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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1715 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 17, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So I came across a reddit thread that discusses something I've been feeling for the past decade or so.

  • Strawberries that are bright red outside, but white inside and have no flavor
  • Bananas that are green and rotten at the same time
  • Kiwis that are partially rock-hard and partially mush
  • Potatoes that wrinkle in a couple day
  • Chicken thighs that maintain a texture more like raw even when cooked to temp
  • Beef that smells foul and is somehow rubbery even when barely cooked

I doubt it's just my city, and I go to several different grocery chains (some better than others), but the frequency with which I encounter the above issues and many more just feels so much higher than 15 years ago. I've gone back and forth about how much of this is bias/nostalgia and how much of this is real, but the more that I eat abroad and the more that I go grocery shopping, the more convinced I get that there has indeed been a significant recent decline in produce quality in the US.

It's real, and It's climate change and capitalism.

All the economically viable cultivares of those fruits have pretty specific temperature requirements in that you need to know with certainty how wet/hot it will be when they are harvested and at various points during their growth. If it's off by a certain margin, you either get a crop failure or a curing failure, which is how you end up with potatoes that go bad from a single nick from the spade instead of healing, and onions that only partially cure and then sprout or rot. (Remember that vegetables are living plant parts,)

There is no amount of money that can fix the snake river plateau being warmer than it ever has been the day after the onions come up, so for the rest of your life you will have hit or miss produce.

Re. Bananas: If you get them at Costco (in california at least) you will be safer; the ones at my store come from Costa Rica and will reliably all go bad at the same inconvenient moment.

I'm less familiar with meat but I know that the major producers have trimmed so much fat from the process that they have reached the bone and are starting to scrape; I have no direct personal connection to that particular industry so I only have hearsay, but I'm told that the production end is getting squeezed hard to find some efficiencies after 200 years of finding efficiencies, so they are having to do some shit they know is bad to get the numbers Tyson et al require. This will be doubly true if you live outside of Comifornia; where they specifically regulate out certain practices.

It's climate change and capitalism.

I'm not generally a white knight for capitalism but I really don't think it's appropriate to blame here.

If people insisted upon better products, capitalism would generate and deliver them. And it does! It's never been easier to find amazing produce year-round, if you're willing to go the extra mile and pay a bit more.

The problem is that the average consumer is stupid and tasteless, and economies of scale mean that mass-market products will reflect the situation.

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