What To Buy

Not sure what to focus on first?

If you only change a few things, change eggs, bread, dairy and vegetables first. They are bought weekly, the differences between options are large, and the labels on all four are doing more work than they should. Everything below is what I found when I went looking, food by food.

Eggs

The hardest aisle in the supermarket, because the labels look like a ladder and mostly are not one. Free range does not mean what most people think, and the stamp on the shell tells you more than the carton does.

• The best eggs in Auckland, and where to buy them
• What the stamp on your egg is actually telling you
• Your free-range eggs are from hens that haven't been outside
• Organic eggs in New Zealand

Bread and flour

Two companies own nearly every loaf on the shelf. If you want to know what is in your bread, the fastest route is knowing who made it and what the flour was grown with.

• Bürgen is gone. Two companies own nearly all the rest
• Where to get organic flour for bread in NZ
• Glyphosate residues, your gut microbiome, and what you can do about it
• Folic acid, bread and flour in New Zealand

Milk, butter and cheese

Organic dairy is one of the easier upgrades to find in a supermarket, and one of the harder ones to understand once you start reading the fine print.

• The part of milk nobody puts on the bottle
• The milk you almost can't buy
• Organic butter in NZ, from brand to butter
• The cheese decision: calf rennet and conventional milk, or lab rennet and organic

Fruit and vegetables

The biggest single change most people can make, and the one where buying direct beats buying better brands.

• The guide to organic vegetable box schemes and CSAs in New Zealand
• The chemical that finishes New Zealand's potatoes
• The quiet collapse behind New Zealand's frozen vegetables
• Farmers' markets, one of the simplest ways to find real food

Chicken

There is far less choice here than the shelf suggests. Two companies, one certified organic option, and a feed story nobody puts on the pack.

• How New Zealand chicken actually gets to your plate
• Chicken in New Zealand: two choices, not ten
• Bostock vs everyone else: is the organic chicken actually worth it?
• Almost every chicken in New Zealand is fed GM soy

Pork, bacon and ham

Most of the bacon sold here was not raised here, and the pack will not tell you.

• There's an 80% chance the bacon you eat is imported
• The 20%: who actually grows the pork in New Zealand
• New Zealand's best bacon and ham, if you care how the pig lived
• Who makes Woolworths Free Farmed bacon? The pack won't say

Beef and lamb

New Zealand sells the world its lamb. Buying an organic one here is harder than it should be.

• New Zealand sells the world its lamb. Try buying an organic one here
• Regenerative beef isn't organic beef
• What conventional New Zealand beef may have been exposed to
• The Rothschild, the surfer and the beef box

Honey and pantry staples

The pantry is where the labels get loosest. Oil, coffee and honey are all worth a second look.

• Honey isn't just honey
• Niue honey and the last clean bees in the Pacific
• The olive oil scandal and what it means in New Zealand
• The organic coffee that doesn't always say organic

Before you start

You do not need to fix everything. Pick one food you buy every week and upgrade that. Find one place you trust. The rest follows on its own.

If the labels themselves are the confusing part, what the organic label actually means is the place to begin.

When you know what you want, the Places map is where to find it.

A new piece most days. I keep going through this one food at a time, and every guide above started as something I wanted to know myself. Free, straight to your inbox.