As the Osmond Brothers sang, “one bad apple” won’t spoil the whole bunch. Unless that apple is a bland, Red Delicious. But it wasn’t always that way.
What we call the Red Delicious was discovered 150 years ago by Iowa grower Jesse Hiatt. It was a weed sapling that he wanted to kill. But like a truffula tree in The Lorax, he decided to “let it grow.” It produced a yellow and red apple that tasted heavenly. Hiatt won a contest with his “Hawkeye” apple. He sold to a buyer who changed the name, and a legend was born.
So, why does food journalist Amy Traverso call the Red Delicious “a mouthful of ruffage”? The problem was mass production. Moving away from seasonal apples, growers shipped them everywhere for year-round consumption. This required a longer shelf life. At the same time, consumers like us preferred the look of shiny-red apples. The reddest mutations had a thick skin that prevented spoilage for up to a year, so farmers favored them. Sales skyrocketed. But as Traverso explains, “the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin.” The apple industry had painted itself into a corner. A waxy, tasteless corner.
Eventually, sales cratered against competition from Galas and Fujis. In the year 2000, the U.S. government had to bail out apple growers to the tune of $138 million. The Red Delicious survives today only because they are priced far cheaper than their competitors. No one plants them anymore, and galas began outselling them in 2018.
Experts recommend buying unique varieties, in-season, from orchards in your region. Even the original Hawkeye can be found if you’re lucky. It turns out we’re all partly to blame for the rise and fall of the Red Delicious apple.
I’m Jeff Gentry
