9 ms·

The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious

172 points by normanlee 12y ago

Taylorious 12y ago
I don't understand why every time I read an article that has something to do with apples the writer bashes on red delicious apples and acts like people are being manipulated into eating them. I love apples and I eat a large variety of them, and though I don't get red delicious the majority of the time, they are still really good and are a good goto apple because they are so consistent. I love how they are crisp, that they have a thick skin, and that they aren't overly sweet or sour. Plus, they are really cheap and are often good sized. Varieties like honey crisps can be tasty, but they can be quite a bit more money and they are often so sweet that it's almost like a dessert.
- sk5t 12y ago
  Speaking only for myself, the red delicious takes up valuable market real estate that could better be used by some other variety of apple not resembling fresh styrofoam dunked in sugar water--I resent the red delicious for its combination of prominent place, flashy looks, nondescript flavor, and repugnant texture. The red delicious stands apart for its extreme crispness, and to those sensitive to it, biting in is like nails on a chalkboard. Also, it seems like one chew releases all the moisture, leaving a mouthful of dry bleh-ness with which to contend.
  - julian_t 12y ago
    Absolutely... giant red apples with a vinyl-like skin and mushy interior, so highly polished and waxed that a chance reflection can blind you. I call them ASOs (Apple-Shaped Objects)... and IMHO the only place they belong is in Snow White ;-)
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Be fair. Most grocery store fruit is a gamble - you know that going in. But Red Delicious, properly ripe and picked at the right time, can live up to its name. A perfect one is really, really good.
    - mark-r 12y ago
      I live in an area that grows a lot of apples - in fact the Honeycrisp was developed only a few miles from my home. But I don't think I've ever seen a locally grown Red Delicious. As a kid I fell for the storyline "they're delicious", but as I got older I realized just how poor those ones from the supermarket are. I avoid them at all costs now.
- kijin 12y ago
  Seems like Red Delicious is the Comic Sans of apples: a ubiquitous flavor that everyone loves to hate!
  - notfoss 12y ago
    I would compare it to Georgia. Why does every (well most) news website use Georgia?!! As if there is a dearth of newer beautiful looking fonts.
- x0x0 12y ago
  red delicious in sfbay area have been uniformly mealy or mushy. My favorite fruit is apples and I can still barely eat them. I think people are just unhappy lots of grocery stores stock only red/golden delicious with maybe a granny smith, or at least primarily red delicious. Plus the name offends...
- mcphage 12y ago
  > I don't understand why every time I read an article that has something to do with apples the writer bashes on red delicious apples Well, clearly you like Red Delicious apples. And that's fine, I'm not knocking you for that. But I don't think that's a majority opinion. As a result, most articles about apples are written by people who really dislike Red Delicious apples.
- HNJohnC 12y ago
  You have...unusual taste for someone who loves apples and "eats a lot of them". May I humbly suggest you try a few varieties further afield.
pjungwir 12y ago
Good riddance. Red delicious apples get mealy fast, sometimes before you buy them. I kept waiting for the article to acknowledge this, and the closest it came was "tastes have sifted." Bah, who has ever liked a mealy apple? Gala, Fuji, and especially Braeburn stay crisp and tasty longer. Strangely, yellow delicious stays good despite getting softer. It doesn't get mealy, just softer, and it's still great to eat.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "Red delicious apples get mealy fast, sometimes before you buy them." Wait, you mean it's possible for them to not be mealy?
  - roghummal 12y ago
    Yes.
  - kd0amg 12y ago
    They're ok straight from the tree. Still not my favorite by a long shot, but ok.
    - bunderbunder 12y ago
      Basically nobody gets 'em straight from the tree, though. I live in an apple-growing state, and all the Red Delicious apples in the supermarket still come from Washington, 2,000 miles away.
- colmvp 12y ago
  You pretty summed up why I hate Red Delicious.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  Has the apple itself changed? I don't remember the modern frustration with mealy red delicious apples when I was a kid - I loved them back then. Is modern shipping or farming rougher now?
siliconc0w 12y ago
It's clear this capitalism thing isn't working. New national mandate: all products to be sold in identical opaque boxes. Marketing is outlawed and the only allowed form of advertising is hiring Sam Waterston to dispassionately read off the results of independent double blind studies your product has been involved in.
DirtyAndy 12y ago
As a kid in the 1970's living in New Zealand most of our local apples (NZ grows a lot of apples) were green. Imported Red Delicious used to sit in the supermarket looking so red and beautiful and screaming to be purchased, which occasionally I could get my mother to do. I don't remember them being floury, but they were always sweeter than the green apples - a real memory of childhood. But now in comparison to Gala, Fuji, Braeburn and others, Red Delicious seem floury, the skin is too thick and the flavour no where near as crisp and clean as the other varieties. There's also a lack of airmiles on most of these as we grow them here. 35 years on I don't think my kids have had a Red Delicious, and certainly not something I will miss if I never have another one.
legohead 12y ago
