There's some strange new items appearing in the fruit and veg section these days
Green satsumas
I was intrigued to find out what the “green satsumas” advertised in my Riverford fruit & veg box last week might taste like. I hadn’t tasted a green satsuma before. As it happens, they are tart and very juicy, just the way I like them.
The Riverford people had felt the need to put a note in the box, though, about these miyagawa satsumas. “Don’t wait for the skin to change colour,” it said. “This variety has a distinctive green skin but it’s ready to eat now. The fruit inside is orange.”
I suppose it’s better to be safe than wait around for complaints from upset customers who had waited for the skin to turn from green to orange and ended up with a pile of mulchy, mouldy, inedible fruit instead.
After all, satsumas are supposed to be orange, aren’t they? Do we need new, mind-boggling, eye-popping varieties just to make sure we keep up with getting our five-a-day?
Baby fruits
The major supermarkets routinely try and entice us with novel types of fruit and veg. M&S seems to lead the way in this. In the past few years alone they have brought us baby lemons, figs, plums, grapes and apples.
Mammoth satsuma
Earlier this year they proudly unveiled the “satsumo”, a giant satsuma from Japan which is produced by crossing a Japanese Kiyomi, itself the offspring of a satsuma and an orange, with a Chinese Ponkan, a large mandarin. The resulting satsumo is about the size of a grapefruit but sweeter than a satsuma or clementine.
Why do we need a giant satsuma? Is this part of our quest for all things bigger and better? We’re certainly partial to grab bags of crisps and family-sized packets of Maltesers.
Cross breeding – the natural way
“Natural cross breeding is a common phenomena in the fruit and veg world,” said M&S’s citrus buyer, Matt Pydney. “When you have two different types of citrus groves, they can sometimes cross pollinate resulting in new varieties of fruit. When we find these new varieties we are keen to develop and look at their unique qualities. In this particular case we discovered that a Japanese Kiyomi and a Ponkan had been cross pollinated and we knew it would make one of the sweetest tasting citrus fruits on the high street."
There are plenty of other items out there that we’re not used to seeing. M&S had golden cherries this summer, and Tesco was selling golden raspberries.
Rainbow caulis
Orange, purple and green cauliflowers were available in the US for some years before appearing over here, the product, insist their developers Syngenta, of selective breeding rather than genetic modification. Some scientists have said they are healthier for you (there’s vitamin A and beta carotene in the orange caulis, and anthocyanin which prevents blood clots in the purple), but really they were created to add some colour to dishes.
If new varieties of fruit and veg taste either better or different, I’m all for them, but food excites me enough without scattering the table with rainbow-coloured caulifowers.
Plus the seed company Syngenta has many crimes against food stacked against it. Too many to mention here, but here’s an introduction.
Multi-coloured carrots
But there’s no need to be hung up on the fruit and vegetable colours that we’re all accustomed to. Most carrots eaten in Europe were white, yellow or purple until the 17th century, when it is thought the Dutch popularized the more familiar orange variety. Who knows why the experiment stuck, but now orange carrots are the norm.
And anyone who’s had the opportunity to taste delicious heirloom tomatoes in shades of yellow and green will have gone back for second helpings.
Amid some unusual additions – both M&S and Tesco have sold square watermelons (easier to cut!) – welcoming new fruit and vegetables into our homes is something of a foodie adventure. As long as it comes from an experiment in cross breeding rather than genetic modification, I’m all for it.
Also worth your attention:
The UK's favourite fruit and vegetables