8 ms·

When I moved to the US from southern Europe I was so horrified by the lack of taste of any fruit I tried, particularly the peaches and plums. I moved back to Eu

by quotz 5mo ago

When I moved to the US from southern Europe I was so horrified by the lack of taste of any fruit I tried, particularly the peaches and plums. I moved back to Europe and not a small factor was the lack of good produce and food in general. Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.

rayiner 5mo ago
> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.m There’s a large swath of America that has a deeply ingrained mentality of “food is for fuel, not enjoyment.” It’s a Protestant idea that entered the culture and became ingrained to the point where nobody remembers the origins but are still influenced by it. I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. And I don’t think it’s just “U.S. consumerism blah blah” either. The Anglo food in Canada and the UK sucks too. They just don’t care.
- dctoedt 5mo ago
  > I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. ... I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. Um: My dad grew up in Iowa, so I'd be there seeing family every so often. Years ago it struck me how many Iowans I saw there were ... not svelte.
  - rayiner 5mo ago
    A lot of Iowans stuck to high calorie farmer’s diets even though they weren’t working in the fields all day. They eat a lot, but it doesn’t strike me that they value food quality.
- quickthrowman 5mo ago
  > I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. Iowa is a gigantic field corn, soybean, and pig farm with a few colleges, windmills, and one “city”. Commodity crops, not vegetables. The one thing Iowa is known for is “loose meat sandwiches”, which is a Sloppy Joe with no tomato based sauce. Cuisine is not on the menu there ;)
- oa335 5mo ago
  > I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. I've observed the same thing; But my theory is taste in food is shaped by how recently a families lineage transitioned to processed foods and industrialized agricultural practices. e.g. I've observed a deterioration in taste in South Asia over the past 20 years, which I attribute to the same effect.
kelnos 5mo ago
> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice. How would most Americans know there's a difference? A large plurality will never leave the country in their lifetime, and many won't even leave the area where they grew up in. Even for those who travel to some extent, eating as a tourist will rarely give you the experience of going to a grocery store, buying fresh produce, and eating it. And even if a tourist ends up with some really amazing produce in another country, they'll likely chalk it up to a lucky, isolated incident, and not think much of it. Or it's just the "everything is better when you're on vacation" phenomenon. They'll go back home and be back to eating what they're used to. To be fair, though, there is plenty of wonderful, flavorful produce in the US. There are a few problems, though: 1. Some areas in the US truly are underserved and have bad produce. And by "areas" that can even mean small pockets here and there, where you may only have to drive an extra 20 minutes to get good produce, but it doesn't even occur to you to try, because you assume it will be the same. 2. In the US we seem to believe that we should be able to get every single kind of produce year-round, regardless of what's in season. So you might see something on the shelves all year, but it's only actually really good for a month or three. The experience during the rest of the year will tend to dominate your opinion. 3. You're more likely to get better quality at a more expensive, boutique-like grocer, or at a farmer's market. Most Americans just don't shop at places like those when there's a cheaper, large chain grocery store available. Farmer's markets can be especially difficult when they're only open a day or two per week, and busy people/families need more flexibility. For reference, I live in northern California, and there's plenty of fantastic produce here. Yes, when I go to something like Safeway (part of a huge grocery chain), I don't expect anything terribly amazing. It's fine, but nothing special. But I have a small local grocery a couple blocks away from me that usually has great produce (though sometimes it can be hit-or-miss with some items), and they also make an effort to stock many items based on growing season. I've been to various places in Europe many times, and have even been to grocery stores and bought produce so we could cook dinners in an Airbnb. I've generally had a good experience with the produce there, but I wouldn't say it's notably better than where I live in the US.
doubled112 5mo ago
My understanding is that it's all bred to be easier and faster to grow. Flavour isn't first in the value equation.
- dylan604 5mo ago
  And longer shelf life. And flavor isn't in the top 10
- quotz 5mo ago
  Yes. Flavour isnt the main factor, its easier and faster growing, not spoiling, basically all the factors that are what a supermarket asks for. Here in southern europe flavor is the main concern. The flavorless produce doesnt fly here because nobody would buy that crap. We have standards. When I was living in the US I was shopping in wholefoods only and buying the most expensive varieties of the produce, and it still sucked xD
kstrauser 5mo ago
That's so odd to me. You can buy cheap, cost-optimized fruit in the US. You can also buy amazing produce that would blow your mind. My wife and I look forward to our annual road trip to Monterey partly because of the fruit stands we pass along the way where we'll get cherries so dark they're nearly black, and strawberries the size of my fist (no, really, I have pictures) that are sweet as sugar and incredibly delicious. The existence of Subway doesn't mean you can't get phenomenal deli sandwiches. It does mean you probably need to look around a little more and don't settle for the first sandwich place you see. Edit: This is my wife holding one of those strawberries. We took that picture from the sheer absurdity of it. The pack of berries hardly survived the rest of the drive. We'd eaten almost all of them by the time we arrived at the B&B. https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw
- loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
  Strawberries are not the size of fists. Ever wonder what they put in those?
  - testfoobar 5mo ago
