Fruit used to be better

Status
Not open for further replies.
HarveyJ

HarveyJ

He is - THE CACTUS!
Feb 25, 2008
3,879
48
0
Melbourne - Not the one in Florida
www.affiliationcash.com
Without intending to sound amazingly homosexual, or like Jim Fix Jr, I eat a lot of fruit.
Mainly caused I'm scared to death of being one of those internet folks that ends up being a lard arse and stuck on a toilet for two years before I die from septocemia.

Anyway, a lot of the fruit I've been eating lately just doesn't seem as good as fruit used to.
Peaches, once juicy and sweet, are dry and fibrous.
Apples that used be to be crispy and cleaned my teeth with their porous nature now seem kinda limp and soggy.
Grapes seem smaller and kind of sour and squidgy.
Even the oranges imported from our tropical belt states seem a bit deflated and just aren't good for juicing.
Don't even get me started on exotics like lychees...

I'm just wondering if this happens to be something that's just bound up in my part of Australia, or if this is part of a worldwide trend.

Does fruit taste as good to you as it used to?
 


I'm in Australia too (Perth) and I've found that the quality of the produce depends largely on where I shop. I visit the local fruit & vegetable market instead of the supermarkets for anything fresh. The prices are comparable, if not better, and the quality is great. There was a time where I could get fresh food through the supermarkets, but I've found the quality has dropped off the last couple of years.

The same goes for bread. I only toast the bread I pick up at the supermarket, but can't stand to eat it as part of a sandwich. I grab a loaf from the specialist bakery instead - bread's never tasted so good!
 
I live in a pretty Greek area. We have about 4 different green grocers, where I do my fruit n veg shopping. They're just as bad for the quality of produce.

I dunno if they're cheaping out at the farmers market, or if there just isn't any good produce available at the moment. I guess with the Murray Darling system being so buggered at the moment, it does stand to reason that most water intensive fruits would be crap, but that's all that's available around here, other than pears from Pakenham, and they're rock hard because Victorian winters are apparently cooler (and their summers hotter) than in the previous decade.
 
I was going to offer an opinion but really I have no idea if it's the same here as in Austrialia. Here we have a supermarket that has like 15 varieties of apples. So actually apples are better now then in my youth because I get to pick the kind I like (I like the Fugi apples cause they are very crisp and not at all grainy) instead of having whatever my mom picked. The rest of the fruit is seasonal here, so right now we're about to come into some really good stuff, like yummy watermelon.

Here's a tip on peaches. Go ahead and get the hard ones. Bring them home and put them in your fridge except for 2. Put those on the counter. Within a couple of days you will have yourself one hell of a juicy peach or nectarine. Then repeat with the ones in the fridge
 
Have you tried growing your own fruit?

I've started growing my own vegetables as part hobby, part experiment. I got sick of buying produce that tasted like it was ripened on the truck and not on the plant. I've found some plants are really easy to grow and require next to zero effort besides water every few days.
 
Well they import most fruit in the UK, and because they pick fruit abroad before it ripens and apply growth hormones to it as it travels to the UK, all the fruit ends up looking exactly the same and tasting bland. I've travelled to Asia and the fruit there tastes MUCH better. But generally it depends on where you buy it from.
 
Alex: don't have much of a garden at home. Got a Tangelo tree and a Lemon tree. The dog keeps "trimming" the lemon tree. He seems to like the taste of the bark for some reason.
But with water restrictions, and arsehole old geezer Greek neighbours, it's kinda hard to grow anything at the moment.

Turbolapp: Oh yeah, we've got heaps of variety when it comes to breeds of fruit. What we don't seem to have is the sweet and juicy quality that I remember it once having.
Thanks to the climate, watermelon is all year round here. Problem is getting it before it goes soft and spludgy on the shelf. Trick is to buy a whole one, but the mofos are about 8kg (still cheap enough to buy, but a bitch to lug home).
I have tried the hard peach method. They just end up being hard and flavourless :(

I think my whole dilemma must just be a case of living in a suburb with a lower than average socio-economic standing. I've heard that better ingredients get bought up by retailers in richer suburbs. They can afford the premium wholesale price because their consumers pay an even higher % margin at the retail point.
 
I sorta live out in the sticks now - the grocery stores near me all have crap for produce. They have it - but it's beat to shit, to ripe, not ripe enough, etc..

My folks live about an hour away where the median income is pretty high - THEIR grocery store rocks....

Good produce, good shape, good prices for it etc....

It's better than the produce stand near us (big produce stand - farmers sell directly to and other produce stands buy from).

Your stores probably just suck - or your tastebuds are dying :)
 
HarveyJ said:
Alex: don't have much of a garden at home. Got a Tangelo tree and a Lemon tree. The dog keeps "trimming" the lemon tree. He seems to like the taste of the bark for some reason.
But with water restrictions, and arsehole old geezer Greek neighbours, it's kinda hard to grow anything at the moment.

Turbolapp: Oh yeah, we've got heaps of variety when it comes to breeds of fruit. What we don't seem to have is the sweet and juicy quality that I remember it once having.
Thanks to the climate, watermelon is all year round here. Problem is getting it before it goes soft and spludgy on the shelf. Trick is to buy a whole one, but the mofos are about 8kg (still cheap enough to buy, but a bitch to lug home).
I have tried the hard peach method. They just end up being hard and flavourless :(

I think my whole dilemma must just be a case of living in a suburb with a lower than average socio-economic standing. I've heard that better ingredients get bought up by retailers in richer suburbs. They can afford the premium wholesale price because their consumers pay an even higher % margin at the retail point.
Click to expand...

Or maybe your tastebuds really are dying.:eek:
 
I read a study two years ago that showed that vegetation and plants are not as "potent" as they used to be 100 years ago (or shortly after the industrial revolution).

They proved that flowers such as roses no longer smell as strong as they used to in the beginning of the previous century. It has also been suggested that plants with fruits are slowly evolving away from having the strong flavors they once had. The suspected cause is the way agriculture and modern needs for mass-production has "watered out" some of the genes.
 
Honestly the only time I enjoy fruit is when I can get it at home from the farm and/or when I go to the middle east ($0.75 fresh fruit smooties FTW!). The crap they sell in a supermarket here disgusts me.
 
Completely agree that fruits are way better/fresher in Asia and the Middle East.

As far as the grocery stores go, most of them sell the same tasteless crap. So far, the only grocery store I found that sells semi-decent fruit (still not as good as in Asia, but miles ahead of Safeway's crap) is Trader Joes.

If you have one in your area, give it a try.

BTW, if you are ever in San Francisco, check out the huge farmers market they have at the Ferry Terminal on Saturdays - great selection of fruit and produce there.
 
Do you have a local farmer market around? Fruit sold in supermarket sucks.

And there are store like trader joe or whole food that sell "organic" fruit in higher price. They taste a lot better too
 
HarveyJ said:
We have about 4 different green grocers, where I do my fruit n veg shopping. They're just as bad for the quality of produce.
Click to expand...

The Prahran Markets used to be pretty good when I lived in Melbourne (admittedly quite a few years ago now), especially at the organic grocer there.

I haven't lived in Australia for a couple of years but when I was living in Perth (my hometown) I noticed a definite decline in quality.

I now live in Paris where the fruit and veg is generally tasteless crap so I think it's an international thing.

Try to buy heirloom varieties if you can, the flavour is so much better.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom