Before embarking on the successes I have had honouring my pledge to consume only local/British food, I have to hang my head in shame and admit that I cracked and bought some coffee.

On the advice of friends, who have watched my self-imposed diet with some amusement, I went for Fairtrade coffee which is readily available at my local Co-op, which stocks a superb range of Fairtrade goods.

When the weather warms up, I really will try roasting dandelion roots – but not yet. In all other respects, apart from a moment of weakness when I plucked a grape from the bunch my sister-in-law Maggie Richards had contributed to our regular family meal, I have honoured my pledge.

Actually, there are so many delicious winter vegetables around at the moment I have found it quite easy, though the shortage of fruit apart from Bramley apples has affected my ability to ring the changes.

I wait with excitement for samples of tomato juice, sauce and oven roasted tomatoes to arrive from The Tomato Stall, on the Isle of Wight, to help me add a much-needed tomato kick to some of my stews.

Sustainable Wallingford have proved a great help too, having supplied me with a copy of their Buy Local in and around Wallingford. This lists all sorts of interesting local suppliers, including Hendred Vineyard, a family run vineyard at East Hendred, near Wantage, which sells its wines at farmers’ markets.

Richard Stanley, from Rectory Farm Pick Your Own, has been in touch too. We plan to talk potatoes once the weather picks up, as Richard has several varieties of potatoes, including Maris Piper and Wilja, that will be available until May. He has promised to walk me round the farm and show me how potatoes are produced which should be fun.

This week, the product I aim to talk about is not local, but it is certainly British. The Silver Spoon Company contacted me to explain that I didn’t have to rely on honey (which is in short supply at the moment) to sweeten my food. They pointed out that I could use their sugars, which carry the Little Red Tractor logo, as they are produced from beet grown in the UK.

Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L), is directly related to the beetroot, and fodder beet and is a hardy biennial plant that is grown from seeds sewn in March and early April. The crop is harvested between mid-September and late February, though most is harvested before Christmas when the amount of sugar in the beet is at its highest.

Beet has been grown for food and fodder since ancient times, but it was not until 1747 that the German chemist Andreas Marggraf succeeded in extracting sugar from beet in a form that could be used in cooking.

The beet industry took off in the UK in the 1920s to help make Britain more self-sufficient in sugar production after severe shortages during the First World War and to help boost the depressed agricultural industry and give farmers the chance to grow a valuable cash crop. Today almost 9,000 farmers, who farm mainly in the Eastern areas of England from Yorkshire to Essex and in the West Midlands, are responsible for growing ten million tons of fresh beet. This equates to 1.4 tonnes of sugar and some 750,000 tonnes of animal feed.

The process by which sugar is extracted from sugar beet is similar to the methods used to process sugar cane. It is washed, sliced into strips and then raw juice is extracted with hot water.

The raw juice is then purified to remove all the non-sugars after which it is concentrated and then crystallised. The processing of cane to obtain sugar differs from beet in that it has to be crushed rather than sliced to enable the sugar to be extracted with hot water.

On discovering that I had found a way of sweetening my food during my eat Local/British year, a friend suggested that beet sugar would not be as sweet as cane sugar.

To test her theory, I set her a taste test – after which, she had to admit there was absolutely no difference. She even had the good grace to congratulate me on finding a way of sweetening my food using home-grown produce.

Silver Spoon has reduced the carbon footprint of its product by working with the Carbon Trust set up by the Government in 2001.

They are proud to be the first sugar manufacturer in the world to certify the carbon footprint of its sugar. I obtained most of this information from Silver Spoon’s customer quality co-ordinator Anne Theakstone, a charming and very knowledgeable woman who was happy to talk about British sugar. She even sent me a delightful little Silver Spoon recipe booklet that features recipes which call for a few spoonfuls of sugar. Anne is happy to send this book to any readers of this page. They can contact her by sending her an email to: email@thesilverspooncompany.co.uk or by writing to her at The Silver Spoon Company, Sugar Way, Peterborough PE2 9AY.

I realise there may be some who feel sugar should be cut from our diets altogether to fight the war against obesity etc etc.

My answer is – everything in moderation. I accept that if eaten in excess, sugar might be a problem, but so would loads of other products we use regularly today.

A little sugar used to cook some of the delicious cakes and meals in the Silver Spoon recipe collection and also help our home-made bread to rise can do very little harm. I am certainly thrilled to be able to place a pack of British sugar in my larder this year.