    Perhaps you haven't had the pleasure of eating fresh-picked strawberries from Watsonville on your drive down PCH 1. Strawberries that are shipped across the US (Watsonville produces something like 40%) are picked under-ripe and will not sweeten more along the way. Ripe, Watsonville farm-stand strawberries are something else entirely. They can indeed be fist sized. I encourage you to try them yourself. Alternatively, you can go to pick your own places along the way - also fantastic.
    - kstrauser 5mo ago
      Yep, those are the ones. Those Watsonville strawberries are to die for.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5mo ago
    They are in Japan.
uncletammy 5mo ago
It's hard to vote with your dollar when market economics are such that only a handful of (massive) firms sell almost all of thing you're protesting. What leverage does one have in the age of oligopolistic enshittification?
boringg 5mo ago
This is a funny statement in that California has probably the best agricultural produce on the planet. If you were in say Texas or Georgia - you could be forgiven for your statement. Bay area produce is unparalleled - Tomatoes, peaches, figs, strawberries, etc. More organic growers if thats what you care about - high quality growers. There is also massive commercial growers doing high volume low cost but you do need to know where to look.
- kelnos 5mo ago
  I live in NorCal and agree with you that we have great produce, but it's a little weird to single out Texas and Georgia (the latter especially on an article about peaches!). There's plenty of good produce to be had in both of those places, though I'm sure quality varies across a state as large as Texas (just like it does in California to some extent).
- hn_acc1 5mo ago
  See my other comment: in 20+ years in the Bay Area, compared to 25 in SW Ontario (Canada): the BEST peach I've had in 20+ years in the Bay Area wouldn't even make it as "a good one" of the bunches we had every summer in Canada. Not sure where they came from, but from personal experience, Bay Area peaches suck REALLY hard. I've WANTED to find some good ones, because I miss them, and they're always super hard or already rotten.
  - blt 5mo ago
    Agree. California peaches are horrible. Southern peaches (Georgia, Carolinas) are indescribably better. I love California, but it's funny/sad the extent to which many Californians deny that other parts of the USA have us beat in some regards.
    - boringg 5mo ago
      White peaches in California in stone fruit season are delicious. Pluots also pretty darn good. Freestone peaches in Niagara are the best on the continent bar none. Georgia has pretty good peaches probably on par or maybe a bit better than california, but smaller and mixed bag whenever I have had them in June.
janalsncm 5mo ago
You are comparing fruit in a prime stone fruit-growing region to the US. The US is big and fruit needs to be refrigerated to be transported. Refrigeration kills aromatics. I assume you would have a similar experience buying plums in Germany. Similarly, if you bought stone fruit in California where it is grown, it would taste good. > stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice Unless you are willing to pay $30/peach for them to be flown next day on a jet, peaches in New York are not going to taste as good as they do off the tree.
- realo 5mo ago
  Fill up the jet with 20,000 tons of peaches ... your price per peach will be different.
  - janalsncm 5mo ago
    Assuming you mean 20 tons=40k lbs, this is around 120k peaches. You would need revenue to cover such an expensive mode of transportation. Flying will probably be on the order of $20k. So you need $0.5/lb just for flight costs even if you can sell all of your peaches.
    - realo 5mo ago
      I live in Canada. For reasons you might be aware of, me and my neighbors avoid buying any wine, fruits or vegetables that come from the USA nowadays. The USA are not our friends anymore. Today I bought very nice oranges from Spain, and super sweet and tasty fresh blueberries from Morocco. Price was same as usual in the supermarket. I am sure the californian peaches could be sold at a reasonable profit , somewhere in the world, if there was actual demand. The problem I see : no demand for US produce.
dylan604 5mo ago
I've stopped buying peaches from the supermarkets. They just are not worth it. To get peaches with actual flavor, I have to get them from special vendors that know they have better peaches and charge accordingly. The suppliers don't notice when the numbers that stop are rounding errors. The vast majority of people don't have any experience with anything other than supermarket produce and don't know there's a choice. Growing up as a kid, I didn't know there were so many varieties of apples. Our store only carried red delicious, golden, and granny smith. It wasn't until I moved out of the sticks and saw more varieties. Some people never move, so they only know what they know and never experience new
psadauskas 5mo ago
Same with Maui Gold pineapples. I can't eat the Dole crap you get everywhere else. The ones at the markets in Maui are a completely different fruit, they're like candy. Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid. This is what happens when you optimize your food supply for profit instead of being edible; varieties are selected for yield, longevity and shipping rather than flavor or nutrients. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
- joecool1029 5mo ago
  Not sure that's citric acid doing that, it's probably bromelain, which can be used as a meat tenderizer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain
- dylan604 5mo ago
  > Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid. Been to Maui once, and this was pretty much my exact experience as well. Thought I was the only weird one to do that. I only slowed down though until it got really bad before stopping. Wish I was smarter to stop earlier ::face-palm::
realo 5mo ago
Exactly. I can see a lot of US apple juice bottles that contain a liquid resembling piss. It's disgusting. Real apple juice is dark brown and tastes nothing like the golden liquid mentioned above.
- boc 5mo ago
  They sell "real" apple juice in the US. It's just called apple cider and you can find it at any supermarket. "Apple cider is raw, unfiltered, and often unpasteurized apple juice, resulting in a cloudy, dark appearance and rich, tart flavor. Apple juice is filtered to remove pulp, pasteurized for a longer shelf life, and often sweeter. Cider is usually seasonal and refrigerated, whereas juice is shelf-stable" Europeans consistently visit a gas station and conclude this must be all there is to eat in America.

