The trouble is that the tastier British apples aren't so uniform or storeable as the foreign tasteless imports. What some fruits lack in uniformity, they gain in taste. I read somewhere that when a supermarket wants to see if they will buy a strawberry, the first thing they do is drop one in the floor to see if it bounces. Taste comes way down the scale. At Christmas in a blind tasting, you'd be hard pushed to tell a strawberry from a cucumber.
I read somewhere that when a supermarket wants to see if they will buy a
strawberry, the first thing they do is drop one in the floor to see if
it bounces.
. Such is our world.
I imagine they test bedding plant varieties in a similar way. Will it survive starving, drowning, beheading, footballs, drought, planting in a tin can? If yes - it will be a hit. (Unless it's a dandelion).
Pricing doesn't work at the moment as a driver for better environmental standards because dealing with the effects of carbon emissions and other forms of pollution are not priced in. Electricity typically costs x4 or x5 per unit compared to natural gas in the UK, but its pollution effect is between 50% and 75% on average, just for carbon, less if you count other combustion pollutants from gas (including the stuff itself leaking into the atmosphere from the pipes). The cost of shipping frozen lamb from NZ reflects the cost of buying the fuel to get the boat half way around the world, but that cost of fuel doesn't reflect how much pollution the fuel creates when it's burned. It's not just subsidies that skew the costs, it's also the lack of accountability for polluters to pay for dealing with their pollution. If the cost of disposal of plastic was part of the cost of buying plastic, it would suddenly become much easier to buy stuff packaged without it.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Seasonality is a step in the right direction but unfortunately cannot really be the answer. I don't think a healthy nutrition is at all possible eating only what is local/seasonal. Those before us did it but they lived shorter, and less healthy.
Britain cannot feed itself and obviously HAS to import citrus fruits, bananas and so on, but seasonal food is fine. Heaven knows, many of us grew up on it! I worry about asparagus from Peru, strawberries from Spain in mid winter. WHY? Is it good for the planet? Seasonal food seems more natural and can be brought in from closer to us in many cases.
After toying with the idea of entering this heated debate, I decided to opt for the "one picture is worth a thousand words" saying. Here's my 1,000 word contribution below.
Posts
I read somewhere that when a supermarket wants to see if they will buy a strawberry, the first thing they do is drop one in the floor to see if it bounces. Taste comes way down the scale.
At Christmas in a blind tasting, you'd be hard pushed to tell a strawberry from a cucumber.
I imagine they test bedding plant varieties in a similar way. Will it survive starving, drowning, beheading, footballs, drought, planting in a tin can? If yes - it will be a hit. (Unless it's a dandelion).
It's not just subsidies that skew the costs, it's also the lack of accountability for polluters to pay for dealing with their pollution. If the cost of disposal of plastic was part of the cost of buying plastic, it would suddenly become much easier to buy stuff packaged without it.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I hesitate to give my own opinion.