Downfall of Urbanization

Waaa!

I FINALLY figured it out.

Back in 2007, my family and I took a 2.5month vacation to Asia. It was my first time stepping foot onto Asia-Pacfic soil. Among the many places we visited, Thailand left a particular lingering taste in the back of my head, enough for me to go back for a second taste this past summer.

Picture of the floating marketing back in 2007

River side local children jumping with joy waving at the tourists floating by

Mangos are one of my all-time favourite fruit and when I stopped over in Bangkok's world famous Floating Market....I HAD to try some. I can remember it as if it was yesterday, floating around in a canoe...sliding between boats of tourists and local natives. Each canoe offered different items for sale, mostly fresh fruits and cooked food. After turning down over a dozen of Thai-speaking ---of what I assumed to be salesmen insisting me to buy, I finally gave in to this little old lady, with one hand holding a knife peeling a basket of fruits and the other hand swotting flies away from her goods.

She handed me a plate of the-most -saturated-yellow-pigmented mango flesh, she freshly chopped up (With her mango-cutting-fly-swotting-hands). At that point, it was too late to say no. After I paid, my sister insisted me to not eat it, somehow wipe it down, or wash it before eating it. But from looking around, the only source of water is the mucky brown river water in which the boats and canoes floated in.

The little lady who sold me the BEST mango I've ever had

So I took my chances, and bit into till-this-very-day the BEST mango I have EVER eaten in my LIFE! Wow, it was so good I went back and bought 2nd's and when I left I even tried to go back to buy some to take home. It was by far the best mango I have tasted in my life. I've always wonder, why was it so good? Why cant I get that great tasting mango in Canada? even buying premium mangos, thai-mangos, or sweet ripe mangoes they cannot compare. What was missing?

As I am franticly studying for my kinesiology final exam, I found my answer. In Nestle's What to Eat (One of the most interesting and educating school material I've read), He talks about the "Price of Fresh" addressing sustainability of fruits and vegetables. One of the sections he talks about the question of taste, how clueless we are until we experience the real flavours. Fruits and vegetables travels thousands and thousands of miles just to get to our local supermarkets. The miles travelled consumes time; days and sometimes weeks, reducing its freshness as each second goes by. Truth is we don't know what the fruit really taste like in Canada, when we buy mangos, or any other import fruits, they have already lost their "fresh-ness" from the week it took it to get from Thailand to Safeway. The mango I ate was the real taste of a fresh ripe mango. Picked from the tree, peeled, and eaten by me all in the same day, it was heaven. Who would of ever guessed, I was scammed my whole life on what real fresh mango tasted like. lol.