WEITERSTADT, Germany (Reuters) — Asparagus season has started in Germany, kicking off an annual frenzy in which restaurants dedicate entire menus to the vegetable and Germans rush to buy bundles of spears from the temporary stalls which appear each spring.
In the state of Hesse, a burst of intense sunshine has led to the harvest beginning several weeks earlier than last year, according to local farmer Peter Lipp.
He’s hoping for a bumper crop between now and the end of the season in June – and says the vegetable’s health benefits should attract even more customers in the run-up to summer.
“Asparagus contains very little carbohydrate. It contains vitamins and minerals and roughage and those who now eat asparagus will have the perfect bikini figure this summer,” he told Reuters.
At the outbreak of World War Two, Germany’s Nazi authorities decided asparagus was not rich enough in calories to justify its labor-intensive production, and it was later maligned by East German socialist authorities as a pretentious, expensive delicacy, and a waste of labor and land.
But in recent years its popularity has boomed, fueled by a rising consumer appreciation of local, seasonal food. Germans are unique in their overwhelming love for white asparagus rather than green. Some 90-95 percent of consumption is of the white form of the vegetable, which must be grown deep in the soil and dug out by hand.