Day 24: Hang the expense and buy your favourite fruit
Posted by kathryn in Fruit
Today’s task in 31 Days to a Better Diet is aimed at encouraging you to eat more fruit.
A common complaint from clients is they buy fruit each week, only to throw it out seven days later, uneaten and well past it’s prime.
Often on further questionning it becomes apparent the problem is they are uying fruit they don’t particularly like.
Apples, oranges, pears when good quality, ripe and in season are wonderful. Sweet, juicy and glorious tasting. Unfortunately though they’re often not like this. Instead they are too often bland and pedestrian.
However their cheap price means people stock up, knowing they should be eating fruit. Then throughout the week the fruit-eating resolve waivers and almost any other food looks more appealing. Come the weekend the apple has been carried to and from work five days in a row; the pear is over-ripe and festering; while you can never quite be bothered to peel that orange.
This is false economy – a double waste. If it doesn’t get eaten you’re not saving money and you’re not getting the nutritional benefits.
Today’s task
Therefore today’s task in the 31 Days to a Better Diet is to forget the cheap, budget fruit. Instead splash out and buy the stuff you really, really like.
Buy the strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. Get some figs, a mango. Choose delicious frozen fruit if these aren’t in season near you.
This week buy the best fruit you can afford and then savour it, luxuriate in it. Enjoy every single mouthful. And remind yourself that you do like fruit after all.
What fruit are you going to buy this week?
Berries photograph by G & A Scholiers figs photograph by Amanda Rudkin.
24 August, 2008
Comments
Great idea Kathyrn! I absolutely adore raspberries, but as we all know these have a short season and they don’t transport well. I buy big bags of them frozen – they’re expensive, but last ages and are always perfect quality!
Also, blood oranges are in season at the moment and are wonderful!
Christie – good idea about blood oranges. I haven’t had any this year and love them. Am just putting together my shopping list at the moment, so they’re getting added on.
Yes!! I discovered that the reason I didn’t like fruit was for the reasons you brought out in your post. Once I quit worrying about the cost and started buying fruit in season I realized I loved fruit.
I was one of those people who’d buy a bag of apples because it was cheaper and they’d languish in the fridge until, in a effort to save them, I made them into a pie or cobbler.
Now I buy one or two pieces/servings of several varieties of fruits, in season…with an aroma that would enable a blind person to identify the fruit by it’s aroma. The total cost in terms of overall food costs is really reasonable. If I can spend a dollar on a sweet treat, why not a dollar on a beautiful pear or nectarine, etc.?
Dinah – well done. It does require a slightly different mindset, but it’s about elevating fruit in your priorities. As you say, you’d spend money on a lolly or sweet treat, why budget on fruit.
Following Christie’s suggestion I bought some blood oranges over the weekend and am going to get some frozen berries tomorrow. The blood oranges are outstanding.
We’re suffering from an overload of oranges at the moment from our weekly delivery. I spent abotu 5 minutes cutting up oranges/kiwifruit etc into a bowl and set it down in the study in between my husband and I. End of the day – all gone. Sometimes jut need to make it more palatable.
Agree about the berries, I used to never buy them thinking them too expensive. But they are so great as a dessert – sprinkled on yoghurt, in crumbles. Yummy
i drove to the local berry farm on the weekend and bought a kilo of blueberries and a kilo of raspberries for 12 bucks each. way cheaper than the supermarket and now i can eat them whenever i want.
i had to give up on mandarins 3 weeks ago – they have just been bad and we havent been eating them
Ran – two kilos of blueberries & raspberries! How wonderful. Does change your attitude towards them, having such a plentiful supply.
Ah! This makes sense to me. I am aware that I am generally too lazy for fruit – I like it if it is in a fruit salad, because all I have to do is scoop it into a bowl. I shall muse this. Also, on a similar theme, did you see Jen from Vegan Lunchbox’s idea about making it easier to eat fruit and veg? The idea appeals. http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/2008/06/summer-veg-out-part-iii-easy-eaten.html
It’s strawberry season! I have a huge punnet in my fridge already.
Donalda – thanks so much for the link, I haven’t seen the Vegan Lunchbox blog before and isn’t that a great idea!
This article is so true. I say this as I have an apple in my bag which has gone to and from work over the past week, still not being eaten, but getting slightly more wrinkly by the day :-)
Most of the time I love oranges though, and I’m never too lazy to peel one. In fact it’s usually the orange which I also bring to work which stops me from eating the apple!
I definitely agree that we should be buying better fruit, but my tastes are definitely towards the more expensive end (blueberries at $6 to $7 a punnet!) and I find this kind of expense hard to justify as a must-buy.
But your point about cheap fruit being a false economy is very valid.
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