Several weeks ago, I was given a bag of Gravenstein apples picked from a backyard tree.
The apples were squat, mottled and occasionally punctured — as if enjoyed first by some birds.
The fruit had little in common with the cosmetically perfect apples found in a supermarket, with the oddest of the bunch resembling a giant dappled lima bean.
It was gorgeous.
Most people want their produce to look like supermodels: sleek, unblemished and perfectly proportioned.
Yet the preference for idealized fruits and vegetables might have negative consequences for taste buds and overall health.
David Mas Masumoto — an organic farmer near Fresno, Calif., who grows peaches widely considered among the most delicious in the nation — describes the idea as “produce porn.”
This year, his family published The Perfect Peach: Recipes and Stories From the Masumoto Family Farm.
“Salability defines what is good,” Masumoto said. “And the easiest way to sell product is to make it a commodity defined by the visual. What I am focusing on instead is peaches with special needs. These are peaches that don’t look like the perfect peach but have just as much, if not more, value.”
Beth Mitcham, a post-harvest researcher at the University of California-Davis, said the consumer preference for uniform produce is shaped partly by marketing and partly by government regulations that stipulate that all commercially grown produce be at least 90 percent blemish-free.
She places most of the blame on us, the consumers.
“Research shows that food gets rejected at point of sale if it’s bruised,” she said, “not if it’s unripe or has poor flavor.”
Masumoto, though, hopes to see a growing market for his produce.
He is thrilled, he said, that some food and cooking magazines are using images of produce that isn’t perfect.
John Navazio, a plant breeder in Washington state, also sees a shift in produce selection.
“We still want beautiful food,” he said, “but, as we understand the story behind that food, we begin to look for a different kind of beauty.”
Navazio began his career at a commercial seed company and now works for the Organic Seed Alliance, a nonprofit organization that helps farmers develop seeds for organic farming.
After decades of preferential breeding for yield, transportability and uniformity, he said, our standard produce has lost much of its flavor and, in some cases, some of its nutrients.
Initially, his goal was to improve upon the commercial breeds. But in 2002, when he started working at the seed alliance, he realized that most modern crop varieties are unsuitable for organic farming.
“The available commercial seed stock was developed for a high-input industrial model where the land is flat, irrigated and treated with pesticides and fertilizers,” he said.
“Organic fruits and vegetables need to resist pests naturally by having more genetic diversity within each breed and by having a structure that wards off pests. They also need to be great nutrient scavengers, because their fertility is not handed to them on a platter.”
Navazio realized that he needed to revive characteristics that had been lost with modern breeding.
For example, the Chantenay carrot has a wild, bushy top and a blunt root. Its top fights weeds, and its root is adapted to grab nutrients from soil that is less processed and improved.
What’s more, root vegetables and most other plants synthesize more anti-oxidants and more flavorful sugars and tannins in response to stress, casting even the insect nibbles and sun spots in a better light.
“Just like every face tells a story,” Navazio said, “you can look at every fruit and vegetable, and learn about the life and environment that it came from.”
Daphne Miller, a family physician and an author, most recently wrote Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing.