Since when are strawberries an ‘everyday essential’ in the depths of winter?

Aveline

M&S had white strawberries when I was in yesterday. They looked perfect yet a ghastly pearly white. Didn't fancy them at all.

I ‘taste-tested’ those in America last year. Their selling point was that they tasted like pineapple. I can assure you, they didn’t, and anyway, if I wanted to taste pineapple I’d eat….guess what!…a pineapple. 🍍

If the only way your child will eat fruit in winter is strawberries then maybe you would buy but not essential.

Perhaps one would ask why a child has reached a stage where strawberries are the only fruit they will eat.

WWM2 Much of the winter salad veg are grown in the UK in Kent and Sussex. Avocadoes,no and I am not sure about peppers.

Gin

They do not even have any taste and are very white in the middle but my OH insists on buying them with raspberries to have on his cereal. However we need our vitamins and I am just as bad as I have pineapple but what British fruit is there other than pears and apples?

Dh often has a satsuma or clementine on his cereal. Citrus fruits are at least in season in the UK, winter, and not on the other side of the world.

He also likes stewed apple with his cereal, when I’ve bothered to make any.

Germanshepherdsmum

I have never had success with freezing strawberries. When thawed they have always been mushy.

I pick, wash, slice, sugar and freeze quickly. Delicious.

Use in children's drinks, on breakfast pancakes, in baked bread pudding, in syrup, and I make summer pudding all year as we love it.

Bananas aren't grown here nor are oranges or pineapples, I still buy a plethora of fruit year round. Frozen in-season fruit is a good substitute.

M0nica

^If the only way your child will eat fruit in winter is strawberries then maybe you would buy but not essential.^

Perhaps one would ask why a child has reached a stage where strawberries are the only fruit they will eat.

WWM2 Much of the winter salad veg are grown in the UK in Kent and Sussex. Avocadoes,no and I am not sure about peppers.

Many children go through a picky stage when they will prefer to eat certain things over others, and autistic children, for instance, often have very specific foods they will only eat. My grandson used to eat almost every fruit you could think of - then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he went right off eating bananas.

I don't eat fruit in winter hardly at all. Am I alone in this? I eat plenty of vegetables

aonk

Strawberries may not be an essential to many people but fruit is an essential for a healthy diet. It really doesn’t matter which fruit you eat or where it comes from. I’m puzzled by the somewhat sanctimonious attitude of some to strawberries when they may well eat bananas. These travel a long way all year round. Why pick on any particular fruit?

At least bananas last a long time if they’re kept cool. I recently kept some outside - they were left over after a visit from the Gdcs, who get through so many.

Still fine after a week. We’re not all that partial but I made some bananas flambés, which are delish.

Strawberries OTOH go past their best very quickly, even if kept in the fridge - at least that’s my experience.

I have strawberries with other berries every morning for breakfast

I’m puzzled by the somewhat sanctimonious attitude of some to strawberries when they may well eat bananas.

aonk Sanctimonious? Holier-than-thou? Smug? Priggish? That'll be me.

No need to be puzzled. I try to eat seasonally and buy locally when I can. Sometimes that means we do without things for a few months, not really a huge sacrifice. I haven't suggested others should live as I do, we all make our own choices.

And I haven't eaten bananas for quite a few years.

aonk

Strawberries may not be an essential to many people but fruit is an essential for a healthy diet. It really doesn’t matter which fruit you eat or where it comes from. I’m puzzled by the somewhat sanctimonious attitude of some to strawberries when they may well eat bananas. These travel a long way all year round. Why pick on any particular fruit?

Is it really essential for health? We never had much fruit as children - because of cost it was pretty much rationed, we couldn’t just help ourselves. Anything like tangerines or grapes were an occasional treat, ditto strawberries even when in season.

OTOH fresh vegetables were on the menu daily, even if only carrots, cabbage and (in the early days) tinned peas.

All 3 siblings and I grew up perfectly healthy.

I ate lots of fruit as a kid, even more than I do now. Yes I eat strawberries all year round they're essential to me on my breakfast granola with Greek yoghurt. They're not tasteless either or white they vary in flavour and are red throughout.

Witzend

aonk

Strawberries may not be an essential to many people but fruit is an essential for a healthy diet. It really doesn’t matter which fruit you eat or where it comes from. I’m puzzled by the somewhat sanctimonious attitude of some to strawberries when they may well eat bananas. These travel a long way all year round. Why pick on any particular fruit?

Is it really essential for health? We never had much fruit as children - because of cost it was pretty much rationed, we couldn’t just help ourselves. Anything like tangerines or grapes were an occasional treat, ditto strawberries even when in season.

