Common refrain from my perspective. No wonder kids don’t like fruit. It’s bred to survive picking and transport with minimal damage, often seedless, and have as long a shelf life as possible while looking attractive. It’s picked under-ripe by a big margin.

It tastes like shit. Pithy, flavorless, sour, etc. Some vegetables even fall into this trap. They’re big, pretty, and pithy. Dry. Hard.

It’s been a noticeable shift since I was a kid, and I was spoiled by growing up in a major fruit-growing area. Could pick up a flat of fresh strawberries for $6. Fresh melons, tree fruit, berries…all were available during the summer. Didn’t have too much cooler-climate fruit like apples though. That fruit was better than candy many times.

I’ve been making an effort to try to locate as much fruit or whatever to grow ourselves that tastes right, looks be damned. It’s a lot harder than I thought. Many of the seeds found at stores around this time of year are hybrids that often fall into the same commercial trap - big, showy, and shitty. You’ve got to go places like Seed Savers Exchange and buy the older varieties that are less fucked with.

It seems to me that ají/dedo-de-moça is undergoing the same process here in South America. People went from “whoa, you’re adding a whole pepper!” to “…meh, add two just to be safe”.

Dicing a pepper still gives me deadly jalapeno fingers for about 2 days, so I guess I’m still getting the spicy ones.