Now, freshness is in. (At least where foods are concerned; mercifully, freshness in humans is still not admired, though practiced almost constantly.) Today, food must be fresh— fresher—the freshest. Remember how, not so very long ago, we palpitated, in succession, over salt, sugar, chicken over beef, special diets, amounts of water one must drink daily, and so on and so forth? Where are those concerns now? They are under wraps, and we have substituted for them the cry for freshness. The gurus of the food industry—the writers, the dieticians, the “foodies”—proclaim that only with the freshest ingredients can we produce dishes that will taste good and keep us healthy. They have a point; but they forget that it is impossible to get true freshness in the supermarkets, where almost all Americans shop.
Let us take produce and fruit first, since it is concerning these comestibles that the cry for freshness is loudest right now. Unless you have your own garden, or you can shop early in one of the greenmarkets to which the farmers bring their own produce (and are really sure that the farmer picked the stuff that very morning), or you live in the country near a good farmstand, the daily produce you consume is not, and cannot be, fresh. (I used to buy produce, for the buying co-op in our building, at New York’s wholesale Hunts Point Market, and I know that the greens and fruits look wonderful, often with the help of water—but looks aren’t everything.)
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