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Are you storing cucumbers the right way?

Our attempts to keep fruit fresher for longer could be doing more damage than we realise.

When we return from the supermarket it’s common practice to transfer fresh produce from shopping bags straight to the fridge but, in some cases, it might just be the wrong thing to do.

Speaking on Mornings, Dr Chris Smith explained that refrigerating fruit such as cucumbers and strawberries is potentially doing more harm than good.

Cool as a cucumber: should we change our storage habits? (Image: Monika1607/Pixabay)

Cold injury

"Cucumbers, like many fruits, have evolved to grow, mature and ripen in warm temperatures," said Dr Smith.

"Fridges are below four degrees celsius and the rationale for having things at that temperature is that it suppresses the growth of the kinds of things that cause food spoilage: fungi and bacteria."

However, keeping the fruit cool can not only hinder the ripening process, but cause 'cold injury'.

Dr Smith likened the practice of putting a cucumber in a cool box to trying to grow a cucumber in winter.

In from the cold: should strawberries be kept out of the fridge? (Image: Engin Akyurt/Unsplash)

"It doesn’t like it," he explained. "The cells don’t like it, the metabolism of the cucumber goes off kilter, the ripening process is thwarted and it produces chemicals that that might not taste as nice and tissues that might not taste as nice."

Leave it out

So how do we find the happy medium between long lasting, and better tasting cucumbers?

“What you could do is to let your cucumber ripen naturally on your table top or in the pantry at room temperature, " advised Dr Smith.

“Once it’s got ripe and you know you’re going to eat it, put it in the fridge, cool it down, chop it up into slices and put it in your cucumber sandwiches. Then you’ll have all the benefits but it won’t have spoiled in the meantime.”

And it seems that we may wish to think again about how we store strawberries, too.

“We tend to put those in the fridge as well, said Dr Smith. “We eat them cold and they’ve not evolved to be eaten cold, they've evolved to be eaten warm.”

Food for thought next time we unpack our groceries.