Why imported fruit in Pune is older than it looks

Count the stops

Imported fruit lands at a port, clears customs, sits in a cold store, moves to a distributor, then to a shop’s own warehouse, then onto a shelf. Every one of those is days, and not one of them appears on the label.

Cold slows it, it doesn’t reverse it

A good cold chain is the only reason the fruit arrives at all. It is not a pause button. A cherry that took three weeks to reach a shelf in Pune has aged three weeks, however well it was kept on the way.

What to actually look at

The stem and the calyx — the small green parts — go well before the fruit does. On a punnet, look at the bottom layer rather than the top, and at the condensation inside the lid. That’s the fruit breathing in a sealed box.

Price won’t tell you the age

Imported fruit carries a markup of two to three times by the time it reaches a shelf here, and none of that markup is freshness. It is perfectly possible to pay a lot for something a fortnight old.