Is small beautiful?

During our supermarket trip this morning - it was Woolworths today - I noticed two new products in their fruit section. Both of them small, so here I am thinking about why we seem to be trending to small in a number of ways these days. Plus a bit about these two new fruits.

So first of all the fruits and the first one - kiwiberries. Yes they are a variety of kiwi fruit, but much smaller and with no fuzz on the skin, so I think you eat the skin as well. Which is sort of why they are called berries I suppose. You're supposed to be able to eat them in one mouthful - well two I think when I look at them. No more though. And they look like kiwifruit inside.

I'm sure that producers have been creating new varieties, but it isn't a completely contrived thing. It does grow wild and they seem to think that it originated in China. Suffice to say that these days it is New Zealand who seems to be the main producer and the company Seeka whose name you see on the container there seems to have cornered the market in New Zealand. They are grown around the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand's far north.

Seeka has undergone several name changes but started out as a sort of co-operative of kiwi fruit farmers. One part produced the fruit, the other part operated cool stores and logistics. The two combined of course, and after a few more name changes, mergers and takeovers became Seeka Ltd. They now export around the world and have a listing on the NZ stock exchange, and they grow other things too now. Kiwiberries are produced elsewhere though - the USA, Chile, here ... They seem to have been grown commercially for about five years now. You seem to be able to get quite a lot of berries from the vine but it's a rather short season - from the end of February to the beginning of April.

And there are two varieties - red ones which come first and then the green ones. I forgot to check how much they were selling for, and strangely they are not listed on Woolworths website. I'm willing to bet they were not cheap though.

Right next door to the kiwiberries were some more small fruits - sugar plums. No not the sugar plums associated with the Sugar Plum Fairy - those are a confection - sugar coated plums I think, and probably worth another post. These sugar plums are small plums, but not as small as my wild garden plums. This is the packet shown on the Woolworths website but I think the ones they had in store had a different label and maybe came from a different source. And they are not cheap - $5.50 for 500g - so $11.00 a kilo. Comparable with various berries though I guess.

So what are they? Are they anything more than plums that didn't grow very large - which is, I'm sure, what would happen if I attempted to grow plums. I mean the peaches on my peach tree are pretty small peaches, however nice they may be. In fact they are a particular type of plum sometimes called an Italian prune plum - quetsche in French. And yes they grow them to make prunes. Which was a bit of a surprise to me as I thought that prunes were just dried 'ordinary' plums. (Prunes - another topic for a future post.). I did find one American lady who was not impressed by sugar plums:

"Unfortunately, though they were called French Sugar Plums, they weren’t very sweet, and the lack of juiciness was unexpectedly disappointing. They tasted so nondescript that I didn’t know how to respond – they weren’t bad, but that’s because they weren’t anything. They didn’t even really taste like plums, just like they were some generically labelled Fruit." - What is that and how do I eat it?

Which is a bit damning is it not? On the plus side she did find that when she cooked them - particularly in a cake then they were delicious, but then why would you buy these plums for that purpose when 'real' plums would be better and cheaper anyway?

Which brings me to the small is beautiful thing. Have you noticed the trend to small? We now have Qukes (small cucumbers), baby carrots, cherry tomatoes of every size, shape and colour, lots of very small apples, baby lettuce, mini peppers (not chilliest but genuinely small green, yellow and red peppers) ... I'm sure you can think of more.

My theory is lunch boxes. Lunch boxes these days are big business. Lunch boxes are complicated things, with lots of little compartments and insulation. The small is beautiful extends to all those snack things like muesli bars and yoghurts that you suck, mini dips, mini cheese sticks ... On and on the list goes. And overall I think this is wonderful, particularly when it comes to the small sized fruit and veg. It's not just a question of having little things because children have small appetites although that is part of it of course. No it's because small is cute and therefore more appealing. And if you can entice children eat fruit because it's cute then, yes, small is beautiful.

Small doesn't necessarily mean tastier though. Well I guess I might have thought so - somehow small fruit and vegetables generally seem to have more intensity of taste - until I read that comment about the sugar plums. I do see the point of small plums in a lunch box though.

So yes small is beautiful - and therefore expensive - so once again not for the poor who really need it. It's particularly beautiful if you put it in your child's lunchbox - and they eat it. Because, of course, putting it in the lunchbox doesn't necessarily mean it will get eaten. But if making it small and cute helps with that then I'm all for it.