You know you are onto a craze when even the staff canteen gets in on the action.

Nestling among the obligatory apples and bananas this week are this summer's most fashionable culinary accessory, the flat peach.

Already these squashed-looking peaches - or donut peaches, as they are also called - are stacked (they don't roll, you see) to the rafters in newsagents and supermarkets across the capital.

At Whole Foods, the food fashionista's mecca, shoppers have embraced the phenomenon.

"People love their convenience. They are easy to hold and there is much less mess," says Ed Belschner, the store's head of produce.

First grown in China during the 19th century and known elsewhere as Paraguayos, Saturn Peaches or Chinese Flat Peaches, it has taken 200 years for the fruit to take hold in the West.

For the past few years, they have been making serious inroads in continental Europe.

On a visit to France last month, I found them ubiquitous from the Loire to the Languedoc.

At first I thought they were normal peaches, squashed in transit and sold by unscrupulous Frenchmen.

When I realised these novel mutants were bona fide, it opened up a new, decidedly better world.

Now, after years of neglect in the UK, the fruit has finally crossed the Channel. The flat peach has arrived.

"It will be my number one selling peach this year, without a doubt," says Belschner.

"Three years ago my supplier was shipping three to five cases a week to the UK. This week alone he shipped 200 cases."

London's restaurants are already getting in on the act. "Flat peaches are beautiful," says Elaine Murzi, pastry chef at the Modern Pantry in Clerkenwell.

"They are slightly sweeter than your everyday peach, almost nutty in flavour and perfect in salads and desserts. At the moment we are serving them with white wine, elderflower and kalamansi lime soft-set jelly."

Fruit markets across the city are preparing for a summer dominated by the new fruit.

"It has suddenly gone from being a specialist item to the mainstream," says Helen Evans from New Covent Garden Market. "It seems like now is the flat peach's time."

As modern life gets ever more hectic, food has had to become more utilitarian - while continuing to excite.

The flat peach is delicious, exotically amusing and will always preserve one's dignity.

Five a day has never been so easy.