Did the BBC get it wrong?
By muddy_knees
8 comments
I wonder how many of you watched the ‘What to Eat Now’ program on BBC2 on Monday 27th July at 8:30? Hold your hands up now.
Did you see the part where the presenter, Valentine Warner, was talking about the merits of fresh peas against frozen ones ? Keep the hands up if you did.
Now how many people agreed with him that supermarket unpodded peas were better than frozen? Now if you have your hands still up now you can consider yourself in the wrong camp. Allow me to explain.
It is a proven fact that as soon as a vegetable is picked the natural sugars start to turn to starches and the flavour decreases. That is why everything you grow tastes so much better when it’s fresh. However, VW took a basket of freshly picked unpodded peas around a supermarket and invited people to try them and taste how good they were, and I have no doubt that they were lovely as I know how good fresh peas taste.
However, Birds Eye will happily state that every pea they have is frozen with 2.5 hours of picking (check their website if you want), and if you have ever been in rural North Lincolnshire (where they grow a lot of peas) you can hear the pea-viners going to and fro in the middle of the night and see the peas being delivered to the processing plants.
Now if you buy those unpodded peas from the supermarket you have to think of how long they have taken to get to you, even under chilled conditions. They get picked on the farm and packaged there, travel from the farm to the depot, get selected into cages for further delivery and then go from the depot to the store. This will easily take more than 2.5 hours even at the best of times, I know I’ve worked in this supply chain before. Then you should consider how long they have been on display.
I realise that this sort of writing may well get me hung as a heretic or tarred and feathered and chased out of town, but his argument only works if you are growing your own peas. If you are not then a good quality frozen pea is probably better.
Don’t shoot the messenger, give peas a chance!
29 Jul, 2009
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Comments
I've known this fact for some time Muddy, so i believe you :)
29 Jul, 2009
I like frozen peas and in fact thats all my kids will eat unless I stirfry the sugarsnap variety then they will eat them but if I stand and pod them they walk away (oh hum more for me!!!)
29 Jul, 2009
Peas (my second fav. veg) are delicious picked off the plant but even I would struggle to produce fresh picked pods on christmas day. so the ONLY alternative has to be frozen and as you say even these have to be from a good supplier. Carol made the mistake once of bringing TINNED peas into the house ! ! ! ! ! ! As I say she ONCE made this mistake but never again, they were horrible tastless, textureless green balls of ........... (Cencored )
29 Jul, 2009
Whilst our garden peas were producing just enough pods for a meal we picked and cooked them directly. Once they all came on together they were all picked and frozen well within two and a half hours.
I can well accept that frozen peas are better than ones that have been sitting around for any length of time.
And have you noticed the price of fresh peas in the pod? We have a local grower who sells produce at the farm gate. This is much fresher than Tesco but they are asking £4:50 per kilo including the pods. This seems a lot to me.
29 Jul, 2009
The only thing wrong with Fresh pod peas is that my grandchildren eat them before i can get them to the table.
29 Jul, 2009
Bulbaholic, you ought to phone the police about that.....its daylight robbery. We try to use farm shops and local shops as much as possible but I couldn't justify that kind of price to myself let alone convince Carol it was worth it.
29 Jul, 2009
the peas we grow in our own gardens are grown for taste whereas the supermarkets want quantity.this is why so much of what we get from dear old sainsburys etc is just a little bland.
29 Jul, 2009
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pea assured your point very well put, and true...lol :)))
29 Jul, 2009