No longer the Apple of our eyes

[packman]

the decline of the Red Delicious apple. Sad, this was THE apple at one time found in fruit baskets, and almost a given in a brown bag lunch, prized for its crunch and crispness.

"Between 1997 and 2000, U.S. apple growers lost nearly $800 million in surplus crop. They had “made the apples redder and redder, and prettier and prettier, and they just about bred themselves out of existence,” a marketing director for one Northwestern fruit company told The New York Times, shortly after President Bill Clinton approved the largest bailout in the history of the apple industry.

Since then, Red Delicious production has declined by 40 percent. While the apple is still by far the most common in the U.S.—growers produced 54 million bushels of Red Delicious in 2011, compared to just 33 million bushels of its closest competitor, the Gala—"

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/the-evil-reign-of-the-red-delicious/379892/

[msongs]

1. mushy with no flavor and skin thick as shoe leather. good riddance :-) nt