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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2351 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.

The strawberry thing is varieties of strawberries that look big, red, and beautiful on store shelves but have almost no flavour. Also they ship well.

They are dominant with California growers, not sure about other states.

It's one of the things I tease California about. People from there just assume strawberries have no flavour. Steve Sailer is a Californian and usually has interesting observations, but once he talked about how strawberries are a flavourless decorative fruit.

California popularized adding strawberries to salads, because they think they are basically a vegetable.

Beef and Chicken have been having domestic production problems in the US. There were very aggressive chicken culling during the Biden admin against bird flu. Beef producers took big hits during covid. Supply chain disruptions kept feed prices high. I suspect that some of the corporate consolidation and regulatory changes haven't helped. The US beef herd has been declining for years and it's currently the smallest since the 1970s, in the face of a much larger population. Obviously imports have offset a lot of that.

I'm conspiracy minded and paranoid, so I think there's an alliance of Big Ag and vegans in the USDA working to wipe out small producers and make meat more expensive. But no, I can't prove that.

Anyways I think that in the face of higher prices stores have been putting lower quality meat on the shelves.

Potato prices for farmers are way down, so I'm not sure why quality would be dropping there.

It could also be something happening during transport. Truck drivers setting the trailer temp to be too high or too low for some reason. Perhaps letting it get too warm then dropping it near freezing right before delivery so it's cold enough when it's unloaded.

It's one of the things I tease California about. People from there just assume strawberries have no flavour. Steve Sailer is a Californian and usually has interesting observations, but once he talked about how strawberries are a flavourless decorative fruit.

California popularized adding strawberries to salads, because they think they are basically a vegetable.

This is absurd and hilarious. Can any CA posters confirm if this is real? If true, just another reason not to move to Cali, I guess.

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