Fruit For Thought
Mango, banana, apple, green grape, red grape, squeezed lemon.
Fruits for lunch is a thing these days. I was having one of such lunches recently, a good assortment of tropical and temperate weather fruits, and it got me thinking. Not a single one of these fruits, tropical or temperate, is in season right now - being winter. Yet, I was able to buy them, apparently fresh, definitely unfrozen, from the supermarket.
Mangoes and bananas don't grow here for a start so, in theory, they're never in season here :). Lemons are mainly imported from Spain and Italy. Grapes are local but they're not in season so these particular ones must have come from an antipodean location, or at least somewhere below the equator. Popular places are Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, Peru and Argentina. In a few months we can get grapes from the Mediterranean and north Africa, which are the very best in my humble opinion.
Talking of North Africa, Algeria is a powerhouse when it comes to grape vines. A good amount of the "French" wines historically got grapes from that region. The weather is perfect and the relatively fertile northern coast is the perfect ecosystem for growing grapes. We have grape vines here in the UK, but it's just not the same. I'm not a wine connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination - heck, I don't even drink at all, but I hear that French grapes have been cultivated carefully for centuries to arrive at some regional masterpieces that give their wines the iconic tastes. I wouldn't know.
I walked past the wine section at the supermarket and saw a huge variety of origins including Uruguay, which I suppose has the same climate as Argentina, and India! Apparently that's a growing industry over there. Of course there's also wine fro Zimbabwe and other southern African countries. Those have been around for a while now. It seems like everyone has figured out how to make "good wine".
Back to the fruits. I've noticed more awareness growing concerning "food miles". It's a negative factor in that the more of it a food item has, the worse it's classified. This is fundamentally an ecological measure but some have pointed out some nutrition and health issues related to food miles. The longer a food item has to travel to get to you, the more chance it has of being exposed to toxins and other such terrible things. The aim is to encourage eating local foods, which will mean only getting certain food items when they're in season.
What that means for a country like the UK is not being able to get bananas, mangoes and pineapples at all! It will also mean only getting berries and grapes in spring and summer time, unless frozen and eaten months later. This may seem alarming but this was how people lived in the olden days. Many delicacies were created in an attempt to preserve food items into winter times. Sauerkraut, raisins, pickles and jam are examples.
Peace & Love,
Adé