footprint larger than the super tanker that shipped the constituent sugar all the way across the Atlantic, because it’s now taking a similar return journey via a 767, and remember that;
As a top-of-the-economic-food chain tourist, you’re simply redistributing your wealth to the bottom by buying goods produced from raw materials you can get at home anyway.
*Answers on a postcard please. First correct answer wins a prize.**
**This is a lie.***
***No really it is.
N.B. The more observant among you will recognise the picture as a detail from the carving ‘Raven and the First Men’, by Bill Reid. It is in Yellow Cedar and is currently on display at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology http://www.moa.ubc.ca. Well done, aren’t you clever!
