I suspect it is more expectation and marketing than any real ‘need’ 
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produce from china is not fresh.
Put any spin on it you wish but it’s not fresh.
Chinese don’t worry about pesticides, most of them are dangerous and not used in Australia. sitting in nitrogen pumped fridges at low temps doesn’t make the produce fresh.
if it’s not few says fresh, it’s not fresh.
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Possibly true, but it can be difficult to get colder season crops in say in the northern summers or warm season crops in the southern winters.
As we are no longer hunter and gatherers, and typically don’t grow all our own produce, we have an expectation to get most basic produce all year round.
We also want other stables such as wheat, rice etc all year around as well.
This is why there has been much work done on processing/storage to facilitate longer periods of availability.
There is also research that some forms of storage (e.g. freezing) retains nutritional value of the produce better than buying and eating a few days later.
So processing and storage can have its benefits. It can retain nutritional value, reduce waste/spoilage, better suit customer needs etc.
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I think this is where the problem lies. I have done a quick search and unable to see a definition for the term fresh…especially that relating to the labelling of produce.
If there is no standard definition (maybe someone else can find one as I have been unsuccessful), then fresh is very much an opinion or is highly subjective and will vary between individuals. What is fresh? It could be a wide range of viewpoints, including and not necessarily limited to any of these:
- Any food which is not processed
- Any food which is not processed or stored in any way
- Any food which is stored no more than 1 hour… 2 days…1 week…1 month…
- Any food that has the same nutritional value as it has when harvested
- Any food that that hasn’t been processed and looks unspoiled/good to eat (leaves not wilted, no bruises, no blemishes etc)
- Any food that has been stored, hasn’t been processed but look good to eat
- Any food free of pests and pathogens
- Any food recently cooked (as if freshly cooked chickens)
- Any food which has just been prepared irrespective of the age of the ingredients (freshly stewed apples which were a bit worse for wear)
- Any food which has processed (fresh ham, fresh slice of cheese)
- Any dried ingredients which have been processed (fresh bred)
- Any processed food (farm fresh canned tomatoes)
- Any food free of additives such as preservatives…
And the list could go on.
Until say Food Standards Australia defined the term "fresh’, its real meaning could be anyone guess. I suspect that they will be reluctant to define fresh as the horse as well and truly bolted in relation to the use of term…as fresh can and has been applied to almost anything.
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I only eat seasonal.
I know the person who curates the markets and I know that it’s all seasonal. All local.
You can spin it any way you wish… you can shop from supermarkets and believe that it’s fresh… it’s your life and I for one will not bow to your ideas.
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For the record, I do not buy most of my fruit and vege at a supermarket. I chose to buy such at either fruit and vege markets or independent grocers.
One must also realise that post harvesting can have a significant impact on the nutritional value of produce after harvesting.
It is possible that fresh fruit and vegetables sold at a farmer’s markets may have less nutritiinal value than that sold elsewhere… either fresh or procesed (frozen or canned). This can especially the case if the produce is not stored in a cool environment (inc. refrigerated). If the produce is stored at room temperature, exposed to higher temperatures such as on display outdoors, potentially in high light/sunlight, such can quickly degrade the nutrient value of the produce. Believing that farmer’s market produce is better is problematic and in fact may be proven not to be the case. The same applies to supermarket and other retail outlets.
There are to many variable for the consumer to determine whether the product is in fact fresh and whether it has a high nutritional value, similar to that at harvest or through better handling and storage processes.
This summary of research papers provides some information on this…
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Organic farmers know how to store their produce,
The food I buy doesn’t have less nutritional value then Coles/ Woolworth./ adli’s or any independent store.
if you think that you purchase food that is superior to what i do, then so be it.
Another myth. Both Organic and conventional products are sprayed with pesticides. Organic pesticides can be much more harmful for the environment and the health of the workers.
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Enjoy eating Chinese produce… gotta love Chinese garlic. it’s so white because it’s been bleached… the workers cannot go out in the fields after they’ve sprayed it for a few days.
yummy yummy bleached food… at least your gut will be preserved for eternity.
