7 Comments

• Simon Jerram 4th Aug '09 - 9:07am

  That was good. I remeber watching the Europe QI programme.

  Still good two years on.

• Hywel 4th Aug '09 - 11:55am

  But aren’t there actual standards about the curviness of bananas (the class I/II categorisation). The “defence” is whether this is EU legislation or not not but there’s never a discussion about whether it is sane to have such regulations at all (which do result in a lot of food getting wasted etc)

• Andy GL 4th Aug '09 - 12:42pm

  @Hywel

  I think the purchasers wanted it (a classification), because their customers wanted it.

  People avoid misshapen fruit/veg when they are paying by the weight, illogical as this might be.

• Anders 4th Aug '09 - 1:21pm

  Not sure about bananas, but I know that the legislation on the curvature of cucumbers was UK legislation well before it became an EU directive. Of course many of the rules on standard sizes, shapes and measurements were part of international agreements before anyone in the EU had even thought of making it the law. Leaving the EU wouldn’t solve any of it.

  Although I do like QI and the fact that someone is putting people right on EU rules, it did strike me that the Tories or the Daily Mail would try and use this episode as further evidence that the BBC was a bunch of Labour-voting, euro-supporting luvvies. Just like Stephen Fry in fact.

• Hywel 4th Aug '09 - 3:14pm

  @Andy

  But the fact that most fruit in Tesco etc is Class 1 is usually printed in incredibly small text so I’m not sure many customers look for it.

  No-one has ever asked me how curvy I wanted my banana to be (Prob a good job Frankie Howerd isn’t here!) and such classification does mean that Class II fruit and veg rarely makes it into the supermarket meaning prices are higher (and children grow up with a weird, “racially pure” idea of what fruit and veg looks like.

  This is part of the classification of Class 1 bananas (according to t’internet anyway)
  “- slight skin defects due to rubbing and other superficial defects not exceeding 2 cm2 of the total surface area; ”

  As regards size:
  “The minimum length should not be less than 14.0 cm and the minimum grade not less than 2.7 cm.”

  That must mean that every banana sold (or at least classified) has involved someone in measuring the length, circumference and any marks on the skin. This for a product which in the main people actually pick for themselves and is often sold by weight.

  I don’t believe that’s the biggest issue needing attention today.

  @Anders
  As I usually point out at this point, despite attempts to deny it there IS EU legislation on the curviness of cucumbers, (or at least was untill recently – the good news is a whole raft of such legislation has been repealed) the fact that it used to be UK legislation doesn’t make it right.

• Kim Scriven 4th Aug '09 - 4:41pm

  An episode of QI you ‘stumbled across’ – someone’s been watching too much Dave…

• Mark Pack 4th Aug '09 - 11:00pm

  Kim: nope, it was a Dave-free piece of research that unearthed this. I was actually looking at beta versions of some of YouTube’s new features. Whether that is better or worse than watching Dave, I’ll let you judge…