by Bec Whish
Recently, I stayed in a country town that had a greengrocer selling local product. One display were lemons with dimples, bananas with spots, and apples with skins that were a cloudy green-brown colour - all much smaller than the glossy, cloned rows of fruit a city girl sees in big supermarket chains.
When I bit into one of those apples on the way back to my room, the flavour was incredible. In fact, it made the ones I'm used to taste like flour in comparison. Which got me wondering: Why is the produce in supermarkets so uniform, and should we not judge a fruit by its cover?
According to a ABC news reports, supermarkets reject any fruit or vegetable that doesn't meet a specific size, colour and shape requirement. This results in about 30 per cent of fruit and vegies being rejected each year, and puts pressure on farmers to use chemicals to meet these strict cosmetic standars.
"Everyone's lost sight of the fact that it's a natural product and natural products grow how they want to. Sometimes they are a funny shape. They get frost scarring, or insects might bite the fruit when it's just a flower and put a little dimple on it ... The customer just isn't educated to know that it tastes the same if it's got a little mark on it.
Adds Dr Vijay Jayasena, associated professor of food science at Curtin University of Technology in WA. "In my studies, I found that growers use nitrogen fertiliser to make very large strawberries, but they are very watery in taste.
"We had a case where too much fertiliser washed off into the river, which made algae grow excessively, which starved fish of oxygen and a lot of them died."
So should we be concerned about the chemicals currently used in agriculture? "Any kinds of chemical you use is a concern in health," says Vijay. "Growers are using them within the legal limits, but that doesn't mean they don't have long-term effects."
Vijay emphasises the point that supermarkets supply what we demand, "As consumers, we have a role to play. I buy my fruits and vegetables from farmers' markets, and I don't mind imperfect apples."
Personal Healthy Living Blog where I share some interesting stories, and articles I've read and find it enjoyable and well worth reading!