Red Delicious Apples Should Die A Horrible, Horrible Death

Red delicious apples are a blasphemy to every other apple as well as everything good in this world. These contemptible, technically edible, mushy blobs of worthless biomass are a scourge on this planet and every human being who inhabits it. Quite frankly, this loathsome monstrosity is not even good enough to be considered a vegetable.

It’s hard to comprehend how such despicable garbage came to sit alongside the honorable likes of Granny Smith and Honeycrisp in our grocery aisles. But they did. Perhaps it is the fact that they look so nice. They’re bright, shiny red façade hardly ever shows any signs of discoloration that can haunt even the best Fuji or Gala. Yet when the victim unwittingly mistakes this appealing exterior for a real apple and has the misfortune to bite into it, nothing but the mushy abomination of unadulterated awfulness awaits. Indeed, one time I was doing some juicing and decided to buy Red Delicious apples because they were the cheapest. One would think that you couldn’t taste mush in juice form. One would be wrong.

Fun Fact: A Red Delicious apple was what the serpent gave Eve that lead to the fall of humanity. Was it worth it Eve? Was it?

But Red Delicious apples are, for good reason, the cheapest apples on the market. Thereby you will find this apple skin-encapsulated mush that even Tantalus would be happy to have pulled out of his reach in every cheap motel’s continental breakfast and every elementary school’s cafeteria. One can only wonder what role this abuse leveled against our nation’s young has had in creating the obesity epidemic. Have our precious children, having tasted the foul nectar of this alleged fruit turned their back on fruit altogether and thus given in to the temptations of candy and other such empty calories in order to satisfy their sweet tooth?

Or more aptly put; how many people have died because of Red Delicious?

If only we would think of the children and pony up for some Honeycrisps to be distributed to our schools. Dammit Michelle Obama! Why won’t you think of the children!

And speaking of the great honeycrisp—undisputed king of all apples—what a majestic creature you are. Yes Fuji’s, Gala’s and Braeburn’s are all quite luscious. And the Granny Smith is the go-to relief pitcher of apples, providing a fantastic change of pace. But ahh Honeycrisp, how I love thee. Crisp on demand, juicy at all times, sweet as flowers to the honeybee, the greatest thing to happen to fruit since the dawn of time…

But I digress. How did the monstrosity known as Red Malicious come to be? Sarah Yager writing for The Atlantic, describes the tragic and sordid history,

“In the 1870s, Jesse Hiatt, an Iowa farmer, discovered a mutant seedling in his orchard of Yellow Bellflower trees. He chopped it down, but the next season, it sprang back through the dirt. He chopped it down again. It sprang back again. ‘If thee must grow,’ he told the intrepid sprout, ‘thee may.’ A decade later, Hiatt’s tree bore its first fruit.”

In other words, the Red Malicious is a mutated, demon-bastard spawn that should be cast back into the darkness from whence it came. But instead, the Red Malicious continued its scorched orchard policy to become the most highly produced apple in the United States.

Sarah Yager again,

“By the 1940s, the Red Delicious had become the country’s most popular apple, with the broad shoulders and lipstick shine of a Golden Age Hollywood star. The cosmetic changes were a boon for industrial agriculturalists: Apples that turned rosy before they were fully ripe could be picked earlier and stored longer, and skins with more red pigment tended to be thicker, which extended shelf life and hid bruises. But as genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh.”

Beauty, indeed, is only skin deep.

Fortuitously, all is not lost my friends. We are living in an amazing time. Sarah Yager notes with optimism that “Red Delicious production has declined by 40 percent.” They are still the most produced in the United States, but together, we can finally triumph over Osama Bin Laden’s favorite fruit! This can be the generation that ends the Red Delicious’ reign of terror once and for all. Just remember, yes they look great, but as the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and, um, well we can’t be fooled again.