American couple baffled by discovery in Tesco fruit and veg aisle

An American couple who frequently share their experiences travelling across the UK were left completely bewildered after encountering something they'd never seen before during a routine shopping trip. Savannah Smith and her husband Kalani regularly share content on social media highlighting the contrasts between American and British life.

In a recent TikTok video, Savannah captured the couple's confusion while shopping at a branch of Tesco, stumped by something they'd never experienced previously. The clip shows the pair in the fruit and vegetables section of the supermarket, standing at the scales where customers weigh and label their items. Savannah said: "One weird thing that you would not think about is being in the UK grocery shopping.

We're at the thing where you have to put, like, your vegetables on a scale to weigh what it is, but you have to type in the vegetable. We typed in zucchini and nothing came up because they don't call it a zucchini here."

Kalani adds: "They call it a courgette," pronouncing it with a hard 'g' sound, as in 'guitar', rather than the correct soft 'g', as in 'giraffe'. Savannah continues: "They call it a courgette," echoing her husband's pronunciation, "which I have never heard it called before. Also none of our grocery stores at home have you do this."

Kalani adds: "You just do this at the till." Concluding, Savannah says: "Yeah, so here you do it and put the sticker on it. But I would never have known you guys call it a courgette."

Numerous UK supermarkets have installed scales within their fruit and vegetable aisles in recent years, reports the Mirror. These enable customers to weigh loose produce such as bananas, apples, onions, potatoes and other fresh items, then print a barcoded label displaying the appropriate price for that weight. This can be scanned at self-service checkouts, via portable scanning devices, or by checkout staff. Supermarkets continue to offer the option of weighing and pricing produce at the till, though.

Viewers had varied responses to the video, with many puzzled by the couple's pronunciation of courgette. One said: "I'm sorry for laughing at this pronunciation." Savannah replied: "Oops."

Another person said: "The way you pronounce courgette is damn near killing me. I'm officially changing it to that in our house now, it's brilliant!! We also call Worcestershire sauce 'wash your sister' sauce after hearing a lady from the US call it that!!"

But another said: "They gave it a great attempt though as a complete new word they've encountered." And someone else commented: "The whole world calls it a courgettes. The US changed the name to zucchini. It's French originally."

A different commenter raised questions about the scales. They said: "I live in the UK and have never done that and didn't realise it was a thing, and I shop in Tesco." Another said: "You only really need to print the label if you are using the handheld self scan handsets."

And someone else said: "Honestly surprised the checkout software doesn't have a thing that redirects a search for zucchini to courgette. Most people are familiar with American terms."

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