8 ms·

Anecdotal: A strawberry farmer once told me that people prefer to buy the bigger ones, unaware they are less tasty, so that's what he's growing.

gumby 8y ago
I guess it's like the chickens: large and without flavor. Perhaps most people in the US have never experienced ordinary food?
- mamon 8y ago
  After I moved to California (quite recently) I was shocked by the quality of food here, compared to Europe. In fact I think most of so called "American cuisine" are actually workarounds for that poor quality. They use enormous amounts of ketchup, because it very efficiently kills the taste of everything underneath. They use toasters, because American bread tastes like it was made of sawdust mixed with gum, and toasting it makes it taste slightly better. They grill a lot of things for the same reason. They eat a lot of eggs, because it is almost impossible to cook them wrong :) And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by. I've actually been to a Walmart which, despite being huge (200k sqft) have not sold any fresh vegetables at all.
  - adriveatrain 8y ago
    > enormous amounts of ketchup, because it very efficiently .... if it was efficient, why use enormous amounts? The conditions you describe are called "food deserts" and is an oft discussed topic. https://www.cdc.gov/features/FoodDeserts/ https://www.cdc.gov/features/FoodDeserts/
  - VBprogrammer 8y ago
    I understand why you are being downvoted because to label a whole countries cuisine as being bad is a massive generalisation. But I've got to agree that my experience in New York was pretty similar. Even in a fine dinning steak house, the steak was hidden by a 'salt crust' which made it practically impossible for me to enjoy it. In an Italian the tomato sauces were so sweet they reminded me of the sauce you'd have with baked beans. Everything was just over done in one way or another.
    - CloudNetworking 8y ago
      > In an Italian the tomato sauces were so sweet they reminded me of the sauce you'd have with baked beans. On the other hand, most -if not all- of tomato sauces in the UK are so acidic that Spaniards living in the UK are importing tomato sauce from Spain (as it has a bit of added sugar). It might be similar with actual Italians, so maybe this example is just that you're used to your way of having tomato sauce :)
      - chosenbreed37 8y ago
        True. I understand that drinks manufactures adapt their products to suit different markets. The Fanta "Orange" I've seen in Europe seems paler and possibly less sweet compared to the ones in Africa. I wouldn't be surprised if Coke tasted slightly different depending on which part of the world you happen to be.
        VBprogrammer 8y ago
        I can vouch for that. My father used to bring a pack of Cokes back from Florida whenever we went growing up. Good old High Fructose Corn Syrup! Everything in America appeared to be shifted towards an extreme though. Fattier, bigger, saltier or sweeter than you'd find in much of Europe.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Coke does taste differently - the ingredients are different even across Europe. I always look forward to visiting Germany because I always bring a 4-pack back.
        CloudNetworking 8y ago
        > Coke does taste differently It's usually cut down with things like chalk and aspirin when sold to final customers across Europe. Oh, you meant the other Coke. Nevermind :D
        theriddlr 8y ago
  - adventured 8y ago
    > And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by Nearly everything you said is incorrect, this one in particular. Vegetables are not expensive in the US compared to other nations of similar incomes. The US is a leading producer of vegetables such as cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, squash, potatoes (/tuber), onions, turnips, soybeans, carrots, pumpkins and tomatoes (/fruit). Globally the US is third in vegetable production, behind China and India. For one example, the US produces about 15% of all lettuce globally (with 4% of the world population). Vegetables are more than plentiful in the US, we unfortunately waste enormous amounts of vegetables. The US consumes more vegetables per capita than these European nations: Germany, UK, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia, Austria, Ireland, Iceland, Hungary, Czech, Bulgaria US vegetable consumption is almost identical to the average of the EU. It's also essentially identical to the consumption in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Interesting fact: the poorest countries in Europe typically consume 50% to 100% more vegetables per capita than the wealthiest countries in Europe. Source: FAOStat
    - CloudNetworking 8y ago
      > Interesting fact: the poorest countries in Europe typically consume 50% to 100% more vegetables per capita than the wealthiest countries in Europe. This is indeed interesting, but I guess vegs are mostly grown on poorer countries (except Netherlands I suppose), so it's cheap and easy to buy local vegs. Also, mediterranean/southern european countries (Italy, Spain, Greece - poorer than their northern neighbours) have different diets than northern countries. Less meat and more tomato/olives/uncooked stuff as the climate doesn't require to ingest as many calories as in the north.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    I don’t know which part of California you’re in, but this certainly isn’t true of the cuisine in San Francisco. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant that used ketchup on anything but fries or burgers. I’ve had plenty of bad food in France and Italy by the way, you can get bad stuff anywhere. Judging a nations cuisine by personal anecdotes is not very rational. And Walmart is not really a grocery produce store. If you want fresh vegetables, go to your local grocer, farmers market, or atleast a Whole Foods. I mean if you’re going to Walmart to buy vegetables, perhaps your buying “American cuisine” at the wrong places too. Anyplace slathering ketchup on stuff is fast food or fast casual, or a really shitty restaurant.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      On the other hand, in France you can buy fresh produce in all Walmart-type stores.
