I was an apple fan until I bit into that big, shiny and colorful apple. Biting into it was like biting into one of those display fruits that look deceptively real but really made out of wax. It didn't taste like apples I knew back home. It was bland and boring.
Later I discovered an organic apple with much improved taste. Still, it wasn't close to my ideals. The true apple happiness occurred when one day I found a guy on the Farmers market who was selling real, tasty apples. They weren't shiny and were pretty small in size but the taste was right.
Unfortunately, the farmer didn't come back to sell his apples after that summer. I'm assuming he was losing business with his less attractive real apples.
The BBC News article dating way back to 2001 says that organic apples do taste better but are less efficient and produce half the yield. And the taste heavily depends on quality of the soil which gets ruined by conventional farming that include chemical treatments.
So my concern is that the fruit of the future will have no taste, since even organic farms implement conventional farming (that's why even organic apples don't taste quite right). My only hope are local farmers but even they are hard to find.
...Maybe I'll ask my mother to send me a package with apples from that community garden back home.
3 comments:
You could always buy a house (even in the city), and plant an apple tree. After a few years of care, maybe cleansing the soil with good composts and organic fertilizers, you could get a crop of ugly little apples with that beautiful taste.
1-I hate houses (even in the city). In fact, if there's a house in a city, it's not a city anymore. It's a suburb that calls itself a city. Like North Seattle:)
2-I'm kinda over apples. Humans are adaptable creatures and so I started to like different varieties of fruit. But, when the opportunity presents itself, I'll definitely buy tasty apples.
It's not just the chemicals... "Conventional" apples are bred to be shelf-stable for longer, to transport better, and to bruise less easily... and to be pretty. These are not necessarily compatible with the same genes that produce good taste! Red "Delicious" apples are anything but.
I like Fuji apples in general.
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