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?

A relative has an allotment and having tasted allotment grown raspberries and tomatoes I am realising how tasteless many supermarket ones are.

Agree! And strawberries.

with strawberries i use the ‘lightly squeeze box and waft toward nose’ my nose therefore is not close enough to spread any germs

I've also lived in several countries abroad and the idea that all British produce tastes like crap and everything abroad is amazing is a stupid myth. French food doesn't taste any better as a rule and Spanish people aren't all connoisseurs of produce.

Yeah but even people growing up in poor hogh(ish) rise area can know how to buy food. Half my family grew up in poverty and that was actually the important point. You don't want to pay for bad things because you don't have money to waste.

@Thatswhyimacat

My privilege is showing! You're hilarious. I actually spent some of my life homeless and the rest of it on a council estate. Farmers aren't all wealthy, we were tenant farmers on a council owned farm, lost our home because the land was sold underhandedly to developers.
You know nothing about me.

The people on this thread making pathetic claims about germs and implying people are dirty for knowing about produce, aren't doing it because they are poor and living in high rise blocks. People just don't want to know about these things, they think they have moved on and are more clean and modern.

Well you don't know my background but the thread is actually about germaphobes being horrified that other people smell food before buying rather than 'poor people not knowing how to cook anything that didnt come in a tin'.

I find your assertion that this is about wealth pretty offensive actually. There are plenty of single parent families in tower blocks perfectly capable of making decent food from scratch. I do agree that this is possibly a peculiarly British cultural issue though this disconnect from food. I think it crosses all spectrums of income types though!

The whole point is that a nice punnet of decent tomatoes from the market for a fraction of the price of tasteless supermarket ones can make a decent cheap pasta sauce with very little else added. The key is the quality of the ingredients which you determine by feeling and smelling. If generations of people have lost these skills we should be encouraging them to learn them again not telling them it's disgusting.

@pastabest my point was absolutely nothing about wealth and everything about opportunity and not looking down on those who don't know things that you do, or even those who don't find the same things important as you do. I was also clearly not responding to the germaphobe posts but to the posters who are horrified at people who don't know to smell vegetables and implying they are lesser.

This has been a very enlightening set of comments. Thanks to everyone who posted, those who agreed and disagreed. I even learned a few new tricks myself such as a gentle shake to listen for pips rattling being a new means of spotting ripe apples and pulling leaves out of pineapples. I had always just depended on scent and touch but will add these two new tests to my repertoire. My partner gave me a funny look when I said I hadn't known to pull a pineapple leaf to check for ripeness.

I think my shock at the knee jerk horror of people not liking the idea of smelling produce came from how normalized I thought it was. It was a skill taught to me first by my parents, then something discussed in HE (Home economics...food science in some parts of the country now, or life skills class) class as a teenager in secondary school and finally something I have had a few fellow shoppers in markets give me tips on for a variety of produce when we have been stood perusing the offerings together over the years. To hear that so many have not heard of any of the traditional ways and means of selecting good produce is disheartening and perhaps indicates that HE and food education has missed a step in some places. I am a secondary teacher nowadays myself (Not for HE) and know that in the schools I have worked in ingredient selection has been part of the fundamental skills that underlie most cookery practicals. Does anyone know if fruit and vegetable weeks are still done in primary school? I remember being maybe 7 and having a day in school where a variety of fruits and vegetables were brought in for us to try. We learned the countries they came from, were taught some fun facts about them and then got to sample them. Is this not done in primary schools anymore? I grew up in a poor area in an underfunded suburb. I still remember tasting limes, passionfruit, figs, watermelon, coconut, cherries, radishes, and avocado for the first time ever that day with fondness. They were a revelation at that age which my family could never have afforded for us to just try on our limited budget.

The ability to discern good produce in order to hold supermarkets and suppliers to a higher standard is something I think all shoppers should be enabled to do. We all deserve the best bang for our buck and when purchasing produce we should be able to pick the best tasting available. Choice is king afterall.

I have been rather surprised at the strange beliefs expressed about how people smell things. From the idea that your nose makes contact with something to the idea that you breathe on something when smelling it...despite smelling being the act of breathing in. Also, the naive belief that supermarket produce has not already been contaminated from numerous other sources in the supply and distribution chain, and from the hundreds of people breathing in store or children passing by and fumbling things. Getting a fit of the vapors that someone may have failed in the basic act of how to correctly smell something and have breathed on your apples or tomatoes is hysterical and over dramatic. You should always wash your produce when you get it home, because let's be real, no-one knows who has been touching it or what has been crawling over it.

As to those who say you shouldn't squeeze produce...I agree you shouldn't 'squeeze' soft skinned produce but a gentle handling lets you feel for softness indicating if something is past its best, hardness if it is not ready to eat yet, soft spots where it may have been bruised or even where rot and pests may have entered. Knocking a melon, pressing on the crown of an avocado and checking my carrots for floppiness will remain part of my touch tests.

The redundant ideas that we should only smell, or touch produce we intend to buy or even after we buy it makes no sense. If I purchase fruit, then smell it and discover it is scentless and thus tasteless I am out of pocket and stuck with produce of inferior quality. Why would anyone short change themselves?

The idea that smelling or handling produce is not part of UK culture is a ridiculous idea. That is like saying being gullible, undiscerning and tasteless is part of UK culture, as though we as a nation are so uncaring of our food quality and taste that we will accept and pay for any old rubbish that is given to us by a supermarket in a fancy package that tells us it is 'fresh' or the 'highest quality' even when it isn't.

I think a little bit of germ hysteria and maybe some pretentiousness about not needing to check ones produce if bought in fine packaging and from a 'good' store may be at play. Imagine, sniffing your produce like a pleb, well I never?!

Thanks for all your contributions everyone.

me too🤥👃🐽

I love everything about this comment

I didn't know about smelling food either, but I am not offended by the OP. I'm pleased I know now. And would rather find out here where someone might think I'm ignorant but don't know me in real life anyway.
I'm sure OP wouldn't think I'm stupid anyway because I went 'oh that's interesting didn't know that' rather than vom, yuk, boak etc (not saying you did that btw).

It's as though the whole Covid thing never happened.

Keep your bugs to yourself as much as possible please

It's a though the whole thread explaining how smelling things work never happened.

I swear I feel like we should all be getting some taxes, which were spent on general education, back😂

IN, YOU BREATH IN TO SMELL THINGS

Going by all the threads with people thinking wearing a mask below your nose was ok because "you breathe in by your nose and out your mouth don't you" I wouldn't trust many to know how your smell things properly either if they haven't managed to figure out breathing yet.

Again let's minimise the unnecessary spread of germs/covid/monkeypox/etc

People are disconnected from what natural food tastes and smells of nowadays, although most of the time the fruit/veg in supermarket has no discernible scent anyway having been forced to grow under synthetic conditions.
Pop the customers in a market in the south of France in July and they'd understand the point of giving the food a good sniff.

I think it is a capitalist conspiracy to make us think all kinds of natural things are weird/dirty so we buy the plastic-packaged blackberries instead of picking them in the park, pump synthetic smells into our homes instead of opening a window and buy all the anti-bac products instead of just actually cleaning with soap. They tried it with breastfeeding too.

Smell the tomatoes OP! Enjoy it. Life is too short to love it wrapped in plastic.

*live it obvs