HAVE BLOG ~ WILL RANT
Have you ever had the unpleasant experience of biting into a delicious-looking peach, such as these, and ending up with a mouth full of tasteless mush? Well, I have, and it has happened one too many times for me.
Here is my question of the day. American fruit growers, why do you continue to hoodwink American consumers into purchasing your picture perfect fruit, such as these peaches, when they are unfit for human consumption? And by the way, how do you grow peaches that are beautiful to look at and disgusting to eat? Since your peaches are grown to be seen, not eaten, I have used my digital camera to capture their picturesque beauty before their trip down the garbage disposal.
Mushy Peaches , 2 September 2006 – 7 Photos
These peach beauties are home-grown, in the U.S. of A. as their label states. They have spent months in orchard sunshine, precious Arab fuel was expended to take them to market, a customer spent hard-earned dollars to purchase them from a supermarket, and now they are traveling down the drain, as they were too mushy and tasteless for human consumption.
I am “fed up”, so to speak, with mushy peaches and mushy pears too. The grocery market where I purchased these peaches does not usually sell inferior fruit, so I was quite surprised. They WILL hear from me, with pictures, the next time I go there.
Kerfuffles and Flourishes 
Here here! Why does this happen? It must stop. Stop the mushy peaches!
I have received an email from a peach grower who believes that I am being very unfair in this posting to assume and publicize that the mealy peaches are the fault of the orchard. He claims that it is not the growers’ fault.
He wrote that growers refer to this mealiness condition as “internal breakdown” and that it is the result of improper handling after the fruit leaves the orchard’s facility.
He explained that when the fruit leaves the grower’s cold storage in California it travels in refrigerated vans, is unloaded to a retailers’ warehouses, sent to stores’ back rooms, placed upon store shelves, then purchased by consumers. At any one of these points, if the fruit is subjected to temperatures for too long in the range of 36-46F, which growers dub the “killing zone”, there can be internal breakdown. (more about the “killing zone”: http://xrl.us/st4x ) Because the grower has no control over the fruit once it leaves his facility, he questions whether growers deserve the bad publicity they have received at this posting, for as he claimed, “We do not ship mealy fruit.”
Well, it was not my fault, as I never place fresh peaches in the refrigerator. I was also troubled to learn that the peaches that I purchased during the peak growing season were from California, not the Eastern states, as I had been led to believe by the grocer.
i just bit into a mushy peach, did a google search for some reason, and ran across your blog. the offending peach i ate was from California too. up until this batch of peaches mine have been good this year, but they were from Georgia/South Carolina. Oh well, into the trash it goes…
I just bought what I thought were fresh peaches from a grower in _____ Colorado from a fruit stand. The samples we had were fantastic and this is about the time of year I do my peach buying. I bought a case of these and all of them are mushy and taste pretty lame. Not like the cut pieces that were sampled.
The brand of peaches are _______ from Colorado. I don’t recommend buying from these growers. I think I am also going to let one of the largest produce suppliers in the Midwest (C&C Produce in Kansas City) know about these funky peaches too. Now I to figure out if 25lbs of peaches are salvageable in this state of mush, or if they are just compost.
When I read your message I had just purchased two beautiful peaches at Trader Joes here in Virginia that were from Colorado. I’ve never purchased peaches from Colorado before, so I was suspecting that I would be disappointed. But I ate one today and it was delicious.
Fruits such as peaches, plums, etcetera get ruined by being refrigerated at a temperature too low. It can happen during shipping or when stored at the supermarket. That’s why we have to look for peaches in the summer at the farmers’ markets.
mushy peaches are awesome, they are, at least in my opinion, a bit more sweeter and the pit comes right off. maybe you just have bad mushy peaches?
It’s not just mushy, it’s mealy. There’s a huge difference. I have been disappointed so many times lately in the peaches I get that I’m reluctant to even buy them any more. A juicy soft peach is fine; it’s the peaches that taste grainy and just plain bad that she’s talking about. I, too, stumbled across this posting after biting into too many really bad peaches.
We just bought some Ontario peaches which looked and smelled great but we tasteless and mushy to eat. I blame the retailers. I will be returning them for a refund
I have a peach tree and the peaches are mushy when I pick them. They are not over ripe. I am wondering if it is the type of peach and if I should remove the tree, any comments appreciated. I live in Australia.
I live in Northern California and have a two year old peach tree that
was a joy to behold, but everyone of the peaches on that tree was
tasteless and mealy. I dont understand it. Every other fruit tree in our yard (plums, nectarines, apples) comes out perfect. So this is
a mistery to us. Please let us know if you find an answer to the problem. Regards from California. Mrs. Teddy Heinrich