This article confused the hell out of me. Since I don't eat apples but my kids love them, I have purposely tried all the kinds of apples at the store. And time and time again my kids prefer Red Delicious.
- RaptorJ 12y ago
  This is maybe not inconsistent. Kids like Kraft macaroni and cheese and Hotdogs covered in ketchup. We shouldn't expect kids to like "better" foods if they haven't developed a palette yet.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Marketing? My kids nag me to buy "cheese product" which is like cheese but 10x the price (OK I'm exaggerating, it's 5x - cheese is already the most expensive single item of food we buy), tastes like plastic and is marketed in a kid-friendly way.
- nshepperd 12y ago
  Might be related to the childhood preference for sweet foods - apparently Red Delicious has high amounts of sugar, relative to other apple varieties. For example, 14.8% sugar for "Early Red" variety[1], vs 10.4% average over all kinds[2]. Maybe this is enough to explain it? [1]. http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49591548_Compositional_Characteristics_of_Fruits_of_several_Apple_(Malus_domestica_Borkh.)_Cultivars/links/0deec51e784d64eb92000000 http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49591548_Composition... [2]. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+apple http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+apple
chrismealy 12y ago
Honeycrisp apples are amazing. If you've never had one before you're in for a big surprise.
- damon_c 12y ago
  They are really hard to find... almost as if they are seasonal or something!
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- freditup 12y ago
  They are great apples, but they're also about 3x as expensive as Red Delicious apples (at least where I am in the US).
  - jcromartie 12y ago
    You'd have to pay me to eat a Red Delicious if Honeycrisp is in season.
- hcrisp 12y ago
  Honeycrisp are amazing. So are Jazz, if you can find them. Our local grocer has many interesting kinds. Also, read Michael Pollan's "The Botany of Desire" for a more in-depth treatment of apple biodiversity vs. the market forces.
- LordHumungous 12y ago
  Too sweet. Braeburn all the way.
jlawer 12y ago
I have to say I love Red Delicious apples when they are fresh. They are the worst for shelf life so you need to be careful, but I will take one at its freshest over any other variety I have tasted.
crymer11 12y ago
Arkansas Black is one of my favorites. Not very common and usually only found later in the season, but they keep for months.
- discardorama 12y ago
  This. I came to talk up AB. For some weird reason, when I bite into them, I get a hint of cardamom. They're my favorite by far.
sdm 12y ago
Interesting read. I've always found Gala and Fuji too soft and lacking the crispness of a Red Delicious. I have never been able to stand them. I can't abide non-crisp apples. I find the best apple for crispness and taste is the Cameo, followed by Granny Smithes. Red Deliciouses still hold 3rd place when it come apple taste and crispness for me.
- peeters 12y ago
  Interesting; while I agree with your ideals, I find they lead me to the opposite conclusion. Red delicious were never crisp enough, compared to Gala which are consistently crisp, and for a lot longer.
- fphhotchips 12y ago
  I've found that both Gala and Fuji vary heavily according to the time of year. If I get them 'in season' [1], they're crisp and delicious. If I get them out of season, they can be quite soft/floury. It's been a long time since I had a soft Pink Lady though. [1] I put that in quotes because I'm not sure whose season. I'm an Aussie, and we can get them year round, so I figure we must be importing at some point. As such, this may be a regional thing.
nl 12y ago
Apples! For a while a couple of years back I was an Apple geek (the fruit, not the computer). It's good to see that the Gala, Braeburn and Fuji apples have already been mentioned. If you can find them, Jazz apples[1] are a must-try. They are a cross between the Gala and the Braeburn, and the most amazingly crisp apple I've ever tried. I think the flavour isn't quite as good as a Gala, but that crispness is the complete opposite of the Red Delicious. They are good looking apples, too. The Pink Lady apple is also a good one. I think that might have my favorite flavour. http://www.orangepippin.com/ http://www.orangepippin.com/ is a good place to learn about the varities available. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(apple) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(apple)
- stock_toaster 12y ago
  > The Pink Lady apple is also a good one. I think that might have my favorite flavour. Also my favorite!
- hcrisp 12y ago
  Yes, I second the Jazz recommendation. They are as good as, if not better than, Honeycrisp, and usually cheaper. SweeTango was supposed to rival Honeycrisp, but never lived up to the expectation, IMO.
  - arjunnarayan 12y ago
    I dunno about you - when I first tasted it, I thought SweeTango was like Honeycrisp on steroids. Although I fully concede that my reaction could have been like the folks in the study where they showed people rate more expensive wines higher than the cheaper ones.
  - LordHumungous 12y ago
    Honeycrisp is overrated imo. They are too sweet.
  - rmcpherson 12y ago
    As a connoisseur of Minnesotan apples, I've always thought the SweeTango was a perfect iteration on the HoneyCrisp. Both are good though.
clumsysmurf 12y ago
If you eat the peel, Red Delicious has the highest level of antioxidants / polyphenols of the apples tested. Not all apples commonly available were in the lineup though, like Gala. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0346298 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0346298
durkie 12y ago
