I’m interested in knowing if any of you have noticed a significant loss of quality in the produce you buy from the grocery store in the last few years.
I know that produce quality can vary from state to state, but I live in California which has always been renowned for its produce quality.
Here’s what I have noticed:
Iceberg lettuce - I can’t seem to find a head of lettuce that isn’t turning orange around the stalk. It travels up the leaves and, frankly, looks disgusting. My understanding is that the orange color isn’t harmful, but I also notice that the lettuce overall doesn’t taste as good as it once did.
Onions - almost every white onion I pick up has started to turn green, and from what I understand, the green parts are to be avoided because they can add a bitterness to the onions.
Garlic - I almost always buy the pre-packaged cloves of garlic now because every time I buy a full bulb, the cloves are sprouting. My chef friends tell me the sprouts have to be removed because they taste awful.
Perhaps the supply chains haven’t entirely improved since Covid, which could account for some of this, but I also suspect that the ICE raids have left the agriculture industry short-handed and produce tends to sit around longer than before.
Anyway, those are just theories. I’m just wondering if it is just me, or if others have noticed this phenomenon.
I can’t get a good head of celery to save my life. All the stalks I’ve see here in Montana are scrawny with thin ribs or are not ripe and green. I don’t know where they come from, but wherever it is they are either intentionally not growing them as large as they used to, or there’s some reason they can’t anymore.
I’ve never thought of celery as being “unripe” before. I mean, the yellowy stalks in the middle certainly are, And I’ve seen blown stalks that had been in the sun too long, but how does one determine ripeness? (serious question)
In my book, celery should be dark green, not pale green, not yellow, and not whitish. I’m talking about the outer ribs, not the immature inner stuff. The celery I have been buying lately has been light green at best, and not like what I have been buying over the past 50 years.
I used to live in California and was told the produce there was better, and that’s certainly true for fruit such as grapes and peaches, but I think celery comes from someplace that is colder, so it’s where it’s being grown and shipped from that’s the problem.
Seasonally we have decent ones. We grow our own so pass up the grocery store ones. Seems to me the bin they are in smells a bit like old fruit, getting ready to spoil.
Which is loads better than shipped green to ripen ones from Mexico.
I buy my groceries online, delivered, so I don’t get to choose the veg myself, but overall the quality is pretty good. We’ve been eating a lot of salad in the heatwave, and I have noticed that the “Little Gem” lettuces that we like tend to be a bit overblown. I dislike iceberg. I have been trying several different types of tomato and found some from a supplier on the Isle of Wight (an island off the south coast) that actually taste like real tomatoes. They are expensive, but worth the money.
Other veggies seem much the same as usual, although prices are up since last year.
What has really gone up in price is meat, especially beef and lamb.
You didn’t ask about meat, but I’ll whinge anyway - chicken breasts have gone completely to crap. I don’t know when the last time was that I got any good ones. We have switched to thighs for almost everything.
Lately the grapefruit has been better than I ever remember. Sweeter, deeper red, and juicier.