Bought some supermarket apples lately? Think they’re fresh? Think again…

Did you know that some of the fruit & veg in a supermarket is already weeks, if not months, old?

Recent research has confirmed that many seasonal items are stored for months, to extend their availability.

This might sound ok in theory, but what does this mean for the fruit and veg you’re buying?

Apples are stored for up to a year in cold store and then shipped around that world. That’s why apples bought out of season, say, in June, taste woolly and flavourless.

Salad crops such as lettuce and spinach may already be a few weeks old, yet they only last a few days when picked in your garden. The advent of “pre-washed, pre-packaged” salads was great for the food retailers, because it means they can seal the leaves in a bag, filled with chemicals, to make them stay looking fresh long after the nutritional value has gone.

“Packaged in a protective environment” doesn’t mean they were careful to keep the factory clean. It means that your “no need to wash” salad is probably washed in diluted chlorine and a mixture of preservative gases. Doesn’t sound quite as appealing…

Other fruits, such as grapes and plums, rot quickly. So they’re kept in cold stores and often sprayed with anti-fungal agents, to prevent them going mouldy. So it’s really essential to wash them well before eating, or you’ll be eating the fungicides, too.

Fact: there are very few nutrients left in old fruit & veg.

You think you’re being good by buying the stuff, but flavour and nutritional content deteriorate rapidly after picking, so the older the produce, the less value there is in eating it.

Even dried fruits can be at risk.

For example, dried apricots sound like a great idea, but how do you think they get them to stay looking so fresh and orange?

Sulphur dioxide…

The natural colour for dried apricots is dark brown, but this (apparently) looks less appetising. So sulphur dioxide is used to help them keep their colour. The only snag is that sulphur dioxide can produce asthma attacks and minor allergic reactions in susceptible people (there are a lot of them out there). So if you’ve ever eaten dried fruit and found your mouth and throat felt funny afterwards, or your breathing changed, now you know why.

Yet this is a perfectly legal, permissible chemical…

What can you do?

Unfortunately buying organic from a supermarket doesn’t mean you avoid all this. Out-of-season organic food can still be stored for months, though the chemicals used will be more strictly controlled.

The only real options are:

1. Only buy in-season, locally-produced food
   That way you know it’s not been hanging around for months.
2. Buy direct from the grower
   Hunt out your local farm shop, farmers’ market or box scheme, so you can ask the grower how their produce has been stored
3. Avoid pre-packed fruit & veg and brightly-coloured dried fruit
   Chances are it may have been chemically treated. Avoid it and you’ll be avoiding the nasties, too.

Only you can decide how important fresh food is to you and your family. I invite you to give it a go and notice the difference.

On Saturday, the National Trust is running its annual Coleshill Local Food Festival. (See the website for details of all the activities, including a mini beer festival and even bird box making with my hubby’s mate, Malcolm!).

Basically, they own the estate, which makes up most of the village (yes, you read right!) of Coleshill and open it once a year to the public for a big food festival.

Coleshill Organics runs a veg box and a farm shop from the village, where they grow most of their own produce on their 10 hectare site. They will be running tours all day and talking about what a box scheme is and how it works. Pop along to meet Sonia and Pete and find out all about what they do.