by quotz 5mo ago

rayiner 5mo ago

> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.m There’s a large swath of America that has a deeply ingrained mentality of “food is for fuel, not enjoyment.” It’s a Protestant idea that entered the culture and became ingrained to the point where nobody remembers the origins but are still influenced by it. I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. And I don’t think it’s just “U.S. consumerism blah blah” either. The Anglo food in Canada and the UK sucks too. They just don’t care.

dctoedt 5mo ago
> I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. ... I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. Um: My dad grew up in Iowa, so I'd be there seeing family every so often. Years ago it struck me how many Iowans I saw there were ... not svelte.
- rayiner 5mo ago
  A lot of Iowans stuck to high calorie farmer’s diets even though they weren’t working in the fields all day. They eat a lot, but it doesn’t strike me that they value food quality.
quickthrowman 5mo ago
> I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. Iowa is a gigantic field corn, soybean, and pig farm with a few colleges, windmills, and one “city”. Commodity crops, not vegetables. The one thing Iowa is known for is “loose meat sandwiches”, which is a Sloppy Joe with no tomato based sauce. Cuisine is not on the menu there ;)
oa335 5mo ago
> I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. I've observed the same thing; But my theory is taste in food is shaped by how recently a families lineage transitioned to processed foods and industrialized agricultural practices. e.g. I've observed a deterioration in taste in South Asia over the past 20 years, which I attribute to the same effect.