      - cromwellian 8y ago
        Hypermarkets in France are typically half to one fifth the size of Walmart Supercenters, not exactly the same. A typical Albertsons, Safeway, or Ralph’s is more the size of France’s big box stores, and those do have fresh produce.
        athenot 8y ago
        Not sure. The hypermarket I grew up going to had 80 (eighty) checkout lanes and sold everything you'd find at a Walmart Supercenter, but with way more selection. As for the food sections in a typical grocery store in the US (Kroger, Publix, Albertsons, Safeway), it is laughably tiny and the quality is depressing.
        cromwellian 8y ago
        I looked up the average square meters and Walmart’s supercenters tend to be 1.6x to 2x. For example, Carrefour vs Walmart
  - zxcvbn4038 8y ago
    I used to live in an area where was-marts were built out very densely, probably a dozen super-centers within easy driving distance. When the stores first open they tend to have really great produce, then after six weeks or so everything falls off, and your left with overripe/wilting produce, and the fruit flys are like a plague. After seeing this pattern a number of times I decided that the good produce goes to store openings, then once people develop a habit of going to the store they start sending the good produce to the next store opening.
  - dazc 8y ago
    To be fair, you can find poor examples of food in Europe too (and very poor hygiene).
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    > And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by. I've actually been to a Walmart which, despite being huge (200k sqft) have not sold any fresh vegetables at all. Are you kidding me? Find a farmer's market.
    - magduf 8y ago
      In the EU, you don't have to find a farmer's market to get fresh produce.
  - fma 8y ago
    Every Walmart I've been to has fresh produce. But to your point, if you want a large variety of fresh produce for cheap you go to an ethnic food store. Around Atlanta that would be the Asian and Mexican grocery stores, which are as large as Walmart, stocked majority of produce. It's bustling with customers, carts full of produce. The produce section at Walmart is actually larger than my local so called grocery stores (Kroger, Publix...)... Where carts are full of cereal and other non perishable food. On the topic of strawberries, they would be half the price at the ethnic super markets. I somewhat disagree with the statement grilling takes the taste and hides the freshness. I would say that to frying. If you go to your local "seafood" restaurant most of the menu is fried this, fried that.
  - rb808 8y ago
    Agreed its usually quantity over quality. California is perhaps freshest and tasiest in the nation, with the healthier lifestyles, local farms and Mexican influence. You should try the midwest.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Going to call shenanigans on your claims. Vegetables and fruits in California are quite cheap, especially the organic and heritage types because they're grown locally here. And having eaten European food, I would say the quality of most of it is trash. The French drown their dishes in butter because that's the only thing that makes their food palatable. British, Irish, and Scottish food simply isn't unless you're drunk, which explains their proclivity for drinking at every meal. And Italian food? It's best ingredient comes from America...
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Ingredients! Potatoes, tomatoes, corn. Chocolate AND vanilla. Tobacco. Chili peppers. And on and on...
