Facebook is a many sided media sending out messages of doom and gloom, weirdness, hilarity, social connection and education.
This morning I watched a video intended to educate, one of the more positive sides of the application, the snippet was about a supermarket chain in France that was selling ‘inglorious’ fruit and veg, at a reduced rate in comparison to ‘perfect’ fruit and veg. Fabulous is my reaction, do you realise how many thousands of tons of fruit and veg are thrown away almost as soon as they are picked because they don’t conform!
The more I thought about the video the wider my thought net was cast, is it us as consumers or is it the supermarkets that are driving this need for perfect looking produce. Either way we should be ashamed of ourselves, firstly for wanting straight carrots or oval potatoes that get chopped up or mashed anyway and secondly if it is the supermarkets, for allowing them to lead us in that direction while we follow without thought.
During the war thousands of men and women died so that we had freedom, that includes the freedom to think for ourselves and act on it, thousands of families during that time would have given their eye teeth for a misshapen carrot or a deformed apple, what have we done with the gift that they gave us, demanded perfect fruit and veg? Are we that fickle?
Waste is something I don’t understand, people work hard for their pay packet yet at the end of each day they toss their hard earnings into a food waste bin and the industry as a whole is doing the same. The cost of living would come down if we utilised everything that was grown in this country, the need for importing would be much less, a bonus point for the whole global warming situation, at the very least, those wonky carrots and short fat courgettes should be going to make soup or stock, not rotting away on a food mountain.
I realise that when you look at a situation like this as an individual you can’t achieve much on your own, one lone voice in the giant world of supermarkets is not going to be heard, but if you agree with any of the above and see a petition or a movement in that direction, climb on board, if and I say if, the British supermarkets ever have enough bottle to follow in the footsteps of the French, take a deep breath and buy those ‘inglorious’ offerings, I guarantee the taste will be just as good, if not better because of the way you will feel about yourself for taking the leap, and as a bonus, you might even get a giggle at preparation time, from the distorted shapes you come across and let’s face it, we could all do with a good giggle now and again, couldn’t we?
frieslandfarm (flowers) 