Food for Thought

What’s on my mind? 

It started with apples. A few years ago, everyone was chomping Macs - and no one seemed to care, because Macs were all the rage. The many varieties of apples once available had pretty much disappeared, and orchardists were ripping out their apples trees to grow more profitable grapes - or to sell the land for housing. A pity.

Gala apples are a pretty big deal right now, most likely because they’re shelf-stable and Costco sells them cheaply, leaving smaller food chains no choice but to buy them, too.

In the days when I was paid to do it, I’d dangle a few numbers (but not so many that you - or I - would fall asleep) to suggest why why this or that was driving this or that market. 

Today, all I can offer is an educated guess that Gala apples appeal to most tastes (not too sweet, not too tart; not too crisp, not too mushy). I also suspect Galas offer a larger profit margin than possible if food chains stocked a greater choice of apples. Apple case closed. 

Next came corn. The bland “peaches and cream” variety is a pox on the land.  I cheered when Margaret Wente, then-columnist for The Globe and Mail, took up the cudgel to fight the good fight in approximately Y2K. I would have done the same, but my days as a newspaper columnist were long gone.

Corn once offered many varieties (Jubilee was my favorite for freezing, doing a credible imitation of fresh-picked corn on a nippy November or January day). Peaches and cream? Perfect for the false-teeth crowd. No crunch. The bland leading the bland.

So now, it’s yams. Their rust-colored skin has fooled me once too often into thinking I’m buying yams, but n’yah, n’yah! Fooled ya, Nicole! What I’ve actually bought are sweet potatoes. No, thank you. 

Hmmm … The US Dept. of Agriculture requires labels with the term “yam” to also state “sweet potato.” That’s misleading. A yam is a yam is a yam - not a sweet potato. 

Although no one’s paying me to do this, I’ve been studying up on the per-capita consumption of fresh sweet potatoes in the US from 2000 to 2018, and also boning up on yams and sweet potatoes in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada filings. So here’s what I’ve discovered: Nothing. Didn’t understand a word of it.

What I suspect, however, is that yams and sweet potatoes are being hybridized for the same reason apples and corn have been dumbed down - corporate profits. 

Fluorescent carrots … Have you seen ’em? They’re the color of Donald Trump’s face and the size of a toddler’s thigh, neither of which is appealing. These Chinese-grown carrots are the most unnatural thing I’ve seen since Liberace’s final face lift. Unless they play the piano, I don't want them anywhere near our kitchen.

© Nicole Parton, 2020