kelnos 5mo ago

> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice. How would most Americans know there's a difference? A large plurality will never leave the country in their lifetime, and many won't even leave the area where they grew up in. Even for those who travel to some extent, eating as a tourist will rarely give you the experience of going to a grocery store, buying fresh produce, and eating it. And even if a tourist ends up with some really amazing produce in another country, they'll likely chalk it up to a lucky, isolated incident, and not think much of it. Or it's just the "everything is better when you're on vacation" phenomenon. They'll go back home and be back to eating what they're used to. To be fair, though, there is plenty of wonderful, flavorful produce in the US. There are a few problems, though: 1. Some areas in the US truly are underserved and have bad produce. And by "areas" that can even mean small pockets here and there, where you may only have to drive an extra 20 minutes to get good produce, but it doesn't even occur to you to try, because you assume it will be the same. 2. In the US we seem to believe that we should be able to get every single kind of produce year-round, regardless of what's in season. So you might see something on the shelves all year, but it's only actually really good for a month or three. The experience during the rest of the year will tend to dominate your opinion. 3. You're more likely to get better quality at a more expensive, boutique-like grocer, or at a farmer's market. Most Americans just don't shop at places like those when there's a cheaper, large chain grocery store available. Farmer's markets can be especially difficult when they're only open a day or two per week, and busy people/families need more flexibility. For reference, I live in northern California, and there's plenty of fantastic produce here. Yes, when I go to something like Safeway (part of a huge grocery chain), I don't expect anything terribly amazing. It's fine, but nothing special. But I have a small local grocery a couple blocks away from me that usually has great produce (though sometimes it can be hit-or-miss with some items), and they also make an effort to stock many items based on growing season. I've been to various places in Europe many times, and have even been to grocery stores and bought produce so we could cook dinners in an Airbnb. I've generally had a good experience with the produce there, but I wouldn't say it's notably better than where I live in the US.

doubled112 5mo ago

My understanding is that it's all bred to be easier and faster to grow. Flavour isn't first in the value equation.

dylan604 5mo ago
And longer shelf life. And flavor isn't in the top 10
quotz 5mo ago
Yes. Flavour isnt the main factor, its easier and faster growing, not spoiling, basically all the factors that are what a supermarket asks for. Here in southern europe flavor is the main concern. The flavorless produce doesnt fly here because nobody would buy that crap. We have standards. When I was living in the US I was shopping in wholefoods only and buying the most expensive varieties of the produce, and it still sucked xD

kstrauser 5mo ago

That's so odd to me. You can buy cheap, cost-optimized fruit in the US. You can also buy amazing produce that would blow your mind. My wife and I look forward to our annual road trip to Monterey partly because of the fruit stands we pass along the way where we'll get cherries so dark they're nearly black, and strawberries the size of my fist (no, really, I have pictures) that are sweet as sugar and incredibly delicious. The existence of Subway doesn't mean you can't get phenomenal deli sandwiches. It does mean you probably need to look around a little more and don't settle for the first sandwich place you see. Edit: This is my wife holding one of those strawberries. We took that picture from the sheer absurdity of it. The pack of berries hardly survived the rest of the drive. We'd eaten almost all of them by the time we arrived at the B&B. https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ebgyxOMT9LpyjhfKuLQWD0kw

loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
Strawberries are not the size of fists. Ever wonder what they put in those?
- testfoobar 5mo ago
  Perhaps you haven't had the pleasure of eating fresh-picked strawberries from Watsonville on your drive down PCH 1. Strawberries that are shipped across the US (Watsonville produces something like 40%) are picked under-ripe and will not sweeten more along the way. Ripe, Watsonville farm-stand strawberries are something else entirely. They can indeed be fist sized. I encourage you to try them yourself. Alternatively, you can go to pick your own places along the way - also fantastic.
  - kstrauser 5mo ago
    Yep, those are the ones. Those Watsonville strawberries are to die for.
- kevin_thibedeau 5mo ago
  They are in Japan.

uncletammy 5mo ago

It's hard to vote with your dollar when market economics are such that only a handful of (massive) firms sell almost all of thing you're protesting. What leverage does one have in the age of oligopolistic enshittification?

boringg 5mo ago

This is a funny statement in that California has probably the best agricultural produce on the planet. If you were in say Texas or Georgia - you could be forgiven for your statement. Bay area produce is unparalleled - Tomatoes, peaches, figs, strawberries, etc. More organic growers if thats what you care about - high quality growers. There is also massive commercial growers doing high volume low cost but you do need to know where to look.

