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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (264521)	5/21/2008 11:21:05 AM
From: neolib	Respond to of 281500

It is not a conspiracy however. Many of the goals seemed reasonable. People want good looking produce. It is unfortunately about the only metric the consumer has in the supermarket. A slightly more intelligent consumer might use hands and nose to deduce whether the good looking produce is in fact likely to taste good, but our retail shopping does not encourage such behavior. The biggest single problem is that distance and time from the source to consumption directly drives low eating quality, while the only real tools to combat this is to breed varieties, or develop handling methods, which seek to preserve the appearance of the product. Of course people want fresh produce year around, so there is a conflict built in. Unfortunately, the market approach to meeting the consumer's desire has resulted in substantial declines in produce quality, unless you use the metrics which are in fact causing the problem (appearance and availability) One thing that could change this would be to require that all produce labels have the harvest date on them. I'd prefer to see some data on the produce state at harvest as well, but this is likely to fly over the heads of most consumers (starch vs sugar content, anti-oxidant levels, etc). Of course, this would in the sort term nail producers and retailers as consumers learned to shun 80% of the produce, so it is not likely to happen. On the processed food side, I'd like to see the % of corn syrup in the product printed in bold print on the front label. That would help dispel delusions of food quality in a very tangible way.