I have a small breakfast every morning that I insist be a half grapefruit.
While visiting in California, I purchased a bag. It was from Florida: normal, juicy and sweet.
When I returned home to Florida, the bag I purchased was from California: smaller, dryer and more tart.
Do truckers have a lock on shipping bundles of grapefruit across the country simply so they don’t have to return empty or what? No that makes no sense either, but I can’t imagine why I’m stuck in Florida with worse product when the best is home grown.
The prices of the bags were essentially the same.
Can anyone explain this waste of trucking?
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Is the grapefruit breakfast for the same reason as Mark Twain’s frog?
Mark Twain — ‘Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.’
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Better. It’s my way of denying my Doc statin
kickbacksrebates.That’s a good one, for sure. The best is Del Monte though, you’ve really gotta hand it to them. Rube Goldberg couldn’t have conceived of what they’re doing.
They grow fruit in South and Latin America because it’s a tropical rain forest. They ship it to China where they cut it up and process it. The plastic cups they put it into are made in the US, also shipped to China (they don’t have a plastics industry?) They use fruit juice to fill the cup, that’s shipped in from Europe (no juicers in latin america where they grow the fruit?) The cardboard packaging comes from India, shipped to China, but is made with 20% recycled paper board, which happens in the US, so we ship the cardboard to India so they can print it (more cheaply apparently). The finished product, is sent to the West Coast and trucked across the entire US. So you have shelf-stable mixed-fruit cocktail cups to put in your kids lunches. Because eating fruit is healthy.
And, by weight of actual fruit (and lost nutritional value), the cost is higher.
I have little problem with paying to out of season fruit/veggies. I’ve learned to be reluctant to buy the “cheap” products that the heavily discounted stores sell – it goes bad within a day or two.
There are a few stores local to me that sell REALLY fresh fruits and veggies – Meijer’s, Giant Eagle, Heinen’s – and their offerings can be kept under refrigerated conditions for the better part of a week without noticeable deterioration.
I also worry about pesticide contamination and other aspects of growing common in other countries.
I’m fairly lucky – I live in a farming area (the farmland within the region along the Great Lakes has some of the best soil anywhere). Just a short drive away (around 45 minutes to an hour or so) are some Amish farming communities – their food is top quality, and available both locally, at farmstands, and in my daughter’s favorite, the Amish auctions. She goes there to get produce for canning.