Names to whet the appetite

East Fife Mail, January 15, 1992

Shopping centres are a popular haunt for the market research teams descending on housewives with their clipboards and pens.

What fascinates me is what these researchers do with the information. I've decided the findings are ignored or the ‘subjects’ are carefully selected on a tasteless fool rating scale.

The proof of this hypothesis lies at the back of my fridge - the forest fruit yogurt.

As we have developed as a nation from the traditional `plain' flavours, our tastes have undoubtedly been broadened, unwittingly or not. Twenty years ago spaghetti bolognese, chilli con carne, were unheard of: mince ruled supreme. Stew was stew... and not goulash, rogan josh or some other creative mix.

And our fruit tastes have also changed; a wee dollop of guava here, a chunk of payaya there, throw in a couple of rambutans, and we're off.

But, despite the rise in the exotic, I've never really taken to the genre of ‘forest fruits’.

What exactly is a forest fruit?

Well, according to the side of the tubs that come like a booby prize on your pack of four, it's mostly all the edible things you find up Leven bing by the side of the golf course - brambles, rasps, blackcurrants and so on.

And I suppose ‘forest fruits’ is more tempting than `bing berries'.

But the real poser is how come all the forest fruits, grown naturally in the wild then picked in their ripe fullness and carefully blended together always taste like someone spilled their aftershave into the vat? That unmistakable perfume automatically relegates the tubs to the back of my fridge.

Did you know yogurt is the nearest we come to eating something that's alive? I leave my forest fruits until the ‘bio’ factor rises from suspended animation, starts bubbling, kicks open the door and they can then make their own way to the bin.

Their origins, of course, lie in the street survey: “Excuse me madam, would your children enjoy the refreshing taste of forest fruits?”

So who were the people who consented to a public slurp and said “Oh yummy”?

I bet they were the same people who spend their days holding their undies up to the window to compare soap powders, who are the same nine out of 10 cat owners who “express a preference'', who throw chocolate biscuits out of the windows and measure curtains with bog roll... yes, all figments of the ad man's mind.

But how far do we go? The answer lies in your crisp packet: Red Leicester and freshly chopped chives (cheese and onion), prime roast sirloin and natural gravy (beef), French country farmhouse smoked gammon (bacon).

I predict just around the corner the great British public will eventually barf at this nauseating nonsense, probably at a bar: “Two schooners of cask conditioned traditional ale and an environmentally-sound packaged portion of French country farmhouse smoked jambon please'' (two pints of flavoured water with a dash of alcohol and a packet of dead pig crisps).

On second thoughts, telling it like it is in our pre-packaged society would never catch on ... and the bottom would definitely drop out of the egg market.

Picture: Myriams Fotos