Buying Tap Water at Vegetable Price

It seems that most grocery customers got convinced that the veggie spaying practice is a good think and in some respect, I believe it is, but for the grocery stores, not the customers.

I have heard and read that spraying water on veggies is keeping them fresh, as if one can freeze time, shower after shower, at the pace of twice a minute and every minutes of the store opening. In reality, vegetables (and fruits as well) are loosing their nutrients from the moment they are harvested and loose even more when washed.

OK, spraying is not washing, although, the quantity of water used in the frenzy process to keep them assumably fresh is certainly equal to a few thorough washings during the few days or weeks they are displayed with this watery sparkling outlook. A little spray every 30 seconds would equate to 1,440 times every day of a 12 hours “water boarding” exposure, or 2,880 times for a 24 hour schedule, equating to 10,080 times per week for 12 hours and 20,160 times for an around the clock opening. A veggie would rot on its roots if exposed to such torture while growing.

I had purchased organic lettuces from a local store, to find out that the pile of this produce was barely going down from one week to another. Three weeks later, the same pile, although smaller, was still for sale, forcefully sprayed with a storm sound warning and enough water to positively wet my sleeves while searching for the best available head, meaning the one that had the least spoiled leaves, which in any case, I intended to tear the bad ones off before shaking the lettuce to remove some of the accumulated water from the past… too many days of a forceful drowning process.

One day, I decided to weigh the plastic bag still containing some of the water I had used to wrap my wet piece of veggie. It weighed one tenth of an ounce and the removed lettuce was still very wet, even if I had frantically shaken the leafs at the store, creating a dangerous “slippery when wet” area around me. If one would take a lettuce from the top of the pile, bag it and collect most of the water in the plastic bag, I would not be surprised that it would weigh about a quarter of an ounce. At $2.45 a pound, the collected sprayed tap water would represent a value of 3.82 cents. At this cost, as water weighs 8.34 lbs per gallon, a regular small water bottle of 16.9 fl. oz would weighs 1.1 lb and would cost $1.35. Not bad for the business; not so good for the consumers.

A few years ago, I worked and lived in Great Britain. Each Saturday late afternoon, the grocery stores were putting their produces, in fact fruits and meat as well, on sales prices. The leftover end of the week had to go, to clean up the shelves and provide space for fresh veggies to start the new week. The shelves were on wheels and carried to a colder storage area during the night. No spray system was to be seen, although the produces were looking attractive enough. One could assume that they were sprayed once, early morning, before pushing the shelves back in place. No humongous stacks of veggies and fruits, although enough to satisfy customers. One could see employees busy re-stocking a few times a day. A good system for the customers and a definite positive concern from the businesses.

Still like sprayed veggies?