You might have to provide some evidence for that claim. The strongest pesticide that my vegetables are sprayed with is Dipel, a naturally occuring bacteria, which is allowed for organic production. Otherwise we mostly rely on natural insect predators to control unwanted bugs, things such as parasitic wasps to control aphids etc…
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I’ve sprayed my plants with a mix of organic detergent that doesn’t contain a degreaser and filtered water… green eating machines are never too impressed and vanish for a time, then they return.
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I have used organic poisons myself but I wouldn’t say they were very safe for human consumption. They killed rats really well and wild pigs and dogs. Among them was Strychnine and a 1080 compound extracted from acacia. I have used Saponica leaves and bark to stun fish traditionally. I guess not pesticides in the meaning of insecticides but certainly pesticides.
Fresh has so many uses that it has somewhat become bastardised in that usage. Fresh fish? Is it just now caught, has it been on ice, has it been frozen in an uncooked state. All those could be said to be fresh but depending on someone’s individual viewpoint some might not be considered fresh. When is an egg a fresh egg? When is milk fresh milk?
The fact that someone keeps the herbs in their fridge for two weeks in many cases would make those herbs considered “old” and not fresh. Rather the fresh would be the ones picked and used immediately not anything older than that but that creates a problem when it has to be transported by the farmer to the consumer. Storage in the fridge is a way of preserving some quality of the product so it remains useful for a given purpose after some duration of time has elapsed. I have worked at some farmers markets in the past. Not all produce is kept in it’s natural condition (foliage, covering, temperature, moisture level or even atmosphere) before it is sold to buyers, if it was it would be an inferior bit of produce or a difficult to use one. Loss of quality can occur very quickly if the storage and handling are not correct, yet most would enjoy the apple picked from the tree (fresh) as well as the one eaten a month or two later that had been correctly stored (fresh).
Fresh can be used to mean not altered from it’s natural state ie not dehydrated, canned, or even perhaps frozen. Again as I said a well used term nowadays employed to mean a variety of things to a variety of people. And perhaps in each of those variety of uses a valid use of the term.
Now to bleached Garlic, how do you know it is bleached? Is it because it is white? If so you have been sucked in by a xenophobic tale. This story has been circulating USA for years and even is used by the Australian Garlic Industry. The reason it is white is because it is a white skinned (the outer parchment like skin) variety of Garlic grown in China where garlic has been in use for thousands of years. China produces by far the most garlic of any country in the World, currently about 22 million tonnes with India next at 1.5 million tonnes.
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believe what you want about bleached garlic. it’s always rotten. doesn’t taste like garlic but keep on spinning…
all opinions matter…
I’m not sure why these are being called organic poisons, when they are used in conventional non-organic farming…
perhaps organic in terms of organic chemistry rather than organic farming? Neither my wife nor I think organic is really the best term to use for what is known as organic farming anyway. I don’t remember very many ‘good for the environment’ type chemicals when I did organic chemistry at Uni!
I’ve grown white garlic in the aquaponics systems here, no need for bleach! I don’t use purple dyes for the purple stuff either However, we have a no Chinese produced foods policy here, you really don’t know what is in it.
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I agree. their pest control is not same as ours.
Walked into Coles today and they were selling ’ fresh’ cherries from USA. We don’t need cherries in the winter.
Summer cherries from the markets were divine and slightly overdosed on them 
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It is impossible to bleach (internally) all of the garlic cloves as reported on some conspiracy websites.
Garlic bulbs may he dipped in a weak chlorine solution to sterilse the bulb from soil and human pathogens. Many agricultural products, irrespective of whether they are organic and inorganic products, are dipped in similar weak chlorine solutions to make them safer for human consumption. Such is standard practice for leavy vegetables/salad mixes which are eaten ‘fresh’.
The food industry also uses weak chlorine dipping solutions to treat uncook foods to reduce risk of pathogens, which may make one sick if one consumes contaminated foods. If one has bought vegetables (either Australian or imported) or eaten out in restaurants or any other food outlets, one would have consumed foods which have been treated with a weak chlorine solutionl no different to imported Chinese garlic.
