I ate a £27 peach from Fukushima so you don’t have to

It was mere seconds after I entered the gilded halls of Harrods’ food court in search of the most expensive fruit I will ever buy that a sprightly assistant bounded over.

“Right this way to the Fukushima peaches,” the suited man said before leading me to a dazzling display cage.

There – positioned between a £150 melon and £60 bag of grapes – was the bounty I had come to taste: fleshy fruit grown in a Japanese region devastated by one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.

Three exorbitantly large, perfectly round peaches sat atop a kind of miniature throne. For £80 you can take all three home.

The precious fruit went on sale at the luxury department store on Saturday, the first time peaches from Fukushima, in northeastern Japan, have been sold in a British shop.

At the fruit stall, I caught the tail-end of the sales pitch by the greengrocer,  “... and they play music to the melons, don’t ask me why, but it makes them sweeter”. Three baffled customers nodded and moved away.

“People are buying them,” he then told me, adding that he had sold one pack of peaches on Sunday. “There’s a lot of interest and hype about the price.”

I watched as punters stared, largely mystified at the display. Some said they were impressed at their size, others simply gasped at their price.

“It’s like trying to sell grapes from Chernobyl,” Chris, 61, from New Zealand said after I told him where they were from. “There is no way I would eat those. It is definitely not for me.”

Warren, 72, also from New Zealand, chided his friend for his lack of bravery, telling him that “radiation doesn’t last forever”. Laughing, he said: “I wouldn’t be afraid to try one, but you’d have to really love peaches at that price.”

Feeling like I had outstayed my welcome at the fruit counter, I walked out of Harrods with my pricey haul.

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.

Yoshio Mitsuyama, chairman of the Fukushima Prefectural Association in London, told the Telegraph: “Since the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Fukushima has faced the damage caused not only by the earthquake and tsunami but also by radioactive related rumours, especially for the food products. 

“Although it has been more than 10 years since the incident happened, some still worry about the safety of food products from Fukushima. Sale of Fukushima peaches at Harrods demonstrates the safety and quality of the products and could contribute to the trades between Fukushima and Europe.”

Describing the appeal of Fukushima peaches, he added: “The peach is one of the most symbolic agricultural products of Fukushima. We can visually see that the size of these peaches are much bigger than average peaches in the UK. The texture and taste are also different. It originates in the difference of the variety but also the difference of cultivation method.”