Go pick apples that grow near you! You don't have to go to a farm to do this in a lot of places. We pick apples all around Atlanta (and donate them to local food banks) and they are super interesting -- Apple trees that are grown from a seed (a "pippin") will produce an apple that has never before existed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation), so we get lots of strange varieties from the fruits we pick around town : large, potato-shaped apples that are just dripping with juice but almost tasteless. Golf-ball sized apples that are green-skinned but pink-fleshed. Super delicious ("grocery store quality") apples with strange skin patterns and lots in between. There's tons of fun stuff to find out there.
- coldpie 12y ago
  Curious for my own sake, do you just pick from random trees you find? Do you worry about property rights at all, or is this on public land?
jbuckner 12y ago
I've always wondered why at almost every event where large quantities of apples are given out, there's always Red Delicious. I see them and just keep moving on. Really interesting (and unfortunate) story of them. I'm curious if there are any early generation Red Delicious apple trees left or if they've all become offspring of the selective breeding. I'd like to taste one. A few years ago I started seeking out good-tasting apples and kept a spreadsheet to track my reviews. If you can get your hands on Jazz or Pacific Rose apples, they are amazing!
thrownaway2424 12y ago
The same thing has happened to pears (used to be hundreds of varieties widely grown) and pork, which veered dangerously close to the color, texture, and flavor of Styrofoam in the 90s before they started breeding some of the tasty genes back in from the vestigial show pigs. Thank god for the 4-H breeders.
brianbreslin 12y ago
I remember growing up on red delicious in the 80s and 90s (my sis preferred Granny Smith, so we had both at home). The day in the mid 90s my dad brought home some new apples (Fuji and gala) was revelating. After that I could never enjoy red delicious as much. I don't think I've willingly bought a red delicious in ages. If you've never tried it, manzano bananas are great too. They are tiny little bananas that have a distinct apple flavor mixed in.
foz 12y ago
There's a great BBC documentary called "Apples: British to the Core" [1] which has a very nice look into the history of apples, how they were cultivated, and how classic varieties are becoming lost. Everything leads back to the Cox Orange Pippin. I live in Europe now, and enjoy a wide variety of interesting regional apples. Whenever I return to the USA I'm disappointed by the selection and quality of apples available. Red and green. They look nice, but often are waxy and bland. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUAJ0F1oH-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUAJ0F1oH-M
- pyre 12y ago
  Must depend on where you are. See this: http://portlandnursery.com/events/appletasting.shtml http://portlandnursery.com/events/appletasting.shtml If they can procure 60 varieties, then it's definitely not at "US" thing.
elchief 12y ago
I'll take a Spartan or nice n sour McIntosh any day over a mushy bruisy oversweet red "delicious".
- e40 12y ago
  I live in arguably the best place in the US for good produce (near Berkeley Bowl and the gourmet ghetto), and I must say, I haven't had a good McIntosh apple in years. Either they are just not around or they just don't taste like the fantastic apples of 10-15 years ago. Red Delicious were responsible for me hating apples as a kid. McIntosh were responsible for me starting to love them again.
  - carlob 12y ago
    Good McIntosh are pretty common in NJ. I just couldn't seem to find them year round. I wonder why that is.
rbobby 12y ago
40 years ago red delicious were small with firm flesh and a great taste and even better refrigerated. They were also uncommon and perhaps more expensive than the locally grown McIntosh. Now... red delicious are usually mealy and blandly sweet. I really miss those oh so delicious apples of my youth.
- jinushaun 12y ago
  I remember when red delicious we're small and crisp. At some point, they got gigantic and mealy. So gross. I hope my favorite apples don't go down the same path... Braeburns seem to be getting bigger and bigger... You still can't beat wild apples though. Way better/complex flavor profile than bland/uniform store ones.
davidw 12y ago
Interesting, and I think it reflects a broader culinary trend in the US: people are waking up to good food. As a kid in the late 80ies, in a medium sized town in Oregon, real Italian ingredients were not to be had for love or money, even if my parents even knew what they were. Now, when I go home to visit, they have real Italian cheeses, prosciutto, and even some mozzarella flown in from Italy. Local copycats (my Italian friends all get a kick out of "Oregonzola") are also on the rise, which is a good thing in terms of bringing down the prices and increasing availability to a wider swath of people. My wife and I have discussed a few ideas for food companies that we might be able to start in the US.
deleted 12y ago
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AlyssaRowan 12y ago
The Red Delicious is a terrible apple. Waxy and mushy and watery. Try a Worcester Pearmain if you get a chance.
rpupkin 12y ago
The red delicious is a metaphor for the U$D. This is the work of Bolsheviks advocating flight from the dollar toward a new reserve currency, concealed as harmless information. Eden's door is Exit Only. Run from this serpent.
hoggle 12y ago