It is also worth noting that chlorine is also used in the treatment of reticulated mains/drinking water, to protect the drinkers of such water from potential human pathogens. At dosing levels, it safe and has proven to be over many decades of use.
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It isn’t spin that you have not shown any evidence that Chinese garlic in Australia is bleached or that such is harmful.
Opinions matter in proportion to the quality of evidence and analysis that supports them. Until you take some steps in that direction yours isn’t worth as much as if you had. Yes we can all believe what we want but if you want us to believe what you believe then you need to give us a reason.
Having said that supermarket garlic isn’t always good and I would much prefer if it was fresh and local but then it would only be available 3 months of the year.
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The chemical is called Methyl Bromide gas and was used in most countries in the world to control soil borne diseases and pests. It has also been used and is currently used to treat some imported produce by AQIS to ensure that the imported produce doesn’t harbour pathogens which could devastate agriculture in Australia.
China, like Australia and many countries in the world are phasing out the use of methyl bromide for most agricultural applications. While it is highly effective and safe when used in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations, it is also an ozone depleting substance. Being ozone depleting is why it is being phased out around the globe.
Methyl Bromide was recently used in Australia for many crops, especially those susceptable to soil borne pathogens or grew underground. This included use on Australian grown garlic. The Chinese use is no different to the historical use in Australia. Under the Montreal Protocol, developing countries like China had a longer agreed time frame to phase out its use. This is why it is potentially still used in China and has been pahsed out in Australia. After 2019, it will also be fully phased out from use in China.
It is still used in Australian agricultural production for strawberry runner products and the post fumigation of Australia grown rice. Its use on these products will continue until a suitable chemcial replacement has been found.
It is also highly likely that if one purchases fresh imported organic certified produce, it may have been also fumigated with methyl bromide. It is also worth noting that before it was phased out, it was an agricultural input approved for use on organic farms, particularly in the US.
I would be also concerned if a Chinese farmer let its workers onto a recently methyl bromide fumigated paddock soon after application and before it has had a chance to dissipate. No doing so may pose a risk to these workers. The same evacuation practices were used in Australia when soil was fumigated, so the information on what China does falls into ‘scaremongering’.
It is also worth noting that China dominates global garlic production with around 80-90% of the world’s production. Some of this production is sold worldwide as fresh garlic, but much is also processed into dried or powdered garlic. Dried and powdered garlic is widely used in the world (inc. Australia) food manufacturing industry and if one consumes processed savoury foods, it is likely to contain Chinese garlic powder as an additive. Like onion powder, it is very hard to avoid unless one only eats whole foods without any form of processed/manufactured products, and does not consume food prepared by others.
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If one wishes to see what compounds are approved for use on organic farms, so that the chemical use won’t impact on the organic certification of the farm or its produce, the information can be found in the National Standard for Organic and Bio‐Dynamic Produce. The Standard can be found here:
The list of approved compounds can be found in the appendices attached to this standard.
There is confusion that organic means that pesticides have not been used in the production of the product. This is incorrect. Principally, the standard prohibit the use of synthetic compunds in certified organic production. Non-synthetic coumpounds which are effective in the control of pests (i.e. are pesticides) can be used.
It is also worth noting that weak bleach solution, like that used on Chinese garlic post production and in in the Australian agricultural and food industry (for human pathogen control), is an approved chemical under the standard.
It is also, from my own experience in the organic input industry, that some organic farm inputs can pose a higher health risk to both the farmers using these input and consumer. One example is chicken litter often used as a fertiliser input on organic farms. The Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries has provided information on the risks of the use of Chicken litter here:
At the end of the day, one needs to assess ones own risks when purchasing food. Organic/Inorganic, imported/local, fresh/processed etc all have risks of varying degrees and nature.
This is why Australia has strict Food Safety Standards for foods sold in Australia, to minimise risks to the consumer of such products. There is also the HACCP Food Safety Methodology which has been adopted by main food producers, manufacturers and retailers (such as supermarkets). It is also worth noting that it is unlikely that foods sold by storeholders a markets or at farm gates would have HACCP vendor quality assurance system in place.
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