AIBU to think people are being childish and foolish to think smelling produce is gross?

[UrslaB]

Okay, this has really caught me off guard. In another thread the act of sniffing produce (tomatoes) to check for freshness and quality was mentioned, and some people then responded that this was in some way weird. Puking emojis and hysterical exclamations that people should keep their noses away from food in the supermarket and that this is why they buy pre-packed produce soon followed.

Are people sniffing/smelling in some strange manner that makes it weird that I am unfamiliar with? A good sniff isn't sneezing on it and you should be washing your fruit and veg when you get it home anyway considering it is naive to think someone sniffing it (or squeezing it) is the worst thing to happen to the produce before you get it home. (Pickers/suppliers/packers, shop staff and a half dozen other hands handling it before you potentially, less than spotless machinery harvesting or transporting, being dropped, potential pests in Distribution and storage centers, pesticides, fertilizers, etc etc.)

To me this seems like hyperbolic hysteria. How else do you discover if fruit is good quality if you don't examine it visually, handle it and with some things like tomatoes and melons, give it a good sniff! Otherwise, you could be buying subpar food.

Always sniff tomatoes, peaches, pineapples, melons etc by the stem looking for a sweetish scent to know it is going to taste good. No scent, no taste. Also, giving veg and bread a squeeze, and meat a poke I thought was standard procedure. At least that is what I was taught growing up.

Is it a lost skill? Snobbery? What is causing such a reaction to something I consider good practice?

AIBU to think it is childish and foolish to react so negatively to the idea of someone sniffing their produce?

@Papirus Me too in France. However having worked in a Greengrocer's, many years ago, sniffing is fine but squeezing is not good, especially with peaches, avocados etc. because the next person who buys that fruit has bruised fruit.

If you think of it like food poisoning bacteria multiplies like 2, 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024, 4096.. you get the drift. One day, even one hour is not much time for it to multiply to unsafe levels that'll make you sick. The main issue with out of date meat is the toxins, which like I said, aren't killed off during the cooking process.

Yuck.

Problem is that (while the sniff test does work and I use it at home), shortly after you breathe in, you breathe out. Puffing your bacteria close all over food that someone else might have to eat. Very rude.

When you’ve paid for it, then you can breathe on it. Until then keep your sniffles away from other people’s food.

Amazing to still find this kind of behaviour when we’ve been in a pandemic for years.

i always smell tomatoes, only way to know if they will taste of anything - same with apples - i waft it near my nose i don't make contact

I also wash fruit and veg before i eat it. from what I'm told, a lot worse has happened to it than being gingerly sniffed before it lands on the shelf. it needs a good rinse anyway

People have become so sanitised and so far removed from food growing and the natural world. Food is something that comes sanitised and prepacked for many people. No connections with soil and animals and the land that it is grown on. Do people realise animal shit is added to fields? It's not a sanitised process.

It's no wonder today's supermarket vegetables are bland and tasteless compared to a veg Market in Europe, or even America.
You need to sniff for taste, it's not breathing out germs, you breathe in to smell! Feeling both meat and produce tells you about freshness and ripeness. Squeezing bread will tell you if it's stale, the gentlest of squeezes, you don't need to squash or damage it.

I'm aghast that people don't know these things. I was brought up in a farming family and it's second nature. This is actually quite a depressing thread.

Apples and tomatoes will be effected by spoilage bacteria, which on the whole isn't nice but won't make you sick like food poisoning bacteria. The butcher will have dates they are allowed to sell that particular meat by, even it's not displayeddirectlyon the counter, and rely on stock rotation.

I sniff melons, I test pineapple by pulling a leaf (bit of a sniff too). Most tomatoes don’t taste of much anymore so I skip those

I eill just recap the smelling manual from first page.

You put fruit close to your nose, breathe in, rrmove fruit from the close proximity to your face, resume normal breathing.

Good God, I would hate to see some of Mumsnet in a French supermarket or market then! It's literally a passed time sniffing fruit. I mean seriously doesn't everyone sniff a melon before buying it?!

I didn't know sniffing fruit was even a thing until I read this thread! Never seen anyone IRL sniff produce in a supermarket.

