Warning: The following post contains information that might be interpreted as “the old days were better than today.”
Summer fruit, such as nectarines, peaches, and plums, used to be my favorite types of fruit–flavorful and moist; however, the fruit that I now typically find in the grocery store is as hard as a rock–and just as juicy. I call most of the fruit in the grocery stores “spalding brand” since it would be better served with a baseball bat or 7-iron than with lunch.
I don’t know if it’s genetic engineering of the fruit designed to give it a longer shelf life, or if it’s the fact that the fruit has to be picked before it’s ripe since it’s sent across the country or from the southern part of the globe, but fruit never used to be like this. You used to be able to go to the store and buy soft, edible fruit.
Some of the stores have now started to put signs in front of the spalding fruit that say something such as This fruit will be ripe in one or two days. I’m no fruit expert, but that sounds suspicious to me. Fruit ripens on the tree; it doesn’t ripen in a grocery store or on your window sill. It might get softer–if you’re lucky, soft enough to be able to eat without paying for your dentist’s heated swimming pool–but I don’t think it gets more ripe. The ripe in a couple of days line is an attempt to make it sound as if rock-hard fruit is to be expected.
If you’re reading this and think I’m a curmudgeon; don’t blame me. You saw the warning at the beginning of the post.
–Paul
Paul’s book–Literally, the Best Language Book Ever;