Vote with your wallet. Lots of variety has been lost forever because old breeds haven't been cultivated anymore. There is an initiative here in Europe that tries to keep old true-to-seed breeds alive but they have to fight the brutal lobbying of Monsanto and the likes. In the end it is our fault when we buy stuff for the wrong reasons (cheaper is better, looks, etc). Arche Noah: "In the past 100 years we have lost about 75 percent of agricultural diversity worldwide." "Beginning of the (20th) century there were 2,000 apple varieties, today you can find at the grocery store only max. 20 varieties." https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.arche-noah.at%2Fsortenerhaltung%2Fwozu-vielfalt&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... Fun fact: these days Joe Cocker cultivates old tomato breeds on his farm in Colorado and gets some of his seeds from the Arche Noah network.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Yeah I grew some 'heirloom tomatoes'. Small, bad color, flavorless. They hybrid them for a reason.
- skj 12y ago
  > "Beginning of the (20th) century there were 2,000 apple varieties, today you can find at the grocery store only max. 20 varieties." Not that I disagree with the point, but I take issue with statements like this one, which can be true yet completely misleading. How many varieties were available in grocery stores in the beginning of the 20th century? How many apple varieties exist now? I suppose you're comparing apples to apples, but not in the way that that phrase is supposed to mean :)
dghf 12y ago
The Cox (Cox's Orange Pippin): sharp and crisp like an autumn morning.
dirktheman 12y ago
I saw a fascinating documentary about apples last year. It traces the back the roots of all apple races to Kazachstan, where the film maker finds a botanical garden with ancient races. Unfortunately, nothing is documented there. It's in dutch, but the images are beautiful, too: http://www.npo.nl/fresco-s-paradijs-2/20-10-2013/VPWON_1175269 http://www.npo.nl/fresco-s-paradijs-2/20-10-2013/VPWON_11752...
cafard 12y ago
A half century ago and more, A.J. Liebling complained of the popularity of the red delicious "which doesn't taste like an apple, and the yellow delicious, which doesn't taste like anything." (Quoted from memory--I haven't seen my copy of Between Meals in a long time.)
tehwalrus 12y ago
Braeburns and Granny Smiths are the only apples we ever buy (sometimes substitute Gala or Jazz for the Braeburns, if we can't find them). I've literally never eaten a deep red apple I liked, and I am a big apple eater. (UK)
roghummal 12y ago
>At the supermarket near his home in central Virginia, Tom Burford likes to loiter by the display of Red Delicious. He waits until he spots a store manager. Then he picks up one of the glossy apples and, with a flourish, scrapes his fingernail into the wax: T-O-M. >“We can’t sell that now,” the manager protests. >To which Burford replies, in his soft Piedmont drawl: “That’s my point.” You're kidding, right?
gadders 12y ago
For anyone that lives in the UK and loves apples, I would recommend the Apple Festival held at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent [1]. Brogdale is the home of the UK's National Fruit Collection [2] and if you've ever wanted to have 30-40 varieties of apples and pears to taste and buy like a wine-tasting this is the place to be. [1] http://www.applefestivalkent.co.uk/search/label/Theapples http://www.applefestivalkent.co.uk/search/label/Theapples [2] http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/ http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/
roghummal 12y ago
When I buy a red delicious down in the SV, it's fantastic. I can't find a decent apple (of any variety) in SF. Granny, gala, delicious, golden, they're all mealy and either overly sweet or tasteless. What's the problem?
shalmanese 12y ago
The New Yorker had a fantastic article on the commercial side of developing new species of apples a couple of years ago: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/21/crunch http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/21/crunch
epaladin 12y ago
I've never understood why Red Delicious were so popular. Now that I've been living down the street from an orchard in upstate NY, I understand even less. Orchards really seem to push Fuji around here- they seem to grow more of them than anything else. I've always really like macs, and my wife got me into macouns which are pretty similar.
RankingMember 12y ago
After reading the article, I still don't get what he was proving by scratching his initials into them in front of a grocery store manager.
chromaton 12y ago
Here's a tip: try to find a large supermarket that caters to Asian customers to buy your apples. The Buford Highway Farmer's Market here in Atlanta has a great selection. They carry most of the varieties mentioned on this thread. Another thing. Buy in season to get the best quality. Apple picking season is the fall. As a bonus, you'll notice the price drop significantly when the crop comes in.
iopq 12y ago
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.
- jerf 12y ago
  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.
  - aroch 12y ago
    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.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    You're not that far off from the truth. 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.
    - jerf 12y ago
      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.
irishloop 12y ago
I've had lots of different kinds of apples. I like Red Delicious apples the best. Is there something wrong with me?
JeremyMorgan 12y ago
Interesting read for sure, but it's just like any other product. Things that are nice looking, cheap, and plentiful will always be consumed by the mass market, even if it's lower quality. "Good enough" rules the market for nearly every product out there, at least in the number of units sold. Why would apples be any different? "Two buck Chuck" wine is the top selling wine year after year, but it's nowhere near the best. I consider Red Delicious "good enough" apples, and they're plentiful. Fiji and Honeycrisp will be my choice when they're available, but that isn't always the case.