    - saiya-jin 8y ago
      You apparently didn't eat much proper food in France or Italy beyond some take-away junkfood or maybe some obscure highly local cuisine without any clue what you're ordering, otherwise I can't explain such a disconnect from reality. UK food generally is not considered haute-cuisine by anybody so that's a weird comparison. But then your post is full or weird stuff - organic local food being "especially cheap" doesn't make much sense, when everywhere this is the most expensive category due to extra costs on whole process of growing/treatment/transport
      - gamblor956 8y ago
        Before I went in-house, I counted a number of Michelin-starred chefs as clients and I ate at most of their restaurants. I know what good food can taste like. While in France, I ate at a variety of highly-regarded local sit-down restaurants, expecting truly amazing food. I was not impressed, nor was anyone else in my group. The ingredients were about on par with organic vegetables available at my local grocery store. (I live in a nice part of California, so we have better access to fresh organic heritage vegetables than almost anywhere else in the world--including Europe.) While the food certainly looked much fancier than what I normally in in America, and the cooking was far better executed than most American restaurants, on a flavor basis it was merely average. Quite simply, I've had more flavorful food at a taco stand.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Its the economy of scale that ruins our food. Agriculture is 2% of our economy. Better taste etc would cost more. Its a free-market spiral where a thing can be made a little cheaper but gets a little worse, until all you can buy is crap for almost nothing. Or switch to boutique products (food, furniture, whatever) that costs 10X - 100X more than the commodity stuff.
  - delinka 8y ago
    Math checks out. You want quality food? You want the grower and its employees to earn a living wage? You have to pay for that.
    - nickspacek 8y ago
      But don't economies of scale still say that you can improve prices for good tasting food by scaling up from the small farms? Maybe that just gets taken to the extreme year over year when people focus on constantly increasing profit.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      I want quality food that is mostly produced automatically.
logfromblammo 8y ago
This lines up with my anecdotal experience of watermelons. Watermelons used to be quite large, and packed with large, dark seeds. From these, I learned what watermelons taste like. At some point, I think in the late 1980s or early 1990s, growers started selling seedless watermelons in increasing numbers. We never bought these, because they were generally inferior in taste and texture. But they were easy to cut up, and to put into a fruit salad without getting any watermelon seeds in it. As time went on, the seeded shelf space decreased, and seedless increased. Then they started getting smaller in the 2000s. Now, you cannot find a full-sized, genuinely watermelon-flavored watermelon in the supermarket. They are all these tiny, muskmelon-sized seedless orbs, with pale pink flesh that is vaguely reminiscent of a watermelon--like a sweeter, pinker cucumber. And these disappointing little 5# sterile triploid things cost the same as a full-blown 20# "real" watermelon. The small strawberries are still available--sometimes. It is readily apparent that growers are still experimenting with different cultivars. I really only want two things from strawberries. I want them to taste like strawberry, and I want them to not be covered with mold the day after I buy them. The big ones seem to last longer, but the small ones generally taste better. So I don't see a clear winner there yet. If I had the choice, I'd probably buy the smaller ones and save the longer-lasting species for table fruit later in the week. But this puts the strawberry in direct competition with other fruits that tend to go moldy faster. The produce manager probably wants fruit that can stay on display long enough to get sold rather than go moldy before someone can pay for them. So my preference doesn't matter. It isn't really that "people" prefer to buy them, but that supermarket produce managers prefer to sell them. People generally don't get two different varieties to choose from. If they want "strawberries", they buy what the store stocked, or they don't. And the store wants to stock fruits that bruise less easily, grow redder, hold more water, and rot more slowly. Just like with the tomatoes. The "pick your own" places could cater to consumer preferences, but those will be shaped by what has been available to them previously. The "self pick" farms are only open during the local growing season, while the grocery stores are importing the varieties they prefer all year. The stores train them to seek out firm, shiny red, gigantic strawberries.
- beagle3 8y ago
  The strawberry farmer that gave me that answer did, in fact, have both for sale in a farmer’s market, and the answer was in response to the inquiry why he has about 5 times the shelf space dedicated to the large strawberries. I guess I should count myself lucky that I can still get full size seeded and full size seedless watermelons, with essentially no difference in flavor (seeded are indeed a little sweeter, but not by much). Also, they are quite red, dark red if ripe-on-the-edge-of-spoiling, but decent red with still about a week or so of shelf life.

