Little pleases me more than when sacred cows fall. Like Dr Barry Marshall from Perth who was ridiculed for years after he discovered that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori lived in the stomach and were the cause of stomach ulcers.

To be honest I had never given a thought to NOT running in a good quality pair of joggers. Not until my brother John suggested it and then I heard this program on ABC radio with a lecturer in functional anatomy and saw this research article. Here is another informative article by a sports podiatrist. It’s only the commercial interests behind running shoes that so entrenches us to this paradigm. So I gave it a go.

My Bare Feet

The first time after I went running barefoot and gave my feet a wash in the bath, I couldn’t believe how alive my feet felt. All that sensory input the soles of my feet had been missing out on for so long. On Sunday I completed a 3km barefoot run and I think from now on it’s barefoot for me, although I’m not sure if I’ll ever conquer a gravel road!

Vested interests are mounting a major campaign with the price of milk right now and between the farmers, processors and retailers the politics is heating up. How can the major supermarkets sell a litre of milk for less than $1 and what are the consequences of this?

Intensive dairy farming

To me, the more important question (aside from the effects on the farmers themselves) is what happens to the quality of food when prices are forced so low? Let me illustrate with a recent trip to the supermarket looking for tomato paste. Woolworths had their Select own brand, but where were the ingredients from? China, the home of melamine milk. Leggo’s had another bottle that was packed in Australia with local and imported ingredients, which could have come from China as well for all we know. But the Leggo’s 500g Tomato past with no added salt (even better) won the day with made in Australia from local ingredients. I couldn’t even tell you the price because that’s not even a factor in these matters.

The point is that most of these no brand or Woolworth’s and Cole’s brands and Aldi too for that matter simply outsource their ingredient fulfilling to the cheapest provider. I am sure quality and the integrity of the ingredients is a poor second to price.

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