Good Looks Don’t Always Mean Good Taste – How to Look Past Appearances to Find “Good Food”

How Do You Tell Good Produce from Bad?

Is it simply about tidy shapes and pretty appearances? But out in the fields you find all sorts of misshapen, “ugly” fruit and vegetables – so why do they vanish the moment they hit the shelves? The genes haven’t mutated; it’s the market that has done the filtering. If consumers judge food purely by looks, there will be endless “technological tricks and extreme shortcuts” to cater to that demand.

Or is it the labels on the packaging? Terms like “Green”, “organic” and “highland vegetables” keep popping up on supermarket shelves, yet many smallholders who truly grow quality produce are left out.

For this episode, we travelled to Pingren Farm in Changping, Beijing, to explore what people envision when they think of “good food”. Listen to the views of Zhou Chen, a doctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam who studies food; Zhao Fei, a dad who makes his living growing vegetables; and Auntie Li, a wonderful home cook who loves nothing more than making meals. Beginning from their own knowledge and experience, our guests help us discover that starting with the land, learning more about how food is produced, and engaging all our senses to assess it are the ways to come closer to truly “good food”.

Like people, food has its own unique diversity. All those vegetables with imperfect shapes each tell a different story of where and how they grew. Just as none of us wants to be a mere cog in the workplace, forever performing to a perfect template, the world on our plates needs a little more tolerance from consumers.

At the end of the programme, our guests shared some simple, delicious recipes, including roasted pumpkin, blue cheese, cherry tomato and sprout salad, stir-fried soft egg with peanuts and spinach, and four-colour sweet potato. Tune in to this episode of Food Talk, explore the stories behind our food, and become a more discerning eater.

This Episode’s Guests

Zhou Chen

A doctoral researcher focused on rural life and ecological food. Food is a channel for the imagination, carrying me down into the soil to encounter ground hamsters, and into the body, to imagine how every vegetable, every morsel and the tiniest microorganisms become part of a shared “self”.

Zhao Fei

Organic Cultivation Technician, Pingren Farm, Beijing

Auntie Li

A food enthusiast who has been cooking and eating at home for years

This Episode’s Host

Xiaojing

A podcast producer who loves popping down to the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market for a cup of soy milk, a savoury crepe and some gloriously odd-shaped vegetables.

Timeline

00:43 What makes food good? Taste? Health? A fair price? What do our guests think?

07:56 There is a film called “Taste of Cherry” in which the protagonist longs to end his own life, only to be held back by the sweet taste of a single cherry. Can food really be that shockingly delicious?

09:58 You see neat rows of tidy produce in the supermarket, but at the farm what you find sometimes truly deserves the name “ugly” fruit and veg – yet none of it is “born flawed”.

11:11 Who is chasing perfectly shaped vegetables? If all we ask of a cucumber is that it be “straight” or “still has its flower on top”, the market will find a myriad of “technological tricks and extreme shortcuts” to meet that demand.

16:18 Tasty tomatoes have thin skins that split easily – can you live with that? If we were a little more forgiving about how food looks and learned more about its other qualities, we might get closer to truly “good” fruit and vegetables.

28:58 What exactly do the “Green”, “organic” and “highland vegetable” labels in the supermarket really mean? Why do products from ecological smallholders not carry them?

29:57 Beyond a glance and a taste, what else can your five senses reveal about food? Your eyes, nose and hands are all tools for getting to know it.

30:35 Voting with your wallet: how do the choices we make at the checkout express our support for a better, more sustainable world?

33:54 Where do differences in the taste of food come from? Why eat fresh, why eat in season? The head of production at an organic farm tells you from personal experience.

40:11 A worker’s food reflections: in the fast-paced, high-pressure rhythm of a big city, is taking the time to “truly savour good food” a luxury? “Eating well” is its own quiet, everyday act of resistance.

46:55 Better ingredients, the simplest cooking – a recipe extravaganza! Roasted pumpkin, blue cheese, cherry tomato and sprout salad, stir-fried soft egg with peanuts and spinach, and four-colour sweet potato – which dish would you reach for first?