This is a particularly grating issue for me (The above rant in Spanish).
I pass by my local supermarket (a Tesco) pretty much every other day, to pick up little things we run out of in the house.
Of late, there has been an ever increasing number of young people working at the tills or 'cajeros'.
Sin duda esto se debe a la recesion economica que esta afectando a la mayor parte del planeta.
What has been shocking, though, has been the fact that over the course of the past two weeks, as I've had to interact with about half a dozen young employees (I would say they are in their late teens), I have come to realize a sad truth:
The can't tell their Leeks (Puerro) from their Butternut Squash (Calabaza).
It may just be me being my usual 'cranky old fool', but I felt really sad and embarrassed for these young people, who simply have no idea what vegetable or fruit are.
These weren't exotic fruit and veg. They were simple, every day use vegetables in English cuisine (or Welsh if you're referring about the Leeks). More importantly, they are everyday items stocked by the supermarkets they work in (Tesco, please take note of this PLEEEEEEASE train your staff to know what they are selling).
At least one of them looked at me and semi-confidently said 'This is a Sweet Potato, yeah?'.
Maybe I demand too much. Maybe I shouldn't ask today's generation to be knowledgeable of what they eat and how it is grown.
Maybe I have watched too many television programmes about people who simply don't know that food comes from a more rich, beautiful and at the same time tragic diversity of locations. That our food is part of a cycle that transcends geographic, ethnic, religious, and political boundaries, yet is inevitably bound to them.
Food is much more than simple flash packaging!
It is much more than potato crisps (chips to the yanks)!
It is life!
Go Food! (glorious food! ;-P)
Despite food "transcending political boundaries", we younglings can, perhaps, be forgiven our mistakes at times. When on holiday in Menorca recently, we were going through a market and were astonished to find some very odd looking vegetables. On closer inspection, I discovered that they were, in fact, peppers, but due to the politically correct peppers we only see in the UK, my girlfriend's mother refused to believe they were actually peppers until we bought one and made her have a bite!
ReplyDeleteOh, and I know from experience that knowledge and common sense are hardly of high importance in the world of Tesco, so don't expect change any time soon... :/