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Comment by agmcleod | Hacker News Reader

How did you guys keep vegetables fresh for 2 weeks? That's usually why i go a couple times a week. Usually buy a pack of meat to have for a few nights of dinner, vegetables to use as well. Then get more once it's used up.

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There was a time when canned and frozen vegetables were more common than fresh. I can't eat them today, but that's what we ate growing up.

Same. Most veggies we either grew in the backyard garden or were frozen from the store. People don't remember that the vast fresh produce sections you see at most supermarkets today are relatively new. Back then you might have lettuce, carrots, potatoes, and maybe a few other things available fresh and the quality was not always great.

I still remember this from 1999-2000 in the Silicon Valley...I was shocked, fresh products were hard to find and very expensive. In France it never disappeared, we always had fresh sections in supermarkets on top of fresh market at walking distance twice a week.

It is possibly even more shocking today: The best organic produce can be found at Costco. I've bought blackberries there the size of my thumb, and they tasted like a dessert wine. Never had anything like it, let alone from Costco.

"Organic" is a marketing buzzword.

There's actually an argument to be made that some frozen or canned vegetables have higher nutrient content than the equivalent "fresh" vegetables at the grocery store, since the frozen ones are harvested closer to peak readiness and packed proximal to farms, versus the "fresh" veggies which may be harvested well in advance of when they're ready to give them adequate time for long transit to stores and a reasonable duration of shelf stability. I believe this is the case for tomatoes—not sure which other crops.

Unless you've grown them yourself, canned tomatoes will generally make a tastier pasta sauce than their fresh counterparts.

The shipment of bananas is interesting. They're transported in either bulk vessels or in containers. During transport the ripening process is prevented (think just by means of ventilation). The transport can take several weeks. Then on arrival they let it ripen, making the bananas turn yellow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana#Storage_and_transport (too brief though)

You start off early in the 2 weeks eating the perishables. Fruits, lettuce, etc. Mushrooms get used day 1. By the end of the 2 weeks you are roasting squash, having tomato sauce, etc.

In the past, people actually didn't go grocery shopping all winter. They didn't just eat dry beans, the entire world of cuisine exists because people are always finding ways to eat around the constraints of their growing season.

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