The Banana
In Great Farmers Market Taste-off, Nourished Kitchen shares the results of a blind taste-test they conducted at their farmer’s market. It’s not surprising to me that shoppers overwhelmingly preferred the locally grown fruits and vegetables, though I think a couple of years ago I would have been more skeptical.
I live in an area known for its high concentration of granola. In a town of about 3,500 people, we have two very busy “health food stores” (aka “hippie markets”). So I’ve consumed organic groceries every so often throughout my adult life without thinking much of it, and not usually on purpose. I met claims that organic fruits and vegetables tasted better with an indifferent shrug; I never really paid attention, and truth be told, I doubted it. Then I tried The Banana.
I am not a big banana fan. They were the snack suggested by Mother all through my childhood, and she has a potassium deficiency so she eats them a lot, but I usually let them go rotten. They tend to be mealy unless they’re underripe and, as I discovered, they have a bitter aftertaste I find somewhat unpleasant.
I don’t know where The Banana came from, but admittedly, it can’t have been locally. There are no banana plantations in chilly Siskiyou County as far as I’m aware. The Banana was not a special variety, and looked exactly like your average grocery-store banana. However, The Banana was organic. I tasted The Banana in a friend’s kitchen, so I wasn’t affected by the fun farmer’s market atmosphere. I just had some of The Banana plopped in front of me on a plate, and was told to taste it. Not really excited about the prospect, I took a bite.
The Banana had a crisp, clean flavor. It was perfectly ripe and the texture was smooth. But the thing that really stood out to me was that something was missing. A flavor was missing. I couldn’t figure it out. I tasted more. And then I realized . . . the bitter aftertaste I had barely noted before, but which now stood out glaringly to me due to its absence, was completely nonexistent in The Banana. It tasted, well . . . nice.
All I can guess is that the bitter flavor of the conventional banana is caused by either pesticides or ripening induced en route. Either way, the flavor was noticeably more pleasant in the absence of that chemical tang, and the odd sensation of liking something more because of an absence than a presence made the experience unforgettable. I still don’t love bananas, but I’ll never doubt that organic produce tastes better again.
Ultimately, however, the difference in flavor is only a perk. The real reason to shop locally, at least to me, is to support and grow the local food infrastructure, so that if that big food pipeline is ever shut off, the people in my community will be independent and able to sustain themselves through winter and beyond.
Grace is an aspiring fantasy writer living imaginatively in Far Northern California.
I agree about The Banana. There is a definite … “sticky” aftertaste that is missing from the organic bananas, a flavor that is definitely not missed!
Yeah, “sticky” is a good word to describe it! There’s definitely something cloying about “conventional” bananas. (We need a term other than “conventional” to describe this type of food—organic is conventional!)
I agree about the “sticky” flavor (I can’t say why “sticky” is the right word, but it definitely is.)
I’m shocked by how much better locally-grown/organic fruits and vegetables taste, compared to the grocery-store varieties. I got so used to the way things taste (especially The Banana) that the organic variety was truly a revelation, when I tried it!