Natoora x Tate: Stories on Flavour
The Tate café was a hum with clusters of foodies, on that balmy Thursday evening. Before we could venture in, we were met with a psychedelic display of apples, intertwining in their spirals. Owing to their abundance in these early autumn months and Mangus Nillson’s organic apple orchard he owns and runs in Sweden, apples were a topical choice. It’s interesting to look at something you know the flavour of so well. The memory of the taste and texture make it a multi-sensory encounter despite it only being a visual one. And so, our evening was subliminally foreshadowed for us: flavour, memory, thought, seasonality.
Standing amongst the crowd were, indeed, our speakers for the evening: Franco Fubini - who you might know as the founder of global sustainable wholesaler, “Natoora”; Dan Saladino - writer of multi-award winning book “Eating to Extinction”; and Magnus Nillson - former head chef of Faviken. Their obvious presence within the crowd imbued their onlookers with twangs of preemptive excitement. These are perhaps lesser known celebrities but total heroes within their own food community.
A Call to Arms:
We all took to the auditorium and settled to soak up some wisdom. In part, this was a book launch for Fubini’s new book, “In Search of the Perfect Peach”, released just that day. He explained that this was where the idea for Natoora originated. He had heard someone asking for a peach in December. It was a totally jarring concept. Craving a summer fruit in the middle of winter. It struck him just how out of touch we were with nature. The connection to where our food comes from is completely non-existent and he wanted to make it his mission to change this. Flavour, he said, is the key indicator telling the consumer about the quality and health of, not only the produce but also the soil from which it came from. Flavour is intrinsic to nutrition too: better flavour equates to higher nutritional value.
He made a call to arms - "the power is in the hands of the consumer", he said. It is up to us to demand better. Better flavour, higher nutritional value, available to all. We are being blindly led to believe it normal to buy the same variety of tomato, for example, all year round. Because supermarkets make them available to us for the entire year, we become dependent. The quality of these products thus remains low, their flavour even less authentic to what it once was. We are in a global nutritional crisis and unless we demand better, change isn’t possible.
Flavour Memories:
Fubini then spoke of flavour as a trigger for memory. A tool to take us to places of the past and having just one bite can wholly transport us to that exact memory.
“It’s a cultural expression” Nillson chipped in. Eating is an essential biological function and so the act of making and eating food is "the only cultural expression which connects every single human being. We all have to eat and flavour keeps us engaged to eat well”. Traditional cuisines are shaped by the produce readily available to the country it belongs to. Flavour, therefore,relays a story of origin and culture. Saladino mentioned, “there’s no story you can’t tell through food”.
Dan Saladino has committed many years of his life researching and exploring food stories from across the world so he is adept with this idea. His book focuses on the discovery of rare foods heading towards extinction and seeks to uncover lost species and to tell the stories of the people whose lives are dedicated to guarding them.
Generations of farmers have spent thousands of years using their pallets to honing these particular flavours “seeking out the good stuff” as Saladino puts it. He says, “we have been blessed with pallets which are programmed to seek out the most nutritious foods. Flavour reflects this quality.” To dispose of their heritage so readily would be devastating. Saladino has managed to find and relay wonderful stories unheard before: The German farmer and the lost lentil (a story which inspired the founding of Hodmedod’s) and a rare wheat variety grown in the fertile crescent to name a few. All of these stories of preservation are motivated by the same reason: Flavour. The desire to seek out that nostalgic taste which transports these farmers back to their childhoods. To the time before quantity was the priority and quality ruled our taste buds. The link to buy Dan Saladino’s book Eating to Extinction can be found here.
Flavour in the Markets
Magnus Nillson spoke of his experience as an organic apple farmer in Sweden and the struggles he’s faced in the implementation of good quality produce in supermarkets.
“Farmers have the least to gain from farming organically. It is two times as expensive to be organic now than in 2018 yet the pay remains the same as it was.” Biodiverse varieties of organic apples are unlikely to make it to supermarket shelves because commercial retailers prioritise uniformity, scalability, and aesthetics over diversity. These apples often don't meet the strict size, shape, or appearance standards demanded by large chains, and their varied growing conditions make them less predictable in yield and harder to cultivate at the scale needed for mass distribution. Additionally, biodiverse apples may have shorter shelf lives or lack the established consumer demand that supermarkets rely on for profitability, pushing them out in favour of more standardised, visually appealing varieties. It’s why the best flavoured apples will never meet the consumer.
Saladino told us about the role flavour has to play when choosing what is and isn’t put on our shelves. “The panel of wheat selection looks for two things when selecting what varieties are suitable for consumption: Disease resistance and calories. Flavour and nutrition don’t even get a look in.”
The Futures in the Flavour
By the end of the talk we were certainly left with the feeling that the challenge of change that lies ahead is certainly a daunting one. However, our speakers gave us hope: It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
Conscious consumerism is a good place to start. Where our food comes from, whether it’s been farmed responsibly, and if it’s in season has become increasingly prominent. The interest is there, it just needs to be galvanised into demand.
Follow this link for The Food Planet Prize to see some exciting and promising projects shaping the future of our food system.
Katharine Beales