Can You Really Trust Good Fruits Right Now??

At my local store, I always ask the produce people what is really good right now & they have never steered me wrong. I mainly do organic. You can tell by the little stickers what you are getting. 4 digit # starting with 3 or 4 is conventionally grown = pesticides....5 digit # starting with 9 = Organic.......5 digit # starting with 8 = genetically engineered. 9 is devine, 4 is a bore, 8 is NOT great. As for taste, I have gotten some good peaches, strawberries, & I have always enjoyed Honeycrisp apples. pricey, but worth it! Hope this has helped you.

I usually stick to Granny Smith apples in the wintertime. I did get a batch of peaches and nectarines from our grocery store last week and they were surprisingly really good.

I agree with the comment to ask the produce department staff what they recommend. THey will know what just came off the truck. Every thing I have gotten recently at both Aldis and Walmart have been good. THis includes apples, cantaloupe, banans, pears, avacodo, and strawberries. The main thing is to quickly eat what you have boughten as it has travel farther so it has a shorter life in your kitchen. I say go for it.

I personally have been sticking to frozen. I think they taste much better right now. None of the "fresh" fruit I have bought have been good. However, I did get a good batch of apples last week.

S.-
I live in CA so my answer might be a bit skewed to west coast and what we have in store. While expensive, the berries are great right now. I just bought strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. Sometimes the produce is grown in a different country so you want to make sure that you clean the fruit appropriately. I also ate a boatload of cherries today (Thank you, Chile). A lot of the "out of season" fruit that you see in the stores this time of year is grown in South America where it is summer. I also eat green apples, clementines, grapefruit, grapes (usually Chilean or Argentinian this time of year), bananas this time of year. Speaking from experience, I would stear clear of the melons, peaches, apricots. Even if they are grown out of country, I have not had good success with them. I hope this helps.

Happy fruit hunting,
S.

I really love fruit from my local fruit store. They have rich and tasty bananas, juicy apples, oranges, mangos, peaches, plums, grapes and they all are sweet ! They are really fresh and most are from South America and Mexico! I say check your local fruit stores.

Right now we're enjoying clementines, apples, bananas and pineapple. Bought some red grapes and they were pretty good!

Stick to what is in season. That will taste freshest, be freshest and be safest to eat. Do you really want to eat a strawberry that has been shipped up from Chile? Not only are you paying for the luxury but it is awful for the environment and just won't taste as good as homegrown produce. Stick to what is fresh and local. Whenever possible, buy organic for those fruits and vegetables that have the highest pesticide load (peaches, apples, grapes, pears, strawberries).

As Jerry Seinfeld said, "Fruit is a gamble". lol. I usually just buy 1 sample of the different kinds of fruits (mango, kiwi, orange, a few grapes, etc) and test them out until I get good results. I messed up recently and bought a small bag of little oranges. They were beautiful and looked great in their peels but tasted like SOUR!! I'll never do that again. If the single fruits are good then, usually the bagged ones are too.

Not sure what you mean by trust, but I am going to guess that you mean taste. If so, I have been having good luck with fresh fruit at our Costco. You have to buy more because it is bulk sizes, but it's not too much bigger. I wouldn't buy but a couple of things at a time because everything spoils faster in the winter because it has to travel farther.

I think much of what you would be buying would be coming from mexico or South America if it is out of its season.
I bought grapes which didn't last long, same with my lettuce. Apples seem to be faring ok right now and have held up fine for me. Bananas are ok.
I don't buy stone fruits unless they are in season locally , because they are tasteless when they are picked months early, shipped a thousand miles and then sprayed with co2 to color them up. In fact, I don't buy stone fruit from the grocery at all. I go to the farmer's mkt.

So much depends on your budget. Lots of things are imported and will therefore be quite good because they were in season from wherever they came from. But they can be pricey.
If "trust" means = tasty and good texture, you should do some online research on your favorite types of fruit and learn more about how to pick good ones out of the pile (i.e. what to look for in a melon?).
If "trust" means = won't go rotten on me, then just be aware that organic fruit spoils more quickly because it hasn't been treated with preservatives.
if "trust" means = tastes as good as it looks, then choose organic over traditional when you have a choice, and learn which fruits have been bred just for looks, like Roma apples, which are shiny and red and mealy and at best fragrant but not flavorful.
Also, be aware that at this time of year a lot of fruit peels look black/bruised when they are actually just fine on the inside. A banana can look absolutely awful on the outside due to transit in the cold, and be pristinely white (and very sweet) on the inside.
If "trust" means = not violated with chemicals, then either go organic or just peel whatever you buy. In most cases, the violation if any is just skin-deep.
Hope this helps.

Just got some fuji apples that are really tasty right now. Haven't had any luck with grapes at all. Citrus pretty hit/miss too.
Can't wait for summer!

I got some strawberries last week and when opened at home they had a sticky red food coloring type stuff dripping off them..and they molded 2 days later! I like apples and citrus and most imported fruits are pretty good now. Also look up VegeWash you rinse your fruits and veges in it instead of water and all that waxy tasting chemical stuff comes right off!