Scarred fruit.

[Hammer Head]

This was taken from the BBC Food website. It is written by Greg Wallace, one of the judges on the new Masterchef.

"I'm always fascinated by the way shoppers choose their top fruit. Given the choice, virtually everybody will discard a scarred piece of fruit. This would make our southern European cousins howl with laughter. Scarring on fruit occurs because the outer leaves of the fruit tree rub against the immature fruit. Only the fruit on the outside of the tree gets this scarring. Therefore the scarred fruit is exposed to the most sunshine. Because of this, they are nearly always the sweetest fruit."

Now, I am quite proud of my knowledge of food and produce, but this is news to me. I shall defifintely be on the lookout for scarred fruit on my next shopping trip.

The question is, is this common knowledge?

[baileys]

I dont think you will find any scarred fruit in our supermarkets amongst the straight cucumbers, straight bananas (hyperthetical) and the rest of the perfectly formed fruits,but good hunting.

[bellasasha]

hiya hammerhead i agree with you. my family are italian and think nothing of eating a peach with a bruise in it, but here they discard it. weird to me!!

[lia*]

hammerhead, i am with you on this one. i lived many years in a tropical country with many, many different types of fruits and this was one of my observation. ther fruits scarred by the tree and it's parts are definately sweeter.

[Hermia]

I didn't know that. I am a city girl and I have no idea how to pick fruit. I don't know whether a blemish on a piece of fruit is fine or an indication that the fruit is manky. I have only ever bought fruit from a supermarket as there isn't a greengrocers or a market where I live. I was on holiday in the country last year and dropped into a farm shop. I was amazed at how different (and tasty) the fruit and veg was. I made a fool of myself though as I had to keep asking what stuff was!

[nickmo]

Hi HH - its a cultural thing - Farmers' markets, farm shops PYO and the like are all trying to get consumers to realise that the supermarkets only sell what the packers offer to the detriment of the flavour of our food in UK. Artificail processes - usually through gases - are used in bulk to get fruit ready for display.

Fruit is generally unripe at harvest so it travels (grapes are a good example - how often do you leave the yellow grapes 'cos they don't look bright green? the yellow ones are in fact the sweetest as they have fully ripened. There are premium prices now in supermarkets for these and they are sold as 'really special' but isn't this what they should be selling in the first place? not acid, unripe goods? Some varieties of grape are green but will never match the yellow ones for flavour), stone fruit really doesn't ripen off trees, selling apples from China for goodness sake - what is the point when we have the most fantastic produce in Britain that is available seasonally, locally and fresh.

Loads of rants about the topic, and the extract quoted is bag on re. the scarring. Bruising is a slightly different issue, but in short, try and recall what a good greengrocer, farm shop and the like sells and then think how uniformly bland and revolting the fruit (and often veg) is from a supermarket.

[brachiopod]

Spot on, nickmo.

The supermarkets' motto should be "S*d the flavour, aslong as it looks good on the shelf"

(and has a nice, long shelf life without visible signs of deterioration.)

[nickmo]

Hi B/pod - if you haven't already, get a copy of 'Not on the Label' by Felicity Lawerence, and 'Shopped' by Joanna Blythman. Both are really excellent books about the operation of the supply chain, provenance and workings of supermarkets - they'll convince anyone that the s/markets are anything but super.

Just as an aside, s/markets regularly come out 25 - 30% more expensive for goods on a like for like basis than farmers' markets and farm shops, so if anyone is so rich they can afford to waste that much on bland, chemical swamped food, just keep going to the s/market....