gumby 8y ago

I guess it's like the chickens: large and without flavor. Perhaps most people in the US have never experienced ordinary food?

mamon 8y ago
After I moved to California (quite recently) I was shocked by the quality of food here, compared to Europe. In fact I think most of so called "American cuisine" are actually workarounds for that poor quality. They use enormous amounts of ketchup, because it very efficiently kills the taste of everything underneath. They use toasters, because American bread tastes like it was made of sawdust mixed with gum, and toasting it makes it taste slightly better. They grill a lot of things for the same reason. They eat a lot of eggs, because it is almost impossible to cook them wrong :) And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by. I've actually been to a Walmart which, despite being huge (200k sqft) have not sold any fresh vegetables at all.
- adriveatrain 8y ago
  > enormous amounts of ketchup, because it very efficiently .... if it was efficient, why use enormous amounts? The conditions you describe are called "food deserts" and is an oft discussed topic. https://www.cdc.gov/features/FoodDeserts/ https://www.cdc.gov/features/FoodDeserts/
- VBprogrammer 8y ago
  I understand why you are being downvoted because to label a whole countries cuisine as being bad is a massive generalisation. But I've got to agree that my experience in New York was pretty similar. Even in a fine dinning steak house, the steak was hidden by a 'salt crust' which made it practically impossible for me to enjoy it. In an Italian the tomato sauces were so sweet they reminded me of the sauce you'd have with baked beans. Everything was just over done in one way or another.
  - CloudNetworking 8y ago
    > In an Italian the tomato sauces were so sweet they reminded me of the sauce you'd have with baked beans. On the other hand, most -if not all- of tomato sauces in the UK are so acidic that Spaniards living in the UK are importing tomato sauce from Spain (as it has a bit of added sugar). It might be similar with actual Italians, so maybe this example is just that you're used to your way of having tomato sauce :)
    - chosenbreed37 8y ago
      True. I understand that drinks manufactures adapt their products to suit different markets. The Fanta "Orange" I've seen in Europe seems paler and possibly less sweet compared to the ones in Africa. I wouldn't be surprised if Coke tasted slightly different depending on which part of the world you happen to be.
      - VBprogrammer 8y ago
        I can vouch for that. My father used to bring a pack of Cokes back from Florida whenever we went growing up. Good old High Fructose Corn Syrup! Everything in America appeared to be shifted towards an extreme though. Fattier, bigger, saltier or sweeter than you'd find in much of Europe.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        Coke does taste differently - the ingredients are different even across Europe. I always look forward to visiting Germany because I always bring a 4-pack back.
        CloudNetworking 8y ago
        > Coke does taste differently It's usually cut down with things like chalk and aspirin when sold to final customers across Europe. Oh, you meant the other Coke. Nevermind :D
      - theriddlr 8y ago
- adventured 8y ago
  > And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by Nearly everything you said is incorrect, this one in particular. Vegetables are not expensive in the US compared to other nations of similar incomes. The US is a leading producer of vegetables such as cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, squash, potatoes (/tuber), onions, turnips, soybeans, carrots, pumpkins and tomatoes (/fruit). Globally the US is third in vegetable production, behind China and India. For one example, the US produces about 15% of all lettuce globally (with 4% of the world population). Vegetables are more than plentiful in the US, we unfortunately waste enormous amounts of vegetables. The US consumes more vegetables per capita than these European nations: Germany, UK, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia, Austria, Ireland, Iceland, Hungary, Czech, Bulgaria US vegetable consumption is almost identical to the average of the EU. It's also essentially identical to the consumption in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Interesting fact: the poorest countries in Europe typically consume 50% to 100% more vegetables per capita than the wealthiest countries in Europe. Source: FAOStat
  - CloudNetworking 8y ago
    > Interesting fact: the poorest countries in Europe typically consume 50% to 100% more vegetables per capita than the wealthiest countries in Europe. This is indeed interesting, but I guess vegs are mostly grown on poorer countries (except Netherlands I suppose), so it's cheap and easy to buy local vegs. Also, mediterranean/southern european countries (Italy, Spain, Greece - poorer than their northern neighbours) have different diets than northern countries. Less meat and more tomato/olives/uncooked stuff as the climate doesn't require to ingest as many calories as in the north.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  I don’t know which part of California you’re in, but this certainly isn’t true of the cuisine in San Francisco. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant that used ketchup on anything but fries or burgers. I’ve had plenty of bad food in France and Italy by the way, you can get bad stuff anywhere. Judging a nations cuisine by personal anecdotes is not very rational. And Walmart is not really a grocery produce store. If you want fresh vegetables, go to your local grocer, farmers market, or atleast a Whole Foods. I mean if you’re going to Walmart to buy vegetables, perhaps your buying “American cuisine” at the wrong places too. Anyplace slathering ketchup on stuff is fast food or fast casual, or a really shitty restaurant.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    On the other hand, in France you can buy fresh produce in all Walmart-type stores.
