Selfsufficientish.com

At last - a bit of common sense from Europe:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/news/uglyveg.asp

The European Union has abolished rules that impose strict controls over what fruit and veg sold in shops should look like, bringing crooked cucumbers, bent beans and knobbly potatoes back to grocery shelves.

Gardeners who grow their own eat forked carrots, lumpy tomatoes and odd-looking aubergines as a matter of course. But for the last 20 years, anyone selling such imperfect vegetables could be prosecuted. The rules have long been derided for forcing farmers to reject about 20 percent of otherwise edible produce before it even reaches the shops, and the criticism has become even fiercer as food prices rise in the economic downturn.

Of the 26 fruit and vegetables covered by the rules, 16 can be sold in whatever shape or size they come once the rule change comes into force in July 2009. The remaining 10, which include tomatoes, apples and strawberries, can be sold as long as they are labelled 'for processing'.

I wonder if my rant at them about Kiwi fruit made a difference??? Probably not.

Cheers
Zoe

Certainly when we lived in Spain the bigger supermarket chains were no different to the UK or France for being insistent on very regular shaped fruit and veggies. But the local markets always seemed to have some very strangely shaped items and I suspect EU regulations had passed these people by totally. As things were much cheaper at the markets I always shopped there for fruit and vegetables, even though the choice was normally pretty limited.

What DID used to incense me was the perfectly useable fruit and veg just thrown to rot outside the plasticultura greenhouses. This was obviously NOT the perfect stuff the supermarkets or exporters wanted. I have no idea why it didn't end up at the markets. I have seen literally tons of things like peppers or melons just left to rot away and it used to really bother me.

I don't really mind what shape things are as long as they taste good. There are some things (like tomatoes) which rarely taste of anything.

I used to shop at one store where they put all the misshapen or slightly bruised produce in a special corner, marked at a deep discount. I once got 4 perfectly good avocados for 25 cents total, just because they'd reached the soft-ripe stage.

It meant they threw out far less than most stores.