172 points by normanlee 12y ago

I don't understand why every time I read an article that has something to do with apples the writer bashes on red delicious apples and acts like people are being manipulated into eating them. I love apples and I eat a large variety of them, and though I don't get red delicious the majority of the time, they are still really good and are a good goto apple because they are so consistent. I love how they are crisp, that they have a thick skin, and that they aren't overly sweet or sour. Plus, they are really cheap and are often good sized. Varieties like honey crisps can be tasty, but they can be quite a bit more money and they are often so sweet that it's almost like a dessert.

sk5t 12y ago
Speaking only for myself, the red delicious takes up valuable market real estate that could better be used by some other variety of apple not resembling fresh styrofoam dunked in sugar water--I resent the red delicious for its combination of prominent place, flashy looks, nondescript flavor, and repugnant texture. The red delicious stands apart for its extreme crispness, and to those sensitive to it, biting in is like nails on a chalkboard. Also, it seems like one chew releases all the moisture, leaving a mouthful of dry bleh-ness with which to contend.
- julian_t 12y ago
  Absolutely... giant red apples with a vinyl-like skin and mushy interior, so highly polished and waxed that a chance reflection can blind you. I call them ASOs (Apple-Shaped Objects)... and IMHO the only place they belong is in Snow White ;-)
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Be fair. Most grocery store fruit is a gamble - you know that going in. But Red Delicious, properly ripe and picked at the right time, can live up to its name. A perfect one is really, really good.
  - mark-r 12y ago
    I live in an area that grows a lot of apples - in fact the Honeycrisp was developed only a few miles from my home. But I don't think I've ever seen a locally grown Red Delicious. As a kid I fell for the storyline "they're delicious", but as I got older I realized just how poor those ones from the supermarket are. I avoid them at all costs now.
kijin 12y ago
Seems like Red Delicious is the Comic Sans of apples: a ubiquitous flavor that everyone loves to hate!
- notfoss 12y ago
  I would compare it to Georgia. Why does every (well most) news website use Georgia?!! As if there is a dearth of newer beautiful looking fonts.
x0x0 12y ago
red delicious in sfbay area have been uniformly mealy or mushy. My favorite fruit is apples and I can still barely eat them. I think people are just unhappy lots of grocery stores stock only red/golden delicious with maybe a granny smith, or at least primarily red delicious. Plus the name offends...
mcphage 12y ago
> I don't understand why every time I read an article that has something to do with apples the writer bashes on red delicious apples Well, clearly you like Red Delicious apples. And that's fine, I'm not knocking you for that. But I don't think that's a majority opinion. As a result, most articles about apples are written by people who really dislike Red Delicious apples.
HNJohnC 12y ago
You have...unusual taste for someone who loves apples and "eats a lot of them". May I humbly suggest you try a few varieties further afield.

pjungwir 12y ago

Good riddance. Red delicious apples get mealy fast, sometimes before you buy them. I kept waiting for the article to acknowledge this, and the closest it came was "tastes have sifted." Bah, who has ever liked a mealy apple? Gala, Fuji, and especially Braeburn stay crisp and tasty longer. Strangely, yellow delicious stays good despite getting softer. It doesn't get mealy, just softer, and it's still great to eat.

dllthomas 12y ago
"Red delicious apples get mealy fast, sometimes before you buy them." Wait, you mean it's possible for them to not be mealy?
- roghummal 12y ago
  Yes.
- kd0amg 12y ago
  They're ok straight from the tree. Still not my favorite by a long shot, but ok.
  - bunderbunder 12y ago
    Basically nobody gets 'em straight from the tree, though. I live in an apple-growing state, and all the Red Delicious apples in the supermarket still come from Washington, 2,000 miles away.
colmvp 12y ago
You pretty summed up why I hate Red Delicious.
Pxtl 12y ago
Has the apple itself changed? I don't remember the modern frustration with mealy red delicious apples when I was a kid - I loved them back then. Is modern shipping or farming rougher now?

siliconc0w 12y ago

It's clear this capitalism thing isn't working. New national mandate: all products to be sold in identical opaque boxes. Marketing is outlawed and the only allowed form of advertising is hiring Sam Waterston to dispassionately read off the results of independent double blind studies your product has been involved in.

DirtyAndy 12y ago

As a kid in the 1970's living in New Zealand most of our local apples (NZ grows a lot of apples) were green. Imported Red Delicious used to sit in the supermarket looking so red and beautiful and screaming to be purchased, which occasionally I could get my mother to do. I don't remember them being floury, but they were always sweeter than the green apples - a real memory of childhood. But now in comparison to Gala, Fuji, Braeburn and others, Red Delicious seem floury, the skin is too thick and the flavour no where near as crisp and clean as the other varieties. There's also a lack of airmiles on most of these as we grow them here. 35 years on I don't think my kids have had a Red Delicious, and certainly not something I will miss if I never have another one.

legohead 12y ago

This article confused the hell out of me. Since I don't eat apples but my kids love them, I have purposely tried all the kinds of apples at the store. And time and time again my kids prefer Red Delicious.