    - cromwellian 8y ago
      Hypermarkets in France are typically half to one fifth the size of Walmart Supercenters, not exactly the same. A typical Albertsons, Safeway, or Ralph’s is more the size of France’s big box stores, and those do have fresh produce.
      - athenot 8y ago
        Not sure. The hypermarket I grew up going to had 80 (eighty) checkout lanes and sold everything you'd find at a Walmart Supercenter, but with way more selection. As for the food sections in a typical grocery store in the US (Kroger, Publix, Albertsons, Safeway), it is laughably tiny and the quality is depressing.
        cromwellian 8y ago
        I looked up the average square meters and Walmart’s supercenters tend to be 1.6x to 2x. For example, Carrefour vs Walmart
- zxcvbn4038 8y ago
  I used to live in an area where was-marts were built out very densely, probably a dozen super-centers within easy driving distance. When the stores first open they tend to have really great produce, then after six weeks or so everything falls off, and your left with overripe/wilting produce, and the fruit flys are like a plague. After seeing this pattern a number of times I decided that the good produce goes to store openings, then once people develop a habit of going to the store they start sending the good produce to the next store opening.
- dazc 8y ago
  To be fair, you can find poor examples of food in Europe too (and very poor hygiene).
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  > And they don't eat much of the vegetables, because they are expensive and hard to come by. I've actually been to a Walmart which, despite being huge (200k sqft) have not sold any fresh vegetables at all. Are you kidding me? Find a farmer's market.
  - magduf 8y ago
    In the EU, you don't have to find a farmer's market to get fresh produce.
- fma 8y ago
  Every Walmart I've been to has fresh produce. But to your point, if you want a large variety of fresh produce for cheap you go to an ethnic food store. Around Atlanta that would be the Asian and Mexican grocery stores, which are as large as Walmart, stocked majority of produce. It's bustling with customers, carts full of produce. The produce section at Walmart is actually larger than my local so called grocery stores (Kroger, Publix...)... Where carts are full of cereal and other non perishable food. On the topic of strawberries, they would be half the price at the ethnic super markets. I somewhat disagree with the statement grilling takes the taste and hides the freshness. I would say that to frying. If you go to your local "seafood" restaurant most of the menu is fried this, fried that.
- rb808 8y ago
  Agreed its usually quantity over quality. California is perhaps freshest and tasiest in the nation, with the healthier lifestyles, local farms and Mexican influence. You should try the midwest.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Going to call shenanigans on your claims. Vegetables and fruits in California are quite cheap, especially the organic and heritage types because they're grown locally here. And having eaten European food, I would say the quality of most of it is trash. The French drown their dishes in butter because that's the only thing that makes their food palatable. British, Irish, and Scottish food simply isn't unless you're drunk, which explains their proclivity for drinking at every meal. And Italian food? It's best ingredient comes from America...
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Ingredients! Potatoes, tomatoes, corn. Chocolate AND vanilla. Tobacco. Chili peppers. And on and on...
