fruit and veg

I was reading on reddit [its like facebook] about the worse quality of fruit and veg since Brexit !! One person wrote this what i found interesting


GhostCanyon
·
14 hr. ago
Weirdly enough I worked in fruit and veg when Brexit came in. We went from solid shipments daily of the same stuff from the same places to irregular shipments from all over the place. At first it was a problem that the buyers didn’t know how to buy from EU countries so they just bailed and started buying from none EU countries because at least that hadn’t changed so a lot of the fruit that could have come a few hours from the EU was coming from South America/costa rica. We would receive random amounts of things and it was just a mess for months and we were putting the prices up daily at that point just to cover all the extra logistics costs. The supermarket I was working for made us put these little slips out when we had no food saying “due to unseasonal weather conditions we have low stock of this fruit/veg” the manager said it was just the supermarket not wanting to get involved in politics but that was a complete lie and it was 100% brexit confusion/logistics that caused food shortages.

also a lot of writers complin about taste and it rots a lot faster
"Lidl/aldi has always been the worst. Fruit and veg goes off before you get home!"
Bought M&S grapes, basically have no flavour at all.

Has anyone on WW had the same problem???

i will put the link ! if anyone is interested in reading it I used to buy delicious citrus fruit from Italy, now Brexit has put an end to it

I agree it is going off quicker.

If you carefully inspect, in general, stuff on the shelves not as fresh as it used to be.

Aldi used to be bad, but I find they have improved a lot. Now they are far better for fresh produce than Tesco, which at least the stores where I shop, is definitely the worst.

We buy potatoes from Asda which now don't have a use by date on them now. Whether its from when they are dug up/bagged or the handling in the caging of the potatoes when pealing them there are a lot of bruised potatoes

UK citrus fruit annual imports.

From Spain £280 million, South Africa £140 million, Morocco £48 million, Egypt £35 million.
Jaffa oranges from Palestine then Israel used to be very popular in the UK.

There is no oranges in Jaffa never was it was just a name they used

so has fruit declined since brexit ? .

It was not always the case, but nowadays the quality of produce at my local greengrocer (small shop) is far better than the supermarket.

Jaffa

I have been shopping in Lidl for quite a few years now, and I have found their fresh vegetables to be of excellent quality and standard, and they last longer than expected.

If something goes beyond their normal pricing levels or quality control, they won't stock it, which is fair enough.

Asda's produce is of good quality, if not better since it was taken over by the petrol station people

rubbish .

ena malcup

What, even the fruit and vegetables which some small shops buy along with other items at Aldi, Home Bargains, Lidl etc and the re-sell at a higher price at their small shop, especially if in a remote area!

Gaffer
"There is no oranges in Jaffa never was it was just a name they used" i said
let me rephrase and be more precise - Jaffa Oranges are a type of orange which originates from Jaffa area - most houses in Jaffa would have had orange trees in its yard same as I have a lemon tree - cause we are in the Med. You said that Jaffa oranges from Palestine then Israel used to be very popular in the UK - The Jaffa Orange you ate in the UK was a brand as the Jaffa Orange website states: "Jaffa is the UK’s leading citrus brand. We provide you with juicy and refreshing Jaffa oranges, easy peelers and seedless lemons year-round and Jaffa Giant easy peelers, Jaffa Jumbo Oranges, Jaffa Alizza Fruit and Jaffa Reds when they’re in season." So unless you were born in the 1800s.... you would not have eaten a orange from jaffa...... And like brexit you have to understand all the process not just some of the pieces that are sexy

Peter Israel

Very informative

But I am now getting confused

Because so where do they grow Jaffa Cakes ?

Whupsy:

"rubbish . "

How dare yoo 'rubbish me'

Seriously,,, Asda's Produce is OK

My local ASDA is OK for green veg and garlic, (Well, better than Tesco, not as good as Sainsbury)

However is not good for fresh fruit, which tends to be rather deteriorated even when first put out into the display shelves.

Aldi and Morrisons do beat them both though.

Local greengrocer bests them all though.



Sometimes, their prices are higher than supermarket, sometimes they are lower, so I do not know which works out more expensive over the longer term.

rubbish.

From the National Geographic Magazine.

One Man’s Quest to Keep the Jaffa Orange Alive
BYCHRISTINE BEDNARZ
PUBLISHED MAY 11, 2015
7 MIN READ



Once Israel’s most famous export, hardly any Jaffa oranges are grown today, for reasons both political and agricultural. But one farmer in Northern Israel refuses to give up.

