German Fruit And Veg

Am I alone in finding it practically impossible to buy Fruit and Veg that hasn't gone mouldy. Everything I buy lasts about as long as a 14 year old on Gail Porter.
Am I p ssed off.
Wanted to give my wife, fresh out of hospital, a fresh fruit salad treat. Fresh as a Turkish wrestler's bollock.
And we are both bloody vegies!!
I'm very p ssed off.

Expect more vitriol if Chelsea don't win by 3 against Monaco tomorrow!

I know what you mean! I just buy enough for a day or two at a time. Lidl seems to be better for veg here in Celle.
A friend of mine is the area manager for the Naafi and told me that the germans don't put any preservatives on their veg like Tesco etc..so that can't be a bad thing really. I guess you have to just find out when shops get their deliveries and be there asap afterwards...or find a farmers market or farm shops are usually good. Hope your wife is fine

A good tip is , if there are any nearby, go to the Turkish shops, their fruit and veg are usually up to very good standards because they eat much more of the stuff than the Germans do.

I got sick of everything rotting so quickly so in the end we bought a very big expensive fridge that has two big drawers for fruit and veg at 0 degrees C and a big salad drawer for stuff that is a bit more fragile at 4 degrees C. My man keeps one of the drawers full of beer and there still space for all the veg to stay fresh. Before this I had all but given up and filled the freezer with frozen veg.

As for where to buy it, I go to Minimal on the day after they get a delivery or to the local organic shop which has a cold room for fresh stuff. Our local Globus has a cold room too.

I have to agree about the quality of veg. However, if you can find a market or a green grocer the quality there is usually much better than the supermarkets - unfortunately they are usually more expensive. You really have to learn how to hunt for the fresh stuff in supermarkets. Lidl sometimes has good quality stuff but you do have to be careful and avoid/lookout for the baby flies hovering around the mushy paprikas and onions. (I always wonder how they can get away with having stuff on shelves in such a condition. It is the same ocassionally with their juice section - one juice container splits the flies move in) Yuk...

I think the quality of the fruit and veg is much better here as the German supermarkets seem to be more aware of selling produce in season. I find the produce tastier than at home, where supermarkets provide everything at all times of the year regardless of season, from tasteless strawberries and stringy asparagus in December to squashy sprouts in July.

My tip for fresh fruit & veg is to shop often (at markets or greengrocers if you can), buy stuff in season and invest in a nice, big, cold fridge

Aldi have a pretty good selection if you go on the day of delivery but they don't have as much choice as the bigger supermarkets. What I hate are those soft soggy lettuces, that the Germans seem to love, and they are always full of slugs or worms. Give me GM pesticide sprayed stuff any day!!!

JOhn, whatever you give your wife to eat it will be a lot better than what she's had in hospital but if she's breastfeeding be careful about strawberries as these can upset the baby's digestion.

Me again !
AS you will be feeding fruit and veg to the baby too in a few months it's really worth finding a local organic suplier who has fresh stuff. If the baby is going to be veggie too you may get a shocked reaction from the Kinderartz.

I wonder if GM pesticided stuff will be better for a breast feeding woman than sloogy lettuce

Please don't think I'm being rude but this is typical of the sort of reply I get here. I refer you to the research on pesticide and human health by the famous danish chappy whose mame I forget because I have lent my copy to a friend. (Okay I can see my case is getting weaker by the second). It turns out that for example the quantity of caffeic acid normal lettuce contains is thousands of times more carcinogenic than the amount of pesticide it contains.. No natural isn't always better.
Pesticides in the amount we eat them are not a significant danger to health. Flying once in a plane, drinking coffee or eating basil are far more dangerous.
I will send the numbers if anyone is interested.
I will send a friendlier message if we win tonight.
Even more I will promise to eat an Aldi Pineapple.
Courageous huh?

It's not so much the pesticides I worry about as the naturally occuring toxins in rotting fruit and veg. I have read, please correct me if you know more about this, that even if you cut the rotten bit out the toxins have already penetrated the rest of the fruit.
I lived here for nealy seven years before I found a local organic shop and I only wish I had known about it before because the produce is so much better and they even have parsnips in the winter.

Rebecca

You shouldn't eat citrus fruit if it has a spot of bad in it, as this will infect the whole fruit. But non-citrus fruits, e.g. apples, are ok, just cut out the bad bit.

I agree with John over the quality of fruit and veg here - its just awful. The only good stuff I get is from my neighbour, who is a distributor, so the produce is really fresh.

The stuff in supermarkets is rotten before I even get home.

One tip: queen pineapples are usually good quality, for some reason (unlike the large pineapples).

hth

Definitely second the organic shopping idea - that's been my saviour especially as much of the produce on my local market is rotten before they sell it you and you are not allowed to pick the stuff yourself. Another thing I've noticed is that because of higher turnover the stuff does tend to be a bit fresher in large supermarkets than the small ones. Interestingly as well I've found fruit and veg to be much better in the south of Germany than further north. NRW seems particularly bad.