Yeah, them and broccoli. I don't buy strawberries grown with pesticide. But it's hard to get a good one, even so.
The fact is, even strawberries I plant myself don't necessarily taste like anything anymore, because they've been developed for the packers for so long that most of the seed-and-plant stores that sell to individuals have only a very few varieties to choose from and none of them is much worth eating. To satisfy the packers and supermarkets, for years vegetables and fruits have been selected for longevity after picking, for resistance to bruising, for good colour -- so naturally, most of them have become fairly tasteless.
Folks who've been raised on the stuff, though, of course don't realise this.
But there are groups who share seed -- "seed savers", they call themselves (sounds like some Orwellian sabotage movement, and by gum it is!) -- which they inherited from their parents and grandparents. There are hundreds of varieties of tomatoes and strawberries and melons and so on to be had through the seed savers, and these varieties tend to have excellent flavour because that's what they were developed for.
cheers, Joanna
At 07:46 24-01-01, you wrote:
>Strawberries, of course, are one of the most heavily pesticided crops in
>the country.
>
>On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 02:32:53PM -0600, jf noonan wrote:
> > On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Joanna Sheldon wrote:
> > >
> > > "A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found
> > > in a Burger King strawberry milk shake, contains the
> > > following ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl
> > > valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl
> > > isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl
> > > valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone,
> > > ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl
> > > cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate,
> > > ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl
> > > propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin,
> > > hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol),
> > > a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon
> > > essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl
> > > anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl
> > > heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl
> > > salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil,
> > > nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol,
> > > rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent."
> >
> > Right, most of those things are probably in strawberries too,
> > hence the strawberry smell.
> >
> > > And all I want is a strawberry that tastes like a strawberry.
> >
> > A strawberry without the organic chemicals, eh?
> >
> > It's called water. You take all the scarey sounding substances
> > (hundreds, if not thousands of them) out of strawberries and you
> > have water (dihydrogen monoxide).
> >
> > > Something our grandparents would have taken for granted but
> > > which is almost impossible to find anymore.
> > >
> > > It occurs to me to wonder why we're surprised the cancer
> > > rates are so high.
> >
> > Yeah, we live long enough to get cancer now. Cancer is an older
> > person's disease with incidence very low in children (e.g. there
> > are only about 1500 cases of lymphoma in children per year in
> > the entire US), and building steadily the older one gets.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Joseph Noonan
> > Houston, TX
> > jfn1 at msc.com
> >
> > "An average scrapple loaf contains the rectums of 4 swine."
> >
>
>--
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
www.overlookhouse.com