this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
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There are many reasons, but it all comes down to economics: how easy and cheap it is to farm and harvest, yield size, does it require refrigeration during transport, what's the shelf life, etc. Unfortunately optimizing for economics rarely pairs well with user interests, e.g. How nutricious the food is.
About shelf life:
There's this weird little apple tree, Prime Rouge. Every two years, he's choke full (the other empty) of perfectly formed, perfectly red apples, optical flaws are rare. They are already edible in summer but get really succulent taste and a white flesh about two months later. The best apple breed i know, in texture, taste and look.
Buut they only keep about two months max, unlike the other breeds you have in your supermarket.
Yeah, some apples I bought recently weirdly last a long time. The reason I know is that they tasted bad so I didn't feel like eating them...
Which is why until modern farming some of the most nutritionally balanced people's were hunter gatherers and pastoralists. The big advantage of farming vs ranching or pastoralism is that you can feed a lot of people for relatively little work, this rule of thumb is still true it's just that we can now do it on such a massive scale that a lot of the downsides have simply been overwhelmed.