OTOH fresh vegetables were on the menu daily, even if only carrots, cabbage and (in the early days) tinned peas.

All 3 siblings and I grew up perfectly healthy.

there was a radio 4 programme recently with Dr Mosely and a professor who is studying longevity and she had found that one of the important factors was a Mediterranean diet with added berries, nuts and seeds.. berries not normally part of MDiet and thus significant

JaneJudge

I don't eat fruit in winter hardly at all. Am I alone in this? I eat plenty of vegetables

I don't eat much fruit at all, an occasional apple. I do eat a great deal of veg, cooked and raw.

The difference in taste of hothouse strawberries and seasonal outdoor strawberries is incredible.
We should start growing seasonal only fruit and vegetables.

JaneJudge

I don't eat fruit in winter hardly at all. Am I alone in this? I eat plenty of vegetables

You're not alone JaneJudge.
I don't eat fruit in the winter months except for a banana now and again.
I could eat seasonal summer fruit until they come out of my ears though.

An article in the New Scientist this week, while broadly supporting the mediterranean diet does suggest that it is more munaced then we are all led to believe.

A recent 5 year project in Itay with 20,000 participants found that the benefits of he Mediterranean diet only benefitted the well off and well-educated. The same benefits were not seen in low income families.

This suggests that it is not eating fruit and vegetables alone that counts, their health value may depend on what kind of fruit/veg they are and how they were grown.

It has also been suggested that the lifestyles of the people involved in the original research, played into the benefits of the mediterranean diet. They were rural people, who lived an active life as farmers and prepared their own food, often eaten in larger social groups.

So if you are well educated, with a good income, doing lots of walking and socialising a lto, the mediterranean diet will no doubt assist your long life and good health.

But if you fall into the lower social groups and are inactive and do not mix much, then it will do you less good.

But this research suggests that those with a simpler, more active lifestyle plus a Mediterranean diet enjoy better health than those who follow a more Western diet. An interesting piece of research shows that Japanese people have the greatest longevity of all when living in Japan- when Japanese people living in the USA were studied, they had the same health outcomes as other Americans ( i.e. more heart disease, obesity, cancers etc) suggesting that lifestyle and diet affects health more b than genetics factors. Anyway, this is off topic, I enjoy fruit all the year round.

I try to have fruit everyday. Does marmalade count? 😂

Grammaretto

I try to have fruit everyday. Does marmalade count? 😂

I suspect not, but if it does, then I’m claiming raspberry jam as one of my 5-a-day. 🤣

Well, they do have roughage!! 😁

Monica, re ‘rich vs poor Mediterranean diets’ you’ve reminded me of the early 70s, when civil engineer dh was first working on a bachelor basis, in a newly ‘opened up’ so to speak Oman. Facilities were extremely basic - his first car was reg. 603, i.e. the 603rd in the whole country.

The co. he worked for was from a Mediterranean country, ditto most of the workforce, and dh said that if e.g. a mason or carpenter wasn’t very good at his job, they’d put him in the bachelor mess (nearly all the men were on a bachelor basis at the time) and get him to cook!

So virtually all their meals consisted of ‘beans and oil’ with bread, which was apparently considered much like (albeit basic) home cooking and so acceptable to most. Fresh fruit and veg were then scarce and hard to come by.

Needless to say, dh and the odd fellow Brit weren’t too happy with this, I often think this is at least one reason why he proposed on a subsequent trip home - on a married basis he’d be given a (prefab) house and I’d be doing the cooking!*

(We had to be married, or I’d never have been given the ‘no objection’ certificate for my passport.)

*before anyone asks why he wouldn’t do it, he was working 12 hour days, 6 days a week - everything was wanted by the new Sultan ‘yesterday’.

if that is the fruit you like then why can't they be everyday fruit, strawberries are no longer seasonal as they are grown all round the world and you can now get them anytime.

I eat blueberries and raspberries on a daily basis throughout the winter but only eat strawberries when the British ones hit the shops in the summer, the mass produced winter ones generally taste awful

I buy frozen berries in the winter. I just have to remember to decant some into a bowl so they defrost ready to have with yoghurt and a sprinkling of granola. Delicious!

keepcalmandcavachon

Me too Witzend, I look forward to the year's treasures- strawberries, asparagus and chestnuts etc in season, there's always something special to look forward to but essentials are day to day items.

I agree with you. When we lived in Suffolk I used to drive past a farm shop on my way to work. Nearly every day during the asparagus season I'd buy a bunch for our supper. We binged on asparagus for a few weeks and then no more, until the following year.