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March and April are notoriously bad months for any local-food-loving epicureans in Britain -- they've even been dubbed the 'hunger gap'. So it's with welcome low-food-mile arms that we greet the 'strasberry', a fruit that's halfway between a strawberry and a raspberry.
Waitrose will stock the soft fruit, which it says are smaller than strawberries but have more deeply pitted seeds akin to a raspberry. The supermarket's buyers describe it as having a "sweet, unique flavour."
Originally a wild strawberry species, the berry has reportedly been a big hit elsewhere in Europe ever since a Dutch grower rediscovered it seven years ago.
The fruit is grown relatively locally, under glass in Holland. The food miles debate recently intensified when Dr Adrian Williams of the National Resources Management Centre told the Guardian that "the concept of food miles is unhelpful and stupid. It doesn't inform about anything except the distance travelled." But we'd still be surprised if these strasberries had higher carbon footprints than strawberries grown under polytunnels in Spain.
Low carbon or not, we're looking forward to sampling these berries for ourselves tomorrow at one of the 17 London Waitrose stores where they're due to debut. Priced at a steep £3.99 for 125g, the strasberries are set to spread to 80 Waitrose stores by mid-April.
04 April 2008 03:58pm
they are lovely, i used to eat loads of them in my childhood as they grew in my garden
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Discover the brilliant experienced people who are helping SmartPlanet through the green and ethical minefield.