kelnos 5mo ago
I live in NorCal and agree with you that we have great produce, but it's a little weird to single out Texas and Georgia (the latter especially on an article about peaches!). There's plenty of good produce to be had in both of those places, though I'm sure quality varies across a state as large as Texas (just like it does in California to some extent).
hn_acc1 5mo ago
See my other comment: in 20+ years in the Bay Area, compared to 25 in SW Ontario (Canada): the BEST peach I've had in 20+ years in the Bay Area wouldn't even make it as "a good one" of the bunches we had every summer in Canada. Not sure where they came from, but from personal experience, Bay Area peaches suck REALLY hard. I've WANTED to find some good ones, because I miss them, and they're always super hard or already rotten.
- blt 5mo ago
  Agree. California peaches are horrible. Southern peaches (Georgia, Carolinas) are indescribably better. I love California, but it's funny/sad the extent to which many Californians deny that other parts of the USA have us beat in some regards.
  - boringg 5mo ago
    White peaches in California in stone fruit season are delicious. Pluots also pretty darn good. Freestone peaches in Niagara are the best on the continent bar none. Georgia has pretty good peaches probably on par or maybe a bit better than california, but smaller and mixed bag whenever I have had them in June.

janalsncm 5mo ago

You are comparing fruit in a prime stone fruit-growing region to the US. The US is big and fruit needs to be refrigerated to be transported. Refrigeration kills aromatics. I assume you would have a similar experience buying plums in Germany. Similarly, if you bought stone fruit in California where it is grown, it would taste good. > stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice Unless you are willing to pay $30/peach for them to be flown next day on a jet, peaches in New York are not going to taste as good as they do off the tree.

realo 5mo ago
Fill up the jet with 20,000 tons of peaches ... your price per peach will be different.
- janalsncm 5mo ago
  Assuming you mean 20 tons=40k lbs, this is around 120k peaches. You would need revenue to cover such an expensive mode of transportation. Flying will probably be on the order of $20k. So you need $0.5/lb just for flight costs even if you can sell all of your peaches.
  - realo 5mo ago
    I live in Canada. For reasons you might be aware of, me and my neighbors avoid buying any wine, fruits or vegetables that come from the USA nowadays. The USA are not our friends anymore. Today I bought very nice oranges from Spain, and super sweet and tasty fresh blueberries from Morocco. Price was same as usual in the supermarket. I am sure the californian peaches could be sold at a reasonable profit , somewhere in the world, if there was actual demand. The problem I see : no demand for US produce.

dylan604 5mo ago

I've stopped buying peaches from the supermarkets. They just are not worth it. To get peaches with actual flavor, I have to get them from special vendors that know they have better peaches and charge accordingly. The suppliers don't notice when the numbers that stop are rounding errors. The vast majority of people don't have any experience with anything other than supermarket produce and don't know there's a choice. Growing up as a kid, I didn't know there were so many varieties of apples. Our store only carried red delicious, golden, and granny smith. It wasn't until I moved out of the sticks and saw more varieties. Some people never move, so they only know what they know and never experience new

psadauskas 5mo ago

Same with Maui Gold pineapples. I can't eat the Dole crap you get everywhere else. The ones at the markets in Maui are a completely different fruit, they're like candy. Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid. This is what happens when you optimize your food supply for profit instead of being edible; varieties are selected for yield, longevity and shipping rather than flavor or nutrients. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

joecool1029 5mo ago
Not sure that's citric acid doing that, it's probably bromelain, which can be used as a meat tenderizer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain
dylan604 5mo ago
> Whenever I go I eat them until my tongue burns from the citric acid. Been to Maui once, and this was pretty much my exact experience as well. Thought I was the only weird one to do that. I only slowed down though until it got really bad before stopping. Wish I was smarter to stop earlier ::face-palm::

realo 5mo ago

Exactly. I can see a lot of US apple juice bottles that contain a liquid resembling piss. It's disgusting. Real apple juice is dark brown and tastes nothing like the golden liquid mentioned above.

boc 5mo ago
They sell "real" apple juice in the US. It's just called apple cider and you can find it at any supermarket. "Apple cider is raw, unfiltered, and often unpasteurized apple juice, resulting in a cloudy, dark appearance and rich, tart flavor. Apple juice is filtered to remove pulp, pasteurized for a longer shelf life, and often sweeter. Cider is usually seasonal and refrigerated, whereas juice is shelf-stable" Europeans consistently visit a gas station and conclude this must be all there is to eat in America.