If you squeeze fruit, then it bruises it, so who wants to buy that? I have seen signs in market stalls with "Do t squeeze me until.Im yours"

Everyone who thinks sniffing produce is going to introduce germs does realise that the produce has been handled by dozens of people before you get it right?

It will have been through a variety of machines to pick, pack and move it, shoved in lorries, handled between lorries and storage, then moved out onto the shop floor where customers and staff will have touched it to either pick the stuff they want to buy or redistribute it in the box.

And that's assuming the very best and trying to ignore the likelihood that it won't also have had flies land on it, mice/rats checking it out and spiders living in the box.

I never buy strawberries without checking that they smell strongly like strawberries, especially if they're out of season. Tomatoes are the same, they can look lovely but smell and taste of nothing.

Then I rinse them before eating.

yes it's culturally acceptable there but it isn't here, which is why you don't ever see it happen. Hth

yes it's culturally acceptable there but it isn't here, which is why you don't ever see it happen

It's absolutely culturally acceptable here and I see it happen all the time?

I pity people who are so disconnected from their food they don't care what their tomatoes smell like.

100 times this.

Culturally acceptable? When talking about tomatoes? Really? I've heard it all now.

Why on earth would you sniff a tomato? You'd go by the feel/texture of that so that's weird.

because it can look ripe and juicy and feel ripe and juicy but if it doesn't smell of tomato it only tastes of water.

It's batshittery, OP, ignore and carry on.

As long as you don’t then breathe out all over the produce and then put it back.

As long as you don’t then breathe out all over the produce and then put it back.
Even if you breath out all over it, so what. Wash your fruit and veg, Steve or Mary doing their weekly shop and breathing all over the veg is one of the least gross things in the food chain.

I couldn't give a fig if people don't like me smelling the fruit. It will not taste of the fruit if it doesn't smell like it, especially soft fruits.
Wash your fruit and veg like normal people.
I am inhaling, my nose is not touching the packing/fruit.
Do you object when visually impaired people have to hold things very close to their face to see? Or the amount of people who lift it and put it back?
I've always done it, I refuse to buy crap produce, I'm not loaded.

You're not a gourmet chef love, you're doing a weekly shop in Tesco.

ah so i can't do it (not a chef) but my DH can (he's a "gourmet" chef). Good to know.

FWIW: shopping in UK supermarkets i have rarely seen unpackaged fruit veg, so i buy from the market. Where they encourage touching and sniffing and will often give you a slice of apple, peach, whatever so you know what they taste like.

Also how hard are people squeezing fruit to leave bruises? a quick slight press at the top of an avocado, side of a mango or peach will tell you all you need to know about how hard it is without leaving a bruise.

The only time I've really noticed this was during one of the Covid Lockdowns, and was removing their mask to do so. It may be irrational, but seeing them do that to several punnets of strawberries was very off putting and I didn't buy any.

@ByTheGrace @pastabest again, do you not realise how many people don't come from 'farming families' where everyone gathers around to connect to their food, and instead grew up in single-parent inner city high rises, eating tinned food cooked in a microwave? Your privilege is showing, some nice posters on here have managed to give explanations of how it works without being so patronising to people who might not have had the opportunity to learn these things.

You're not a gourmet chef love, you're doing a weekly shop in Tesco

I'm not a gourmet chef but I care that my food tastes good.

Which is why I don't buy much of my fruit and veg or meat from supermarket.

Fruit and veg from the market near where I work on a Wednesday, meat from the butchers on a Friday.

I've noticed in recent years the queues at the veg market have tripled in size, people are finally cottoning on to the rip off prices and poor quality in supermarkets.

You would be weird if you DIDN'T smell your tomatoes in the veg queue.

You do not have to come from farming family to know how to spot good fruit and veg.
Do you like think that everyone outside of UK lives on farms or something?

Why do Brits always have to have special Buts for everything. It's really really annoying

I'm actually half spanish and noone on that side of the family would sniff veg either.

I was actually responding to specific poster's inability to see that not everyone lives in their exact situation.

She could be a gourmet chef, do you know what her food tastes like?

sniff away op! People have been doing it to check quality on produce for centuries