A while back I heard a researcher talking on the ABC radio who had found that when fruit is damaged on a tree - say hail damage, some insects, rubbing  etc  - the tree will heal this damage causing a skin blemish but the fruit does not rot  -  We might see this on apricots, peaches, nectarines, apples, pears, nashi, plums. I had a destructive attack by slugs on some apricots just after set but the tree healed the skin damage. Although cosmetically the fruit looked unattractive  it was fine to eat - in fact it tasted delicious, it was full of juice and had great texture. I had some apricots from a supermarket - by comparison they were dry, tasteless, and flowery.

However by contrast  - once the fruit is picked, because the tree cannot produce the antibodies  - when the skin is damaged the fruit begins to rot. 

He discovered that fruit still on the tree with blemishes are very rich in beneficial antibodies - and that over the past 50 or so years due to commercial food production, sorting, storage transportation etc.  we have taken this natural antibiotic completely out of our diet  -

He also found that to gain the most from this natural protection effect the fruit had to be eaten as soon as possible after it was picked.  Ironically, it maybe that the fruit we have been discarding for years is actually the most beneficial.

- so enjoy

Heirloom - An heirloom plant, heirloom variety, or heirloom vegetable is a cultivar that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but which is not used in commercial agriculture. Many heirloom vegetables have kept their traits through open pollination, while fruit varieties such as apples have been propagated over the centuries through grafts and cuttings. The trend of growing heirloom plants in gardens has been a growing world wide trend over the last decade.These are most often treasured for flavour and taste and have recently become sort after by many chefs aware of what they can offer.

Demand and purchase of these varieties encourages a greater genetic diversity within our food source, and adds to our culinary experience. The plants may produce a crop that ripens intermitantly over a long period of time. Because we have not been exposed to these fruits and vegetables they may look a bit "queer" - like red black tomatoes, red carrots etc. But in many cases like red carrots they actually contain a vastly higher source of nutrients and goodness than the commercial varieties we might be familar with.

Genetically Modified - The seed has come from a large corporation where the plants have been modified by the insertion of foreign genetic material for a range of reasons. This might be a toad gene to allow strawberries to ripen in cooler conditions, genes to allow certain herbicides to be applied without killing the plant etc. They are often promoted through the logic that less herbicide like round up is used because the plant can tolerate a heavier dosage and a singlebut more concentrated applicaction is applied.

The full effects of these GM plants are yet to be determined. Pollen can contaminate other"pure" crops many Km away with no responsibility to the GM grower or seed company. Often the seed has a terminator gene added which means the seed is not viable, the grower can not harvest seed for the following year and is locked into purchase from a large multinational food corporation.

Biodynamic - Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms, emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food. The planting, growing and harvesting of these plants has been followed in accordance to cosmic forces like the pull of the moon.

Regarded by some as the first modern ecological farming system[4] and one of the most sustainable, biodynamic farming has much in common with other organic approaches, such as emphasizing the use of manures and composts and excluding of the use of artificial chemicals on soil and plants. Methods unique to the biodynamic approach include the use of fermented herbal and mineral preparations as compost additives and field sprays and the use of an astronomical sowing and planting calendar.Biodynamics originated out of the work of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the spiritual philosophyanthroposophy.

Monocropping - These are single large plantings of a single crop - They might be produced organically or chemically. They are responsible for the reduction of genetic diversity.

Various factors including market forces have conspired, forcing farmers to grow high-performance mono-cultures. Jeremy Rufkin states "The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) reports that of seventy-five kinds of vegetable grown in the United States, 97 percent of all the varieties have become extinct in less than eighty years. According to the RAFI study, of the 7,098 apple varieties grown in the United States between 1804 and 1905, 6,121 or 86.2 percent have since become extinct. Of the 2,683 pear varieties in use in the last century, 2,354 or 87.77 percent are now extinct. The grim statistics are repeated for every food crop". "Garrison Wilkes, professor of botany at the University of Massachusetts, says that the spread of modern agricultural practices is quickly destroying the genetic resources upon which it is built and likens the situation to "taking stones from the foundation to repair the roof". In the present environment, even this technology can not create useful new genes in the laboratory, biotechnological science needs as large a genetic pool as it can find and preserving diversity guarantees a rich resource to draw from.

This relates to the district the food was grown in.

Imported food is most often teated with Mytholbromide gas. Methyl bromide is a known carcinogen which has been banned in the EU. Recent research indicates that it may also cause motor neurone disease. It has been phased out of use in Australia since 2004, but can still be used for fumigation of imported material. It is a colourless and odourless gas. Treatments applied for quarantine purposes are part of managing the risk of introducing exotic pests and diseases. Food irradiation is a food preservation process and a quarantine measure. Food processors use it to destroy bacteria that cause food decomposition and food poisoning. Those bacteria include the parasites, moulds and yeasts that spoil food, and salmonella and campylobacter that cause illness.

Food can only be irradiated if there is no other safe method available.  Any irradiated food must go through a strict safety assessment by Food Standards Australia New Zealand and, if approved, must be labelled as having been treated by radiation.

To date, in Australia and New Zealand, only herbs and spices, herbal teas and some tropical fruits have been approved to be irradiated.

Carbon miles

This records the actual date the item is harvested. Many so called fresh food is actually weeks or even months old and requires energy intensive means to keep it acceptably "fresh". Philosophically some argue the sooner food is eaten the more Parana or life energy it has - the longer the time between harvest and consumption the more this energy diminishes. The longer fruit is left to ripen on he tree the more intense the flavor.

My own experience with fruit shows that the tastiest fruit is actually the very ripe friut that is often attacked by insects - I simply cut that bit off and eat the rest. These are the real taste bombs.

Many so called fresh foods are processed after processing. This might involve sorting and discarding fruit with blemishes, size and colour. The commercial foods industry demands uniformity, nature often produces the opposite. Many fruits are washed to reduce the amount of surface chemicals, and bio-matter both harmful and benificial, however some are not washed at all and retain chemical rseidues.

After harvesting carrots are mainly washed in chlorinated water a synthetic biocide for the decontamination of fresh produce and the carrots can be further subjected to hyperhydration which forces this water into the vegetable at low tempertures and allows longer stroage. Chlorine is routinely used as a sanitizer in wash, spray, and flume waters used in the fresh fruit and vegetable industry. Anti-microbial activity depends on the amount of free available chlorine (as hypochlorous acid) in water that comes in contact with microbial cells. Carrots are also tumbled to remove the skin, this removes many key nutrients, the skin also hold any toxins that plant migh have taken up, so depending on how the carrots are grown, the skin removal might be benificial.

Commercial organic growers use a citrus based non toxic solution called Citrox -

The best carrots come fresh from organic soil - the crunch and taste is quite different.

Some fruits are picked early and stored in chilled and gas filled stores to halt the ripening process. When the produce is required it is gassed with ehtelyne to hasten the ripening process again. Some fruits are stored for many months. Besides the diminishing "life force" there is an increased energy and carbon cost.

Pick an apple off the tree and it’ll last a few weeks before it starts to turn soft and rot. Store an entire harvest under controlled-atmosphere conditions and it’ll last up to 10 months, depending on variety. But the clock starts ticking again once the apples are removed from storage.

To slow the proverbial sands of time, some fruit distributors treat their apple bins with a gaseous compound, 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP). It extends the fruits’ poststorage quality by blocking ethylene, a colorless gas that naturally regulates ripening and aging.

Apples not intended for fresh market are stored at low temperatures, with low levels of oxygen and high levels of carbon dioxide. While this slows the apples’ natural production of ethylene and its effects, fungicides must often be applied to prevent fungal rots from taking hold.