Unusual Fruits and Vegetables Hitting UK Shelves - Diet Blog

Unusual Fruits and Vegetables Hitting UK Shelves


Are you used to your carrots being orange and your potatoes yellowish?

You could be in for a surprise if you go shopping at Marks and Spencers food stores, a UK high-end retailer. Boffins have been creating some new varieties of familiar fruits and vegetables.

We're all used to the idea of purple broccoli, but now you might also find these gracing the shelves:

* Black Velvet Apricots, which look rather like plums
* Crème de Lite carrots, they are pale cream coloured
* Mayan Twilight potatoes, with purple stripes
* Flower Sprout, a cross between curly kale and Brussels sprouts
* Baby Lemons, much dinkier than the usual variety
* Tiny Tangerines, again, small versions of a familiar food

There's no GM or lab-grown food here. The new products are produced in the traditional way of carefully crossing different plants on farms--selective breeding.

Although this might sound as weird as green ketchup, fruits and vegetables have always been bred to produce new, innovative, types. Food technologist Hugh Mowatt explained that our familiar orange carrots would once have been white, cream or purple:

Quite often people don't realise that things they think of as "natural" have been bred that way. There was no such thing as an orange carrot until 400 years ago when the Dutch wanted a vegetable in their national colour, and bred the one we now recognise as our favourite.

Have you tried any unusual varieties of familiar fruits and veggies? Would a bit of variety make you and your family more likely to eat your vegetables, or would it put you off?