McConnell: Pristine produce raises concerns

Column photo

By Cara McConnell

Thursday, February 19, 2009

When I was growing up, the best part of my summer was coming to Kansas to stay with my grandparents, two of whom lived on a farm outside my parents’ hometown of Independence, Kan. For two weeks I would run around in muddy and stained clothes helping my grandfather, and at the end of the day sit down to dinners that highlighted the best a Kansas farm can offer.

Though everything was delicious, it was the bright red and juicy tomatoes that stood out to my young taste buds. What always temporarily turned me off about the tomatoes, however, was that they were usually the ultra-ripe rejects that hadn’t been sold. They often had spots that had already started to decompose. My grandmother would slice off any bad parts and serve them. When I questioned her, she would explain that one bad spot didn’t ruin a tomato.

As I stare down the tomatoes in the grocery store this time of year, I’ve begun to think that, in fact, a few bad spots are just what produce needs. It seems as though grocery store produce has stopped going bad, and too-perfect produce is a sign of trouble.

It’s hard enough to get Americans to purchase raw ingredients rather than easy and convenient prepackaged meals. Produce that doesn’t spoil as fast sounds great — it’s cost effective for the grocer and the consumer, neither of whom wants to trash molded peaches or rotten zucchini.

Among the many strange and harmful tactics employed to “protect” crops (but more often profits), the answer to the mystery of the missing rot is actually quite simple: If you remove what the bacteria want, they won’t attack.

Here’s the catch, though. What bacteria, fungi and bugs want is what we want, or at least should want: nutrients.

Every other creature on the planet seems to be substantially less bogged down with such dilemmas as “Nacho Cheese or Cool Ranch?” They tend to be unconcerned with what price has been slapped on which variety of apple, and they could care less about what the FDA has deemed healthy. Bacteria care about one thing: keeping themselves alive and reproducing. To do that, they need nutrients.

To that end, they’re going to spoil whatever’s got the goods. An orange sitting on your table? They’re on it. Frosted Strawberry Milkshake Pop Tart? Don’t hold your breath. In fact, stick it in a time capsule, and with maybe a little bit of added staleness, your grandchildren can dine with confidence on what only our species would ever dare to call sustenance.

Fruit and vegetable growers pull off this little nutrient bait-and-switch by harvesting produce long before it’s ripe and at its nutritional peak. They then use techniques such as gassing the produce to create a product that’s aesthetically ripe but nutritionally devoid. The bacteria see it coming, but most consumers think they’re getting the healthy benefits of produce that they’ve sacrificed the convenience of faster foods for.

Like most grocery store shoppers, I’m used to having access to a wide variety of produce without any concern for seasonality, which is why I can buy tomatoes in January. A few days ago I found my January tomatoes hidden behind some jars, lurking there for who knows how long, but still as blemish-free as the day I bought them.

I chopped them up and tossed them with some pasta. They were grainy, watery and awful, a world apart from my grandfather’s.

— McConnell is a Dallas junior in journalism.

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