American mass-produced fruits are in general disgusting. They are tasteless and watery. Strawberries are probably the worst offenders. In Ukraine, strawberries are very sweet and much smaller. The American strawberries just seem full of water.
I've long had a joke theory that every fruit produces a certain fixed amount of flavor, and the bigger you breed it to be, the more watered down it gets. Sure, this is biological gibberish, but for a joke theory, it does seem to fit most of the facts.
On a less jokey note, I have found myself wondering how much gene engineering it would take to fix the mismatch between size and flavor.
I mean, you're not totally wrong... Fruits like strawberries prioritize the localization of their sugars towards the outside of the fruit -- where the seeds are (The opposite is true for thick-rinded fruits like melons). Whole-fruit sweetness/flavor though is more determined by the soil composition than the size of the fruit.
Typically the fruit of the plant contains a lot of chemical energy in the form of sugars. Plants that have been selectively bred for hardiness (thicker skin, longer ripening periods, etc.) expend more on those traits as opposed to making more chemical energy in the fruit.
And that is probably much closer to the real reason. (And I'm saying "probably" just to hedge since I don't truly know, but it seems very likely to me.)
But I sort of get a kick out of imagining a meta-physical level of "flavor per fruit" out there in the world.
Incidentally, part of what I wonder about gene engineering is whether we could keep most of the hardiness, etc, and focus very tightly on putting in more flavor compounds, instead of using the blunt stick of breeding and getting who knows what other characteristics correlated in with that. Of course it won't be free to the plant but we might still have some room for optimizing.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. I come from the "Apple Capital of the World" and it's all about local fruit. We ship out our fruit everywhere in the world, and it's not going to be anywhere near as good when it gets to you as it was when I ate it. We make the best apples hands down, but nothing compares to your local fruit if you are fortunate enough to have good orchards.
Basically what I'm getting at is that American fruit that's taken care of on the way to your mouth is great. If your local fruit tastes like this, then it's just not good fruit.
The problem is with early picking and forced ripening to allow longer selling distances and better shelf life. I agree with you completely, too. I live in an ag-heavy southern state and the local produce we get is as good as any I've had anywhere. I actually live next door to a strawberry farm and we take the kids to pick them a few times every spring. :)
Well if you shop at a mass market grocery store then you are probably getting the mass produced fruit.
But if you go to a farmers market or a fruit stand, changes are you are getting fruit from local farms. At least this is the case where I live.
Also there are tons of varieties of Strawberries perhaps the ones where you live are different. Fragaria vesca looks like a strain popular around Europe that looks very different from the American variety.
I agree about some tropical fruits (mangoes and durians especially), but I've had bananas straight off the tree in Southeast Asia and they really didn't taste any different to me.
Bananas are an exception because they are actually best picked green and allowed to ripen off the tree. I don't recall what goes wrong if you don't. This makes them the rare fruit that is perfectly happy with industrial production and shipping.
