Recently I went to the supermarket with my girlfriend and spent an extraordinary amount of time sniffing, squeezing, weighing....fruit. If it had a bruise or an odor, back in the pile it went. Though we are all different, this was her attempt at quality assurance. I almost wish we had walked in with a stamper!
As we sat and observed others doing the same thing, I began again to wonder. What does the perfect piece of fruit look like? Is there a standard that exists? More importantly, how many of them could be found at my local grocer. Its this kind of questioning that always gets me in trouble. At least with my girlfriend :)
There is a much bigger issue at play right? My grandfather has said many meaningful things to me in my life but, this is one of my favorites. About fruit he said, "Never pick the perfect Banana." His rationale, nothing in nature is perfect. The only way it becomes perfect is through man made intervention. That term can mean a whole lot of different things though, it likely means that particular piece of fruit is far from organic.
What do you think? Does the quest for perfection translate into what is the best for us? This sent me down the road of quantity Vs. quality. Same idea right? Is something that is mass produced as high quality as something that is produced by an individual.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile. In fact, cars had been around for almost ten years...for the rich. See the original cars were all hand made and most of them were run on electricity and not gas. Mr. Ford looked at the automobile as something for everyone but to do that, he would need to bring the costs down by A LOT.
One of my favorite authors Michael Michalowicz said in business you can only compete on three principles, Cheapest, Highest Quality or Convenience. You can't be more than one and you had better be the best at whatever it is you do. Looking at the above example, the automobile made transportation convenient but as I said, it wasn't invented by Ford. The cars were no longer hand made, so they couldn't be the highest in quality. What does that leave? The cheapest, of course.
When it comes to quality, it comes in the form of a human and just like the banana, there is no such thing as Perfect.
You seem to do a lot of thinking while grocery shopping. Isn’t it usually the toilet where a man does his best thinking? But in fact you are right on (or should I say your grandfather is) when it comes to aesthetically pleasing fruit. Take a look at the average tomato on the shelf of your local grocer. Now go try to find a tomato that looks like that growing naturally in the wild. Barbara Kingsolver has actually touched on this in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She argues that tomatoes raised by agribusiness have other priorities in mind. They are designed to ripen simultaneously and at the same size, for ease of machine harvesting. This is like telling a class of students to all go through puberty at the exact same time while they grow at the exact same pace. Furthermore, these tomatoes are often bred to have a tough skin to survive rough handling and a long transport (naturally taking away from the taste). They are engineered to withstand chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They are almost always picked early to allow time for transport. And the weirdest part; conventional tomatoes are designed to be roughly square-shaped to fit more tomatoes in the shipping crate. Where does taste of food even rank anymore on the list of priorities? Here is a challenge to you. Go out and buy an heirloom tomato from a local farmers market. Then go buy the squarest tomato you can find on the shelf at the supermarket. Compare the taste, and I’ll bet you never eat a conventional tomato again. Good article Zack! Im stealing this topic for my next newsletter.