Outside on the busy Brompton Road as I raised my purchase to my mouth, I thought about the history of this peach.
The devastation caused to its home, the painstaking work of local farmers determined to cultivate it once again, and here I was, still a little scared.
I took a bite. I suffered no imminent death, no noticeable taste of radiation.
It was, frankly, underwhelming.
The peach was disappointingly hard, with no stop-in-your-tracks taste that should warrant £2.25 a bite. Where was its legendary sweetness I had read about?
I’m no peach expert. However, Diana Henry, author of How to Eat a Peach, certainly is.
Discouraged that the peaches were sold before they were ready, she tried to imagine what the flavours she tasted could have been like if given a bit more time to mature.
‘A thinking fruit’
“This is a thinking fruit. You need to contemplate it with your mind like the Japanese do,” she said, explaining that peaches have always been considered special in Japanese culture. “They signify the banishment of evil.”
She described tasting a floralness similar to a white-flesh peach, but still the sweetness and juiciness associated with a yellow-flesh peach, with an added note of tartness. The lack of fuzziness on the skin was also an unusual bonus, she said.
But was it worth £27 a peach? “No, absolutely not.”
Japanese media reported that the peaches are part of a sales campaign by The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the operator of the Fukushima plant, to dispel myths about its exports and help the region recover.
In March 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake generated powerful tsunami waves that caused meltdowns in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The disaster forced the evacuation of more than 150,000 residents across the region, thousands of whom have never returned despite dissipating levels of radiation.
Britain lifted the restrictions on food imports from Fukushima in 2022, deeming the levels of radiation safe enough to ingest. However, such products are only imported in small quantities and largely sold to Japanese restaurants and specialist stores.
“We would like to continue to convey the appeal and tastiness of Fukushima Prefecture’s produce to the world,” a Tepco official told Japan News.
Harrods said in a statement: “Fukushima is the second largest producer of peaches in Japan and renowned for their unparalleled sweetness and juiciness.
“There are no restrictions for the UK in place on the import of food produced in Fukushima and we work closely with our suppliers to ensure our high standards of food safety are met.”