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Organic groceries and the supermarket system

2006 May 12
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by Tim

I’ve been experimenting with online organic grocers the last few weeks and I’ve been really surprised by how fresh the fruits and vegetables have been. Whenever I’ve tried shopping for organics at one of the larger supermarkets the organic stuff has always been fairly drab-looking.

It occurs to me that the length of the supply chains involved in the modern supermarket might be the problem. While a lot of vegetables seem to get fumigated, force-ripened and gamma-irradiated, organic vegetables aren’t treated in any of these ways. The consequence is that while a factory-farmed apple might still look shiny and well three months after picking, an organic apple may well look horrid after only a couple of weeks.

It seems to me that supermarkets rely on the long shelf-life of non-organically-farmed vegetables because it can take weeks before the product even gets to the “shelf” from the farm. The online grocers, by contrast, can collate the week’s orders, buy the vegetables at a farmer’s market (within a week of harvest) and get them to the customer 2-3 days later.

Just-In-Time production… short supply chains… three cheers for the Internet! It gets me delicious, fresh organic fruit every week.

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  • http://spaces.msn.com/members/dragontales daveyll

    Okay. I’m all for fresh fruit and vegetables, but the whole organic thing has gotten out of hand here in the UK, just like how everyone here BUYS water to drink – I’m talking about lugging 20 1 L bottles of Evian home EVERY WEEK with on your shop. Personally, I use a Brita filter because I don’t like the taste of hard water.

    Perhaps an alternative theory is: organic veges look drab in the shops because they just don’t have the same turnaround like non-organic veges. People think they’re a rip off, so don’t buy them, hence the shopkeepers leave them there in the hope that some will buy it…NOW and they’ll recoup the cost.

    I’m all for a bit of pesticide in the diet. What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger – or accumulates and kills us slowly.

  • http://spaces.msn.com/members/dragontales daveyll

    Okay. I’m all for fresh fruit and vegetables, but the whole organic thing has gotten out of hand here in the UK, just like how everyone here BUYS water to drink – I’m talking about lugging 20 1 L bottles of Evian home EVERY WEEK with on your shop. Personally, I use a Brita filter because I don’t like the taste of hard water.

    Perhaps an alternative theory is: organic veges look drab in the shops because they just don’t have the same turnaround like non-organic veges. People think they’re a rip off, so don’t buy them, hence the shopkeepers leave them there in the hope that some will buy it…NOW and they’ll recoup the cost.

    I’m all for a bit of pesticide in the diet. What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger – or accumulates and kills us slowly.

  • http://www.timbomb.net/blog Tim (with coffee)

    I think shelf-life may be a factor, although since the stores don’t give us any idea how long it’s been since anything got picked, or when it hit the shelf, its hard to tell which things are hanging around longer. I guess that still means online ordering makes sense because then there’s no shelf – you’re not keeping stock on-hand.

    Pesticide isn’t the main thing I’m interested in organics for – mostly it’s the various things they do to make them look fresh for longer. The point of eating fresh stuff is for the micronutrients, if it’s been gamma-irradiated before shipping and it looks fresh for three months, then there’s precious little left in it apart from structural fibre and water by the time I buy it.

  • http://www.timbomb.net/blog Tim (with coffee)

    I think shelf-life may be a factor, although since the stores don’t give us any idea how long it’s been since anything got picked, or when it hit the shelf, its hard to tell which things are hanging around longer. I guess that still means online ordering makes sense because then there’s no shelf – you’re not keeping stock on-hand.

    Pesticide isn’t the main thing I’m interested in organics for – mostly it’s the various things they do to make them look fresh for longer. The point of eating fresh stuff is for the micronutrients, if it’s been gamma-irradiated before shipping and it looks fresh for three months, then there’s precious little left in it apart from structural fibre and water by the time I buy it.

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