RaptorJ 12y ago
This is maybe not inconsistent. Kids like Kraft macaroni and cheese and Hotdogs covered in ketchup. We shouldn't expect kids to like "better" foods if they haven't developed a palette yet.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Marketing? My kids nag me to buy "cheese product" which is like cheese but 10x the price (OK I'm exaggerating, it's 5x - cheese is already the most expensive single item of food we buy), tastes like plastic and is marketed in a kid-friendly way.
nshepperd 12y ago
Might be related to the childhood preference for sweet foods - apparently Red Delicious has high amounts of sugar, relative to other apple varieties. For example, 14.8% sugar for "Early Red" variety[1], vs 10.4% average over all kinds[2]. Maybe this is enough to explain it? [1]. http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49591548_Compositional_Characteristics_of_Fruits_of_several_Apple_(Malus_domestica_Borkh.)_Cultivars/links/0deec51e784d64eb92000000 http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49591548_Composition... [2]. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+apple http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+apple

chrismealy 12y ago

Honeycrisp apples are amazing. If you've never had one before you're in for a big surprise.

damon_c 12y ago
They are really hard to find... almost as if they are seasonal or something!
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freditup 12y ago
They are great apples, but they're also about 3x as expensive as Red Delicious apples (at least where I am in the US).
- jcromartie 12y ago
  You'd have to pay me to eat a Red Delicious if Honeycrisp is in season.
hcrisp 12y ago
Honeycrisp are amazing. So are Jazz, if you can find them. Our local grocer has many interesting kinds. Also, read Michael Pollan's "The Botany of Desire" for a more in-depth treatment of apple biodiversity vs. the market forces.
LordHumungous 12y ago
Too sweet. Braeburn all the way.

jlawer 12y ago

I have to say I love Red Delicious apples when they are fresh. They are the worst for shelf life so you need to be careful, but I will take one at its freshest over any other variety I have tasted.

crymer11 12y ago

Arkansas Black is one of my favorites. Not very common and usually only found later in the season, but they keep for months.

discardorama 12y ago
This. I came to talk up AB. For some weird reason, when I bite into them, I get a hint of cardamom. They're my favorite by far.

sdm 12y ago

Interesting read. I've always found Gala and Fuji too soft and lacking the crispness of a Red Delicious. I have never been able to stand them. I can't abide non-crisp apples. I find the best apple for crispness and taste is the Cameo, followed by Granny Smithes. Red Deliciouses still hold 3rd place when it come apple taste and crispness for me.

peeters 12y ago
Interesting; while I agree with your ideals, I find they lead me to the opposite conclusion. Red delicious were never crisp enough, compared to Gala which are consistently crisp, and for a lot longer.
fphhotchips 12y ago
I've found that both Gala and Fuji vary heavily according to the time of year. If I get them 'in season' [1], they're crisp and delicious. If I get them out of season, they can be quite soft/floury. It's been a long time since I had a soft Pink Lady though. [1] I put that in quotes because I'm not sure whose season. I'm an Aussie, and we can get them year round, so I figure we must be importing at some point. As such, this may be a regional thing.

nl 12y ago

Apples! For a while a couple of years back I was an Apple geek (the fruit, not the computer). It's good to see that the Gala, Braeburn and Fuji apples have already been mentioned. If you can find them, Jazz apples[1] are a must-try. They are a cross between the Gala and the Braeburn, and the most amazingly crisp apple I've ever tried. I think the flavour isn't quite as good as a Gala, but that crispness is the complete opposite of the Red Delicious. They are good looking apples, too. The Pink Lady apple is also a good one. I think that might have my favorite flavour. http://www.orangepippin.com/ http://www.orangepippin.com/ is a good place to learn about the varities available. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(apple) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(apple)

stock_toaster 12y ago
> The Pink Lady apple is also a good one. I think that might have my favorite flavour. Also my favorite!
hcrisp 12y ago
Yes, I second the Jazz recommendation. They are as good as, if not better than, Honeycrisp, and usually cheaper. SweeTango was supposed to rival Honeycrisp, but never lived up to the expectation, IMO.
- arjunnarayan 12y ago
  I dunno about you - when I first tasted it, I thought SweeTango was like Honeycrisp on steroids. Although I fully concede that my reaction could have been like the folks in the study where they showed people rate more expensive wines higher than the cheaper ones.
- LordHumungous 12y ago
  Honeycrisp is overrated imo. They are too sweet.
- rmcpherson 12y ago
  As a connoisseur of Minnesotan apples, I've always thought the SweeTango was a perfect iteration on the HoneyCrisp. Both are good though.

