Kitchen Garden Forum

Interested to read in the paper that the poor weather this year is forcing supermarkets to start selling smaller and misshapen fruit and vegetables.

I think this is a jolly good thing. They've had artificially high standards for years and many farmers & growers have been forced to plough in or feed to pigs crops which are perfectly edible and have nothing wrong with them. I've always felt so angry watching food programmes or countryside programmes about food producers where you see whole fields of vegetables ploughed in and wasted because a supermarket has deemed them of insufficiently high standard.
It shows what a wasteful society we've become. The nation would have starved to death in WW2 if they'd adopted these kinds of policies.
Bring back the curly cucumbers and and forked carrots and let people understand this is actually how food grows in the real world.

I hope they remember and keep this up when fruit and vegetables are more plentiful. We hear lots about food shortages but if we didn't waste so much produce unnecessarily we would have enough. I'm sure people struggling with household bills would be happy to eat the misshapen/blemished food that is thrown away!

I'm thinking that most folk have never seen anything that wasn't 'perfect' & probably won't buy these - thankfully those that remember these type of fruit & vege are the ones who will struggle most in the current climate & hopefully will benefit...if they can't afford to put the heating on they will at least have some wholesome food. Will wait & see the price tag they put on these though!

Westi

I regret to say that the supermarkets are not entirely to blame about imperfect produce sales. The European Parliament were the people who passed the law that fruit and vegetables must be of pristene quality and it is they that have had to place a relaxing order on the law.
Having said that supermarkets were probably responsible for the law coming into force in the first place.
JB.

Everey EU law, look who will benefit and they'll have been quietly lobbying a few years before, or sitting on a standards body.