  - saiya-jin 8y ago
    You apparently didn't eat much proper food in France or Italy beyond some take-away junkfood or maybe some obscure highly local cuisine without any clue what you're ordering, otherwise I can't explain such a disconnect from reality. UK food generally is not considered haute-cuisine by anybody so that's a weird comparison. But then your post is full or weird stuff - organic local food being "especially cheap" doesn't make much sense, when everywhere this is the most expensive category due to extra costs on whole process of growing/treatment/transport
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      Before I went in-house, I counted a number of Michelin-starred chefs as clients and I ate at most of their restaurants. I know what good food can taste like. While in France, I ate at a variety of highly-regarded local sit-down restaurants, expecting truly amazing food. I was not impressed, nor was anyone else in my group. The ingredients were about on par with organic vegetables available at my local grocery store. (I live in a nice part of California, so we have better access to fresh organic heritage vegetables than almost anywhere else in the world--including Europe.) While the food certainly looked much fancier than what I normally in in America, and the cooking was far better executed than most American restaurants, on a flavor basis it was merely average. Quite simply, I've had more flavorful food at a taco stand.
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Its the economy of scale that ruins our food. Agriculture is 2% of our economy. Better taste etc would cost more. Its a free-market spiral where a thing can be made a little cheaper but gets a little worse, until all you can buy is crap for almost nothing. Or switch to boutique products (food, furniture, whatever) that costs 10X - 100X more than the commodity stuff.
- delinka 8y ago
  Math checks out. You want quality food? You want the grower and its employees to earn a living wage? You have to pay for that.
  - nickspacek 8y ago
    But don't economies of scale still say that you can improve prices for good tasting food by scaling up from the small farms? Maybe that just gets taken to the extreme year over year when people focus on constantly increasing profit.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    I want quality food that is mostly produced automatically.

logfromblammo 8y ago

This lines up with my anecdotal experience of watermelons. Watermelons used to be quite large, and packed with large, dark seeds. From these, I learned what watermelons taste like. At some point, I think in the late 1980s or early 1990s, growers started selling seedless watermelons in increasing numbers. We never bought these, because they were generally inferior in taste and texture. But they were easy to cut up, and to put into a fruit salad without getting any watermelon seeds in it. As time went on, the seeded shelf space decreased, and seedless increased. Then they started getting smaller in the 2000s. Now, you cannot find a full-sized, genuinely watermelon-flavored watermelon in the supermarket. They are all these tiny, muskmelon-sized seedless orbs, with pale pink flesh that is vaguely reminiscent of a watermelon--like a sweeter, pinker cucumber. And these disappointing little 5# sterile triploid things cost the same as a full-blown 20# "real" watermelon. The small strawberries are still available--sometimes. It is readily apparent that growers are still experimenting with different cultivars. I really only want two things from strawberries. I want them to taste like strawberry, and I want them to not be covered with mold the day after I buy them. The big ones seem to last longer, but the small ones generally taste better. So I don't see a clear winner there yet. If I had the choice, I'd probably buy the smaller ones and save the longer-lasting species for table fruit later in the week. But this puts the strawberry in direct competition with other fruits that tend to go moldy faster. The produce manager probably wants fruit that can stay on display long enough to get sold rather than go moldy before someone can pay for them. So my preference doesn't matter. It isn't really that "people" prefer to buy them, but that supermarket produce managers prefer to sell them. People generally don't get two different varieties to choose from. If they want "strawberries", they buy what the store stocked, or they don't. And the store wants to stock fruits that bruise less easily, grow redder, hold more water, and rot more slowly. Just like with the tomatoes. The "pick your own" places could cater to consumer preferences, but those will be shaped by what has been available to them previously. The "self pick" farms are only open during the local growing season, while the grocery stores are importing the varieties they prefer all year. The stores train them to seek out firm, shiny red, gigantic strawberries.

beagle3 8y ago
The strawberry farmer that gave me that answer did, in fact, have both for sale in a farmer’s market, and the answer was in response to the inquiry why he has about 5 times the shelf space dedicated to the large strawberries. I guess I should count myself lucky that I can still get full size seeded and full size seedless watermelons, with essentially no difference in flavor (seeded are indeed a little sweeter, but not by much). Also, they are quite red, dark red if ripe-on-the-edge-of-spoiling, but decent red with still about a week or so of shelf life.