Fruit Meh

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What happened to summer fruit? Oh you can still find them in the supermarket and at those week-end farmer's markets. The produce departments at the grocery stores have them in abundance. You can still get summer fruit in restaurants too. They're all over the place. But what you can't get is that wonderful full taste that they had years ago.

I know I'm not the first to bellyache about this, everyone over the age of 50 or so who grew up eating delicious plums, peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries, and yes, even watermelon, knows that for many years now these fruits just haven't tasted as good as they once did. It doesn't matter where you buy them or how much you pay, most of the fruit today have no or very little taste. Today's watermelon has plenty of water, but very little melon taste. And that goes for most other melons also.

When I was a little boy (yes, here I go again into my grumpy old man rant) we had a plum tree and an apricot tree in our backyard. Each summer I looked forward to those plums, they were the sweetest, most flavorful plums I have ever eaten, and I haven't had a plum as good since then. The apricots were delicious too. I couldn't get enough of them. So what happened? Where did the flavor go?

Is it because I grew up? Is it like so many other things that we recall from our youth, our memories play tricks on us? The fruit hasn't changed, we have. No, no, no. That isn't it. I may have grown up, but I'm not delusional. I damn well know that the so-called fruit I eat today isn't as good as it used to be 60 years ago. And I'm not saying that because I'm a grumpy old man. Well, maybe I am saying that because I'm a grumpy old man, but that doesn't make it any less true.

When it comes to watermelon, my sister and I have a theory. We've come to the conclusion that the taste disappeared when the black seeds disappeared. Most watermelons you find today are seedless. It's also tasteless. So could it be that removing the seeds affected the deliciousness of the melon? We think so.

Growers and sellers must have determined that people would prefer that their watermelons have no seeds, so they developed a strain of melon devoid of those pesky little black things (and in so doing, the melon has no flavor). Unfortunately, for those of us who wouldn't mind dealing with the seeds in order to enjoy a better tasting melon, well, we're out of luck.

As a kid, I accepted the watermelon seeds as just another part of normal life. Seeds in the melon was actually a small price to pay for being able to enjoy a refreshing treat on an obnoxiously hot summer day. If you were a gross little boy like me, you would spit the seeds out of your mouth as you burrowed your way through the slice of melon. Sort of like the baseball players do with their sunflower seeds today. If you were a lady or gentleman you most likely would eat your slice of melon on a plate with a fork, carefully working the seeds out before putting a piece in your mouth. Very dainty.

With the seeds removed, watermelon has been given what amounts to a fruit lobotomy. It's become a shell, (make that a rind) of its former self. I'm sure this has been the case with all summer fruit. In an effort to make the fruit look better, or to give the growers the ability to produce more, or whatever else the monetary motivation might be, they have genetically modified the fruit, which has caused it all to become a bland, insipid version of what used to be so delicious. In other words, they're making fruit that looks like what it used to taste like, but doesn't anymore.

And thanks to AI they're making fake people that look like people but aren't really people. Maybe the fake people would enjoy some fake fruit.

As a real person, I can tell you I certainly don't. .

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