FUCK red delicious apples, where my granny smith squad at?
this is actually very interesting though, and as usual, shows that capitalist 'innovation' usually means fucking everything up
where my granny smith squad at?
nope honeycrisp is where it's at
this is actually very interesting though, and as usual, shows that capitalist ‘innovation’ usually means fucking everything up
I wonder though would it be much better how much better could it be under socialism? It probably wouldn't be so extreme but almost all the fruits you can buy at a store are bred for resilliance over all else (like flavor). Idk if this would be very avoidable unless farming itself was revolutionized.
honeycrisp are good, I just like the sourness and crunch of a granny smith over the sweetness of a honeycrisp .
the reason that capitalism does this is to try and infinitely expand. new strains to market to sell more apples, that's it, that's the entire idea. and so in this pursuit of infinite growth they act like short sighted idiots who run off the cliff edge. once you remove the profit motive, there is no reason to forcibly 'innovate' constantly, we should change agriculture for a large number of reasons, but in this case it's outside factors that influence agriculture that simply is not an issue when your primary focus goes from selling a good to providing food for people because they need food
honeycrisp are good, I just like the sourness and crunch of a granny smith over the sweetness of a honeycrisp .
granny smith have a great taste but are more often mealy than not in my experience. Honeycrip is one of the only breed of apple that is almost always crisp and it's also a good balance between sour and sweet
new strains to market to sell more apples, that’s it, that’s the entire idea. and so in this pursuit of infinite growth they act like short sighted idiots who run off the cliff edge. once you remove the profit motive, there is no reason to forcibly ‘innovate’ constantly
Is it just a problem of having too many types of apples that nobody needs or is that making them more vulnerable to diseases? I genuinely don't know much about how apple farms work at all.
I don't know why I didn't expect fruit varieties to be copyrighted :yea:
I think the big change under socialism would be having more free time to cultivate community gardens, where resilience would be less important
nope honeycrisp is where it’s at
Pink Lady is the superior apple variety.
I will fight any wrecker who thinks that their revisionist, bourgeois, anti communist strain of apple DARE be consumed by the proletariat
Traverso explains that on any apple tree you have what are called “sports,” which are apples that might have a slightly different genetic expression than the rest. When Red Delicious apples mutated toward more consistent coloring — i.e., brighter reds, less striping — farmers favored them, because this was a marketable quality. And therein lies the problem.
“It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” Traverso explains, “so as you favored the more consistently colored apples, you were essentially disfavoring the same genes that coded for great flavor.”
Hootin and hollerin at the fact they selective bred for red color so much that it ruined the flavor. I guess capitalism does innovate after all.
That explains why the honeycrisp or whatnot apples are very tasty since their skin is usually a mix of red and yellow (:curious-sickle:).
That's really fascinating. I wonder whether there exists a line of the old, "ugly" Red Delicious apples somewhere in the world. It seems unlikely to me that they'd be completely gone.
Maybe that seed bank in Russia that’s supposedly maintained a bunch of the planet’s biodiversity
There are a lot of heirloom varieties for all kinds of plants here and there, so probably.
the largest loss of apple diversity in the US was due to the prohibition. the temperance movement put an uncountable number of orchards to the axe. during the prohibition the apple tree was regarded as evil.... like forbidden fruit from the garden of eden evil. this is because apple production in the states was, from its inception, about hard cider production. it wasn't until a few clever apple orchard growers switched gears and started trying to market apples as a healthy food ("an apple a day keeps the doctor away" is a marketing slogan) and the pursuit of a not-so-tart and most importantly shelf-stable, red apple became the new goal.
then and now apple trees are the product of grafting scion wood from the tree that makes fruit you like to the root stock (root cuttings). it's clonal. apples are not "true to seed" in that their genetic combination from sexual reproduction is random as shit, so seed germination is the provenance of weirdo experimenters and wild/volunteerism, so apart from research stations and other oddities, apple groves/orchards are extremely uniform, genetically. certainly, nurseries are trying to "invent" new varieties to sell, but it takes time for those varieties to actually be evaluated for pest resilience, climate hardiness, fruit production, etc. and nurseries don't have time for all that... they want to sell their cuttings to the next sucker ASAP. apple growers do intermix varieties, due to the timing of pollination to stimulate fruit production.
and fuck this guy. red delicious always were kinda bullshit compared to others. it looks good and stays looking good on the shelf longer. that's it. most of the varieties of fruits and vegetables you eat were selected for these traits: shelf stable, big size, looks good, edible. you have to start finding local growers to get at the actual good food with high stats in texture, flavor, etc.
red delicious might have "tasted" sweeter to old timers, but that's because not everything was maxed out on sugar stats back then. it's almost certainly the same deal with sweet corn varieties from the 1950s and sweet corn today. and you don't call a variety "delicious" unless you're trying to sell it, just like the primary source for this article which is a longform advertisement for a nursery. they called it "red" because they wanted to distinguish it from the golden delicious, which is also only OK tasting. a real king doesn't need to remind people they're the king. they just be the king. like 👑honeycrisp👑 .
if you want to read an actual insane history of apples in the US, read Mike Pollan's The Botany of Desire . it's a phenomenal read that talks about 4 plants as representatives for 4 human desires: Apples for sweetness, Tulips for beauty, Cannabis for intoxication, and Potatoes for power. it fuckin' kicks ass and is a page turner.
or, if you just want to get righteously angry about capitalism and plants, check out Jack Kloppenburg's First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology.
Sour apples are about a thousand times better than sweet ones. And small apples are better than huge mutated ones. I got ripped off in my youth with only Delicious apples and the occasional Granny Smith. So many better apples out there.
Fujis tasted so much better pre-2010. Around 2011 or so they started getting less flavor and having taller shapes. In fact I've noticed that just about all produce period, tastes better when it has a wider, squatter shape
my observations were validated in 2013: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/climate-change-is-altering-the-taste-and-texture-of-fuji-apples-44558/
unrelated: the best apple I've ever tasted was at a farmers market in NYC in 2014. The woman claimed it was a "pink lady" but it looked nothing like the grocery ones. It had deep red skin, with brown warts, and a very matte finish. I actually only noticed it because of its smell, it was unbelievably fragrant and I noticed it just walking by. I bought a few, and when I sliced them open, there were red veins running through the interior flesh. Super sweet, but more importantly, the flavor was like 30 apples packed into one
Do apples get like that when they're left on the tree for a long time? Also the second best apples I've ever had were imported from China lol (similar situation, but a little less sugar content)
yea they can ruin you
all apples in the grocery store (not most, all) are somewhat unripe, but bred for sweetness. So that they can ship well due to being unripe, but still taste sweet. However, this makes the flavor kinda meh. Tasting an actual ripe apple flavor is really eye opening
basically if it has any green near the stem or bottom, it's still a bit unripe
I got some golden delicious apples one time that were ridiculously good and every one I've tried in the years since haven't been close to stacking up. I'm curious what the difference is too.
