Iranians and their fruit

There's a market (bazar) here that moves around the city and has a different location every day of the week. On Tuesdays it comes to my area, so we call it the sehshambe bazar or Tuesday market. You can find absolutely anything there- carpets, clothes, dishes, makeup, fruits, veggies.... It's a great place to go when you first arrive in Qum as the prices are a little cheaper than shops.

The only irritating thing is that you can't pick your own fruits and veggies. So inevitably I come home with a couple of rotting tomatoes or an apple or two that's really gross inside.

The other irritating thing is that in Iran, they must use less preservatives or something as the fruit and veg goes bad very quick. So you have to buy exactly what you need for the week to reduce wastage. BUT when you go to the sehshambe bazar and ask the guy for 1.5kg of tomatoes/onions/apples, he's like 'you don't want 3kg?'
So annoying, it's like if I wanted 3kg, I would have asked you for 3kg!

But you often see Iranians buying 4/5kg of one type of fruit. So typically at sehshambe bazar, you'll see a husband/wife/kids/stroller all jam packed with a lot of fruits and veggies and I always thought that was a bit strange. How can one family go through so much in one week?

Recently a group of us westerners were talking about this - it started from the fact that bananas are now really expensive. So a friend of mine asked her Iranian friend- why don't you just buy a kilo of fruit and have one each, rather than buying so much. So it turns out that Iranians actually eat that much fruit in one sitting! They'll go to someone's house and instead of being given tea and cakes/biscuits, they'll be given tea and fruit and a knife. So turns out they are really healthy people. And the Iranian friend actually laughed at my friend's suggestion of being less fruit. 1kg of fruit turns out is one persons portion per day!