So I’m munching this golden delicious apple that was part of my balanced lunch (read: it offset, in microscopic terms, the LDL being piled on by the two slices of leftover Pizza Hut that I ate today). I know it’s a golden delicious because of the friendly sticker. And I’m wondering, who gets away with categorizing an entire fruit type as “delicious” anyway? One bad apple (ha, ha!) could ruin the whole reputation. I’m sure we’ve all had a golden delicious (or its friend the red delicious) that was somewhat less than delicious, strictly speaking. But then, who would buy a “golden pretty good” apple anyway? Accurate, true, but with all the charm of a planned economy.
It turns out that those folksy West Virginians have no scruples when it comes to imposing performance anxiety on thousands of apples every day. Per our friends at Wikipedia (who also supply the lovely stock photo), the golden delicious spontaneously appeared as a volunteer tree in the middle of a West Virginia farm in the 1890s. (You should read the whole account; all that’s missing is an aphorism at the end: “and that, boys and girls, is why you never pull up an apple sapling; you may be saving an entirely new cultivar.”) Objectively delicious (is there such as thing?) or not, West Virginia immortalized the golden delicious in 1955 by making it the official state fruit.
And thus ends the lunchtime musing. For the record: mine was delicious.
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