‘Tearless’ onions to be sold in UK supermarkets for first time

Waitrose to stock Sunions, US brand which promises not to make cooks cry

Onions are famous for bringing tears to the eye (Getty/iStock)

“Tearless” onions are set to go on sale in the UK for the first time.

Sunions, a variety of onion that distributors claim does not make the chopper cry, will be in select Waitrose stores from next week.

The brand, which launched in the US, said it took more than 30 years of breeding less pungent varieties of onion to find a variety where the vapours released on chopping are not powerful enough to bring tears to the eye.

A three pack of sunions will reportedly cost £1.50, 30p more than a four-pack of Waitrose own-brand onions.

Paul Bidwell, an onion buyer for Waitrose, said: “We understand how a-peeling tearless onions are to our customers which is why we’re delighted to launch Sunions in selected stores and via Waitrose.com from 18 January.

“Ideal for taking the tears out of the kitchen, the sweetness of this type of onion lends itself perfectly to a variety of dishes, from salads to hot meals.”

Sunions said its onions have not been genetically modified, only bred.

The company said the flavour in sunions develops differently to other onions.

It said: “Volatile compounds in onions are responsible for tearing and pungent flavor and the amounts of those compounds in other onions remain the same or increase over time. In Sunions, these compounds do the exact opposite and decrease to create a tearless, sweet and mild onion.”

Sunions are already on sale in America and have not been universally well-received.

A 2018 review in the Washington Post said they were very sweet – “sweet enough that you could sit there and eat them like popcorn” – and barely had any scent. Another journalist who tried them there there said they were “almost flavourless”.