clumsysmurf 12y ago

If you eat the peel, Red Delicious has the highest level of antioxidants / polyphenols of the apples tested. Not all apples commonly available were in the lineup though, like Gala. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0346298 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf0346298

durkie 12y ago

Go pick apples that grow near you! You don't have to go to a farm to do this in a lot of places. We pick apples all around Atlanta (and donate them to local food banks) and they are super interesting -- Apple trees that are grown from a seed (a "pippin") will produce an apple that has never before existed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation), so we get lots of strange varieties from the fruits we pick around town : large, potato-shaped apples that are just dripping with juice but almost tasteless. Golf-ball sized apples that are green-skinned but pink-fleshed. Super delicious ("grocery store quality") apples with strange skin patterns and lots in between. There's tons of fun stuff to find out there.

coldpie 12y ago
Curious for my own sake, do you just pick from random trees you find? Do you worry about property rights at all, or is this on public land?

jbuckner 12y ago

I've always wondered why at almost every event where large quantities of apples are given out, there's always Red Delicious. I see them and just keep moving on. Really interesting (and unfortunate) story of them. I'm curious if there are any early generation Red Delicious apple trees left or if they've all become offspring of the selective breeding. I'd like to taste one. A few years ago I started seeking out good-tasting apples and kept a spreadsheet to track my reviews. If you can get your hands on Jazz or Pacific Rose apples, they are amazing!

thrownaway2424 12y ago

The same thing has happened to pears (used to be hundreds of varieties widely grown) and pork, which veered dangerously close to the color, texture, and flavor of Styrofoam in the 90s before they started breeding some of the tasty genes back in from the vestigial show pigs. Thank god for the 4-H breeders.

brianbreslin 12y ago

I remember growing up on red delicious in the 80s and 90s (my sis preferred Granny Smith, so we had both at home). The day in the mid 90s my dad brought home some new apples (Fuji and gala) was revelating. After that I could never enjoy red delicious as much. I don't think I've willingly bought a red delicious in ages. If you've never tried it, manzano bananas are great too. They are tiny little bananas that have a distinct apple flavor mixed in.

foz 12y ago

There's a great BBC documentary called "Apples: British to the Core" [1] which has a very nice look into the history of apples, how they were cultivated, and how classic varieties are becoming lost. Everything leads back to the Cox Orange Pippin. I live in Europe now, and enjoy a wide variety of interesting regional apples. Whenever I return to the USA I'm disappointed by the selection and quality of apples available. Red and green. They look nice, but often are waxy and bland. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUAJ0F1oH-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUAJ0F1oH-M

pyre 12y ago
Must depend on where you are. See this: http://portlandnursery.com/events/appletasting.shtml http://portlandnursery.com/events/appletasting.shtml If they can procure 60 varieties, then it's definitely not at "US" thing.

elchief 12y ago

I'll take a Spartan or nice n sour McIntosh any day over a mushy bruisy oversweet red "delicious".

e40 12y ago
I live in arguably the best place in the US for good produce (near Berkeley Bowl and the gourmet ghetto), and I must say, I haven't had a good McIntosh apple in years. Either they are just not around or they just don't taste like the fantastic apples of 10-15 years ago. Red Delicious were responsible for me hating apples as a kid. McIntosh were responsible for me starting to love them again.
- carlob 12y ago
  Good McIntosh are pretty common in NJ. I just couldn't seem to find them year round. I wonder why that is.

rbobby 12y ago

40 years ago red delicious were small with firm flesh and a great taste and even better refrigerated. They were also uncommon and perhaps more expensive than the locally grown McIntosh. Now... red delicious are usually mealy and blandly sweet. I really miss those oh so delicious apples of my youth.

jinushaun 12y ago
I remember when red delicious we're small and crisp. At some point, they got gigantic and mealy. So gross. I hope my favorite apples don't go down the same path... Braeburns seem to be getting bigger and bigger... You still can't beat wild apples though. Way better/complex flavor profile than bland/uniform store ones.

davidw 12y ago

Interesting, and I think it reflects a broader culinary trend in the US: people are waking up to good food. As a kid in the late 80ies, in a medium sized town in Oregon, real Italian ingredients were not to be had for love or money, even if my parents even knew what they were. Now, when I go home to visit, they have real Italian cheeses, prosciutto, and even some mozzarella flown in from Italy. Local copycats (my Italian friends all get a kick out of "Oregonzola") are also on the rise, which is a good thing in terms of bringing down the prices and increasing availability to a wider swath of people. My wife and I have discussed a few ideas for food companies that we might be able to start in the US.

