A spiralizer?
We've been Christmas shopping and in the process visited a few kitchen shops. Whilst there I noticed that the gadget of the moment seems to be something called a spiralizer, with one model sponsored by Pete Evans - the paleo diet man (already I'm put off) - being the one that's being plugged everywhere. I could not imagine why anyone would want such a thing and commented as much in one of the shops. I was told by the very charming saleslady that they were extremely popular. So on my return home I looked it up on the net.
Most of the articles I came across were from the UK and it was really quite interesting reading. Apparently it was the gadget to have in 2014 - when most of the models were manual (as below). Shows how far behind Australia is. I think it all began in Japan, then travelled to the US and thence to the UK.
So popular were they that zucchini sales were boosted by around 20% in all the supermarkets. Sweet potato sales were boosted by an even bigger percentage - I think around 50%. And by 2015 you could buy pre-spiralised, pre-packaged vegetables in the leading supermarket chains - no doubt some of them were frozen too. So maybe the wheel has come full circle there and you no longer need to have your own spiralizer.
So there are quite a lot of interesting things going on here. I gather the sales of these machines were boosted by a couple of influential food blogs, one of which (Hemsley and Hemsley) put their name on one model. These food blogs - aimed at the super healthy set, or as the guy in the picture at the top of the page puts it - "low-GI Janes and Joes who shun carbs and reward themselves with apples, like show ponies pulling off a perfect piaffe" - provided recipes and enthused about the health benefits. The main push was to substitute zucchini spirals - or courgetti - as it was dubbed in the UK - for unhealthy pasta. So I guess you have to admit that anything that battles the obesity epidemic should be encouraged. And if the sales of vegetables skyrocketed, then this has to be a good thing. But it is interesting how just one person or a few can change what people buy. For example in England I believe that if Delia mentions a product its sales soar immediately - it's called 'the Delia effect'. Does this happen here I wonder? Does anybody else have the same influence? I know that shows such as MasterChef are heavily sponsored by various companies, but have no idea whether this makes any difference to their sales. The Block renovation show, after all, was heavily sponsored by Masters - and they have gone bust. Maybe Australia works differently - though the Pete Evans name on the spiralizer might indicate differently. And the other interesting thing about this is that the chief influence in the UK was from a blog, not the television.
The other interesting thing is that, although initially manual and therefore cheap - well cheapish - these gadgets, by 2016 had more expensive electric versions - as shown in the picture at the top of the page. That one was featured in a review article by The Guardian's gadget man Rhik Samadder, who made the disparaging remarks about the 'low-GI Janes and Joes'. He confessed to hating spiralizers, because, "the spiralizers I have tried all involved manual labour, so I was able to dismiss them out of hand, literally. Some were lethal hand-cranked guillotines; others were pencil sharpeners for carrots." But he now admits to a grudging admiration for the electric versions which do the job quickly and efficiently. He gave it 4 out of 5.
But - goodness - as he says, it's basically a food-processor with just one function and it no doubt means you have yet more finicky cleaning to do and more bench-top or cupboard space to find. It's not a small item after all.
There are websites dedicated to the spiralizer. Inspiralized is the one dedicated most exclusively to it, but there are others. Which I find amazing. I mean - think of a topic - however, specialised or weird and there is somebody blogging about it out there. And people like me, who are indulging themselves by blogging as well. So I can't talk. Such a strange new world is it not?
And no I won't be buying myself a spiralizer. I like spaghetti. And you can make a sort of zucchini spaghetti - well fettuccine anyway, by peeling at it with a vegetable peeler.
