Are you a label conscious shopper?

Like many first time parents when my son was born I started buying organic food for him. Pretty much everything that passed his lips for the first 18 months was homemade from organic ingredients (even to the extent of taking organic Weetabix to America for him!). Unsurprisingly, now I'm on child number three I'm a lot more relaxed but I still buy organic meat and dairy products. However, like many working parents with young children I don't have time to shop at farmers' markets or small specialist shops so I do my weekly shop at the supermarket . Again, like many people I know, I try to be "green" and ethical so I usually choose the product with the Fairtrade mark on it or the FSC certified toilet paper.

But working on this series has made me realise just how little I knew about labels and what they actually mean. For example, I never knew that there are no rules on what dishes restaurants and caterers can call organic. Or that some economists have argued that Starbucks has done more for coffee growers than the Fairtrade mark. Like many people I didn't realise that Freedom Food meat and poultry is not necessarily free-range (although some of it is).

So, how has what I've learnt changed my behaviour? Well, I still buy organic dairy products and Fairtrade goods but I'm definitely less evangelical about what Fairtrade actually means.

I've also started buying some Freedom Food free-range products because I now know that the large premium you pay for organic food isn't all about animal welfare. While I still believe in the principles of organic farming I now feel able to sometimes choose the cheaper option of Freedom Food free-range confident that its welfare standards are significantly better than the minimum legal requirements.

But the biggest change is that while I still think it's sometimes worth choosing products with ethical labels, I'm a lot less smug about the difference my choice is making. Many of those I interviewed argued that the most effective way of making sure products meet environmental or ethical standards is through regulation. And as one of the co-authors of DEFRA's report into environmental labels told me, you can't rely on labels to save the planet.

Sharmini Selvarajah is a reporter on You and Yours

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