Missouri Fresh Produce Market- How To Purchase The Best Yield

By William Baker


For the freshest produce, try to find locally grown, in-season fruits and vegetables. The closer you are to where the produce is grown, the less time it sits in a truck and warehouse. If you're shopping for harvest at a farmer's market, shop early in the day. Scan the farmer's entire produce offering to get a general idea of the quality before you purchase. Choosing the best Missouri Fresh Produce Market and crop means knowing what to look for and what to avoid when buying fruits and vegetables.

The problem with an all-year round menu of unlimited potential is that your offering will be mediocre, homogenized, and bland. To say nothing of not being as healthy as it could be. With produce more than anything, you can taste a very pronounced difference between an item fresh off the tree and something that's been frozen and stored in a bin for six months. True, you can't tell the difference at a steam table restaurant in the middle of the desert - but you aren't that kind of restaurant, are you?

The harvest is at its utmost nutritional value when fully ripe. But vegetables and fruits that will be packaged for transit to the market over long distances are not picked in their ripe form, but instead before ripping. Once harvested, the vegetable is as nutritious and fresh as it is going to get. Furthermore, the nutritional value decreases every day past the point of harvest.

For large commercial vegetable farmers, nutritional value isn't even at the top of the agenda. In the long-gone days when all produce was local, horticulturists who were developing new strains of fruits and vegetables only had to consider taste and nutritional value.

With much of the growing and harvesting today handled by machines and with produce being shipped around the world, several other criteria take priority with taste and nutrition taking a back seat. The focus is instead on how sturdy it is, how easily it can be shipped, and the eye-appeal. When today's farmer may never even actually touch the crop, things that make it easy for machine handling like the uniformity of size even come into play.

While all of these new criteria are significant to the farmer's profits, they add nothing to the health of the consumer. If anything, they may detract from it. Sturdy product that stands up to lengthy shipping will be shipped over long distances, taking many days on its journey to your kitchen, and losing nutritional value and flavor with every day that passes between harvest and serving.

Bananas can be greener and less ripe than you like them because they ripen fairly quickly. You can extend the life of your bananas by refrigerating them when they reach the perfect ripeness stage. The peel will darken, but the flesh will be unaffected, and their freshness will be extended. Tomatoes should be bright red, firm and free of bruises.

Whatever fresh yield you are buying, the golden rule is - look, smell feel, and when in doubt, don't buy it. If you have to ask yourself 'Is it good?' Then probably it isn't. Trust your instincts.




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