<story><title>Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible</title><url>https://newengland.com/today/food/red-delicious-apple/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcv</author><text>As a kid, I was a fan of Golden Delicious, while others criticised it for being too mealy. That wasn&amp;#x27;t my experience, at least at first. Eventually I encountered increasingly mealy Golden &amp;quot;Delicious&amp;quot;, and started favouring other apples. Even the cheapest apples here, like Elstar and Jonagold, are pretty good in comparison.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it&amp;#x27;s the fate of any breed to eventually be bred for looks instead of taste. If you see two apples (or any other fruit or vegetable) of the same name, aren&amp;#x27;t you more likely to pick the tastier &lt;i&gt;looking&lt;/i&gt; one? You can&amp;#x27;t taste them in the shop, but you can compare by looks. So eventually, that&amp;#x27;s what they end up being bred for.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d expect the only way to protect an apple from that fate, would be to trademark the name, and the rightsholder only licenses the name to apples from cultivars that breed for taste and don&amp;#x27;t sacrifice taste for looks.&lt;p&gt;This might be a case where IP rights might be used for good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>asdff</author><text>This is interesting, because I think apple picking orchards and farmers markets have an advantage here over supermarkets and delivery services. For public orchards, the apples are bred for taste first and foremost. Everyone goes in expecting to see dusty apples, with many worms too, but its fine since that&amp;#x27;s how it is out in the countryside. Everyone is also eating apples constantly while out picking, even if encouraged not to its an open secret, since after you&amp;#x27;ve tasted the honey you are going to end up with two huge bags of your favorite varieties at the end of the day. Farmers markets also do a lot of free samples, even in this pandemic. You can typically ask at a farmers market for a vendor to slice you a sample as well if you are curious, most of the time they just do it for you unprompted as you are browsing. People become regulars at farmers markets if the vendor has very high quality items. They are looking for freaky mutant looking heirloom stuff in a farmers market, not a perfect plastic looking apple for a good price.</text></comment>
<story><title>Red delicious apples weren’t always horrible</title><url>https://newengland.com/today/food/red-delicious-apple/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcv</author><text>As a kid, I was a fan of Golden Delicious, while others criticised it for being too mealy. That wasn&amp;#x27;t my experience, at least at first. Eventually I encountered increasingly mealy Golden &amp;quot;Delicious&amp;quot;, and started favouring other apples. Even the cheapest apples here, like Elstar and Jonagold, are pretty good in comparison.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it&amp;#x27;s the fate of any breed to eventually be bred for looks instead of taste. If you see two apples (or any other fruit or vegetable) of the same name, aren&amp;#x27;t you more likely to pick the tastier &lt;i&gt;looking&lt;/i&gt; one? You can&amp;#x27;t taste them in the shop, but you can compare by looks. So eventually, that&amp;#x27;s what they end up being bred for.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d expect the only way to protect an apple from that fate, would be to trademark the name, and the rightsholder only licenses the name to apples from cultivars that breed for taste and don&amp;#x27;t sacrifice taste for looks.&lt;p&gt;This might be a case where IP rights might be used for good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kqr</author><text>Sometimes you can go by smell! Produce that smells good also often tastes good.&lt;p&gt;I also have some luck going by looks, but by specifically looking for exemplars that have flawed looks (in ways that I know don&amp;#x27;t negatively affect flavour). For types of produce where you can sort of tell which ones are good, other people tend to go for the ones that look good but also don&amp;#x27;t have blemishes. That selection process results in the good ones being statistically overrepresented among the ones with flawed looks.</text></comment>