Chaim Tzehori pulls out his pocket knife to expertly dissect an orange–sweet, thick-skinned and oval-shaped. He proudly offers me the fruit of his labor as we visited in his orchard earlier this spring.

Some of his oranges dot the orchard floor, signaling the nearness of the season’s end. Chaim, now 87, planted these shamouti trees himself 50 years ago in 1965, and while he still climbs the ladders himself to harvest the fruit, he knows his time among the trees will someday come to an end, too.

But standing in the middle of the rows of orange trees, where the scent of citrus hangs as heavy as the last fruit bending its branches, nothing could taste sweeter.

While citrus fruit has been grown in the Middle East for centuries, by the mid-19th century, Arab farmers in the region had developed a winner–the Shamouti, an orange bred to be easy to peel and practically seedless. British consular reports as early as the 1850s mentioned these oranges, grown in the lush orchards surrounding the historic port of Jaffa (now part of Tel Aviv) finding their way to Queen Victoria’s plate by the late 19th century.
In the early 20th century, orchard workers loaded crates weighing more than 60 kilos (130 pounds) of Jaffa oranges onto camels for transport to the port. Each orange was wrapped individually in paper before setting sail.

Between the World Wars, half the orange groves were owned by Arabs and the other half by Jews, with partnerships and competition forming as more Jews moved in. The Shamouti, nicknamed Jaffa oranges, after their region, quickly became the dominant orange in the area.

And that dominance turned to stardom as more Europeans and Americans discovered the special orange. Celebrities like Ingrid Bergman and Louis Armstrong posed with Jaffa oranges, which were like the Coca-Cola brand of fruit juices, according to the 2009 documentary Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork by director Eyal Sivan.

Over time, and through countless political battles, newer varieties of oranges, easier to package and grown on shorter trees that require less climbing began to replace the famed Jaffas of old.

Despite the challenges, one man sticks to his roots. Farmer Chaim Tzehori works the land just like his father, who fled Russia after Stalin and then helped to establish Moshav Ein Vered in 1930–long before the state of Israel existed. A moshav operates like a kibbutz, with communal work in idyllic agricultural surroundings, but allows some private ownership. This specific moshav sits about 45 minutes drive from Jaffa, in the fertile plain region of the Sharon, once covered by sand dunes.
Tzehori’s father planted potatoes and tomatoes, but oranges became the family’s main business by the 1950s, when he started to grow the Shamouti orange. The ability to root deep into the sand helped the Shamouti trees thrive.

Eventually, though, Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork explains that the Jaffa orange became a politically-charged fruit: “While the orange become the symbol of the Zionist enterprise and the state of Israel, for Palestinians it symbolises the lost of their homeland and its destruction,” director Eyal Sivan says.

Indeed, as more Jewish immigrants moved in, tension built between the communities, with riots and a strike of Palestinian workers prompting the construction of a new port in the north of Tel Aviv. During the 1948 war, the city’s Arab-majority population of about 65,000 fled, and Jewish immigrants moved into the almost abandoned city.

The Israelis saw an opportunity in the oranges. The new state of Israel re-branded Jaffa oranges as the product of romantic kibbutz life. Workers like Chaim’s father on Moshav Ein Vered found a difficult but fruitful living.

But with less than 5,000 farmers in all of the state of Israel today, the orange that once sat on the plates of royals has a grim future. Some farms in Ein Vered were developed into real estate, to meet the demand of the many people in Israel that want to live on this moshav. “There are about 1,500 people [here], but only 20 or 30 farmers. No one wants to be a farmer today, there is no money in it,” says Chaim Tzehori.
Tzehori’s four children pursued other career paths rather than go into their father’s boutique orange business. His wholesale Jaffa oranges earn only 1 shekel per kilo (about $0.13 per lb) or 5-6 shekels ($0.65 per lb) when sold directly to consumers. “That’s why this life isn’t really worth it,” says Tzehori’s son-in-law Tal Lampert, who works in the insurance business but occasionally helps pick the crop.

Tzehori operates a fruit stand at the Tel Aviv farmers’ market and a few other locations. He speaks softly of the satisfaction of seeing customers’ reactions to the taste of a real Shamouti, and how they come back again and again, “The Sharon is the best place in the world for oranges, I think. I can’t eat them from other places, I’ll know immediately,” he says, standing in the the middle of his two acres of approximately 400 trees.

Many people have urged him to give up on the Shamouti, saying modern tastes have changed. But Tzehori won’t hear of it.

“To cut the orchard down would be to cut out my heart. I can’t explain it. But people think I’m crazy,” he says.

Christine Blau is a researcher for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

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That’s about the limit of your learning and intelligence Whups.