ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the discourse of heritage vegetables with a focus on the various ways that social exclusivity has been conceptualised. ‘Common or garden’ carrots are chopped up and stuck carelessly in plastic containers, while heritage carrots are linked with producers who are experts and who also take care and time over their work. In February 2015 the Independent reported that the demand for heritage vegetables was soaring: ‘the ultimate antidote to tasteless, mass-produced fruit and veg forced in a vast greenhouse complex to fill supermarket shelves and the pockets of multinational corporations’. Heritage food research has focused on the instrumental uses of heritage foods, seeing them as a key driver of tourism and an important component of tourists’ itineraries. Renowned ‘posh’ supermarket Marks and Spencer is said to be selling a new range of heritage carrots, pulled from the ground and deposited in a silver bucket by someone who is likened to P. G. Wodehouse’s famous fictional butler, Jeeves.
