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teemyob

Hello,

Greengrocers, when I was a teenager I worked in a greengrocers after school and weekends. The boss would got to the wholesale market and as an example, buy all the stocks of Valencia oranges they needed to get rid of. He would then transport the 50+ boxes that he paid say £1 a box for back to the shop.
My job was to remove all the rotten ones and wash all the good ones in bucket of water to remove all the green mold that fallen onto the better ones. Some boxes had just the odd bad one and some had only the odd good one.
They were then sold in the shop as "Fresh Juicy Valencia's ONLY 5 for 30p!. By the time we sold the last ones, they had to be around at least 3 months old from date of picking, maybe much longer. Reason, by the time they are picked, sorted, waxed, packed stored and shipped by road to the UK, they are already of some age.

With the exception of fast perishing soft fruits, Rasberries, Strawberries etc. A lot of fresh fruit and and some veg can already be quite old when you buy it. Seasonal fruits are different as they tend to be picked, packed and sold fairly quickly. However, you can buy French golden delicious most of the year, but how often are they harvested?, yes they are the sort of fruit that are picked and then held in special humidified long cold storage for sale throughout the year.

The problem you have when you get fresh good home from all their travels and storage, what do you do with them, many of us put them in the fridge and whilst this keeps them nice and cool, other problems then occur.
Your domestic fridge cools the food by way of an evaporator, same principal as that you may have in your cab or habitation air conditioning. What does this evaporator do?, it dehimidifies the air in your fridge and thus all your nice fresh fruits and veg.
That is why very often you put nice fresh carrots in one day and a day or two later they are all limp! They have started to lose moisture. Now you may put them in the crisper but this will not do much good as the air that cools the crisper is the same as the rest of the fridge and all that usualy happens is the moisture condenses on the glass or plastic lid.

You may have noticed that in some supermarkets, often the likes of Auchan in warmer parts of France as an example have started to use humidifer sprays onto fresh produce, to prevent the products drying out.

The added problem is that in a lot of Domestic Static cooling fridge freezers and the majority of Frost Free refrigeration prouducts (Samsung Twin Cooling CoolSelectZone as one of the few exceptions), the food can be cross contaminated by other foods making matters worse. In addition your fridge temperature may either be too even or too uneven. For example, whilst fresh meat and poultry needs to be as near to zero c as possible, fresh vegeatbles should be kept between 10-12c.
The same is true of frozen foods. As an example, long term storage of ice cream by manufacturers is -29c exactly, display and serving of ice cream should be from -12 to no colder than -15c. Again, your domestic fridge will keep it around -18 to -22c (roughly Smile

no good for serving and no use for long term storage.

What is the solution to fruit and veg going off?

Some of us may remember the old "Pantry" or "Larder" if you come from posher parts than I. Gee, we had a TV before we had a fridge and that was third hand.

Somewhere cool and dark, preferably where the the dog, cat, rabbit, mice, rabbit, horse or whatever you have cannot chew them.
They will not be too cold and they will not dry out as quick as they did in the fridge.

If you do not have anywhere and realy want to try to keep fruit and veg in better condition then you could always buy a red wine cellar/conditioner. Like a wine/bottle cooler but the temeprature is higher. The appliance will still have an evaporator but as you will be storing it at a higher temperature in relation to the ambient temperature, the extent of dehumidification will be lower.

So if you have a wine cellar with some Chateau Lafite in it, make some room for your cabbage. Make sure it is exactly +13c mind.

Any use?

Trev.

pneumatician

What really annoys us is the fact that everything is prepacked in what appear to be family packs and on occasion BOGOF. We are a pair, that is two old dears who just want to buy enough fruit and veg to last a week 5 a day without going rotten.
We have now returned to shopping at our local outdoor Market whenever possible.

I hate exessive packaging, plastics in particular, it is a waste of resources and just contaminates the planet. Bit like exessive Homo Sapiens.

Grumpy
Steve

devonidiot

Teemyob.

Living in a pre-war house we have a larder which does keep things cool even in summer. During the winter it keeps everything very cool, almost as cool as a fridge, but the fruit and veg still go off far too quickly.

tonyt

bouncer

Take broccoli for example......its picked in Spain, in the sunshine, so when it goes on the truck its warm, now experienced truckers know that, so they don't start to drop the temprature on it too soon, or it all 'burns' on the top...from Spain to Uk your broccoli may only just be down to fridge temprature....

Those lovely tiny new potatoes you get in big supermarkets, that come in from southern Protugal...same thing, they are picked and packed straight into one tonne bags and put into the back of a fridge lorry,now apart from running the gauntlet of customs dogs that sometimes are put in to sniff around.....it stands to reason that three or four days all cuddled up in a one tonne sack is not doing them any good, because the outside ones are starting to chill down but the middle is still warm.......

Then on a slightly different tack there is pork chops etc from Germany, the trucks line up at one end of the factory, on very hot days for 2-3 hours before unloading, the pigs are killed, cut up processed and packed and back out on the UK delivery trucks within an hour...so in effect you have steaming hot pork being put onto a chiller lorry, and you are told to bring the temp down gradually so it doesnt go slimy... As travelling time from Germany to UK is so short that meat is often still warm on arrival....

How do i know all this....been there done it got the t shirt as a 'fridge driver' so despite what supermarkets tell you, its very rare nowadays to get a product that is fresh...and has not been through, transit, storage, transhipping etc etc...

In germany we used to have yoghurt, blueberries, pork and sausages all standing about on the warehouse floor for several hours, whilst the drivers brought in the rest of the goods tobe transhipped onto other wagons.....and don't even get me started on what happens to a pizza before it hits the shelves.........

I've taken meat packaging from big supermarkets to German abbatoirs waited for them to wrap German meat in Best of British wrappers and brought it back to UK......

Its all down to demand...you are all too demanding......!!!!

teemyob

some-where-in-oxford

No-one has mentioned irradiation. Do they still do this?

Irradiation of food is used to kill bacteria in foods and extend its shelf life.

Maybe this is why some food has no taste when it goes past its "natural shelf life" By the time it does go off, its well past the natural shelf life.