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AlyssaRowan 12y ago

The Red Delicious is a terrible apple. Waxy and mushy and watery. Try a Worcester Pearmain if you get a chance.

rpupkin 12y ago

The red delicious is a metaphor for the U$D. This is the work of Bolsheviks advocating flight from the dollar toward a new reserve currency, concealed as harmless information. Eden's door is Exit Only. Run from this serpent.

hoggle 12y ago

Vote with your wallet. Lots of variety has been lost forever because old breeds haven't been cultivated anymore. There is an initiative here in Europe that tries to keep old true-to-seed breeds alive but they have to fight the brutal lobbying of Monsanto and the likes. In the end it is our fault when we buy stuff for the wrong reasons (cheaper is better, looks, etc). Arche Noah: "In the past 100 years we have lost about 75 percent of agricultural diversity worldwide." "Beginning of the (20th) century there were 2,000 apple varieties, today you can find at the grocery store only max. 20 varieties." https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.arche-noah.at%2Fsortenerhaltung%2Fwozu-vielfalt&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... Fun fact: these days Joe Cocker cultivates old tomato breeds on his farm in Colorado and gets some of his seeds from the Arche Noah network.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Yeah I grew some 'heirloom tomatoes'. Small, bad color, flavorless. They hybrid them for a reason.
skj 12y ago
> "Beginning of the (20th) century there were 2,000 apple varieties, today you can find at the grocery store only max. 20 varieties." Not that I disagree with the point, but I take issue with statements like this one, which can be true yet completely misleading. How many varieties were available in grocery stores in the beginning of the 20th century? How many apple varieties exist now? I suppose you're comparing apples to apples, but not in the way that that phrase is supposed to mean :)

dghf 12y ago

The Cox (Cox's Orange Pippin): sharp and crisp like an autumn morning.

dirktheman 12y ago

I saw a fascinating documentary about apples last year. It traces the back the roots of all apple races to Kazachstan, where the film maker finds a botanical garden with ancient races. Unfortunately, nothing is documented there. It's in dutch, but the images are beautiful, too: http://www.npo.nl/fresco-s-paradijs-2/20-10-2013/VPWON_1175269 http://www.npo.nl/fresco-s-paradijs-2/20-10-2013/VPWON_11752...

cafard 12y ago

A half century ago and more, A.J. Liebling complained of the popularity of the red delicious "which doesn't taste like an apple, and the yellow delicious, which doesn't taste like anything." (Quoted from memory--I haven't seen my copy of Between Meals in a long time.)

tehwalrus 12y ago

Braeburns and Granny Smiths are the only apples we ever buy (sometimes substitute Gala or Jazz for the Braeburns, if we can't find them). I've literally never eaten a deep red apple I liked, and I am a big apple eater. (UK)

roghummal 12y ago

>At the supermarket near his home in central Virginia, Tom Burford likes to loiter by the display of Red Delicious. He waits until he spots a store manager. Then he picks up one of the glossy apples and, with a flourish, scrapes his fingernail into the wax: T-O-M. >“We can’t sell that now,” the manager protests. >To which Burford replies, in his soft Piedmont drawl: “That’s my point.” You're kidding, right?

gadders 12y ago

For anyone that lives in the UK and loves apples, I would recommend the Apple Festival held at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent [1]. Brogdale is the home of the UK's National Fruit Collection [2] and if you've ever wanted to have 30-40 varieties of apples and pears to taste and buy like a wine-tasting this is the place to be. [1] http://www.applefestivalkent.co.uk/search/label/Theapples http://www.applefestivalkent.co.uk/search/label/Theapples [2] http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/ http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/

roghummal 12y ago

When I buy a red delicious down in the SV, it's fantastic. I can't find a decent apple (of any variety) in SF. Granny, gala, delicious, golden, they're all mealy and either overly sweet or tasteless. What's the problem?

shalmanese 12y ago

The New Yorker had a fantastic article on the commercial side of developing new species of apples a couple of years ago: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/21/crunch http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/21/crunch

epaladin 12y ago

I've never understood why Red Delicious were so popular. Now that I've been living down the street from an orchard in upstate NY, I understand even less. Orchards really seem to push Fuji around here- they seem to grow more of them than anything else. I've always really like macs, and my wife got me into macouns which are pretty similar.

RankingMember 12y ago

After reading the article, I still don't get what he was proving by scratching his initials into them in front of a grocery store manager.

chromaton 12y ago

Here's a tip: try to find a large supermarket that caters to Asian customers to buy your apples. The Buford Highway Farmer's Market here in Atlanta has a great selection. They carry most of the varieties mentioned on this thread. Another thing. Buy in season to get the best quality. Apple picking season is the fall. As a bonus, you'll notice the price drop significantly when the crop comes in.

iopq 12y ago

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.

jerf 12y ago
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.
- aroch 12y ago
  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.
- bduerst 12y ago
  You're not that far off from the truth. 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.
  - jerf 12y ago
    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.

irishloop 12y ago

I've had lots of different kinds of apples. I like Red Delicious apples the best. Is there something wrong with me?

JeremyMorgan 12y ago

Interesting read for sure, but it's just like any other product. Things that are nice looking, cheap, and plentiful will always be consumed by the mass market, even if it's lower quality. "Good enough" rules the market for nearly every product out there, at least in the number of units sold. Why would apples be any different? "Two buck Chuck" wine is the top selling wine year after year, but it's nowhere near the best. I consider Red Delicious "good enough" apples, and they're plentiful. Fiji and Honeycrisp will be my choice when they're available, but that isn't always the case.