Please, for the love of god, stop putting honeydew in fruit cups and fruit trays. There are cheaper and tastier options.
Does anyone actually like honeydew?
I’m genuinely curious. Because every fruit cup and fruit tray I’ve ever encountered in the United States is littered with chunks of this sickly green fruit that is either never ripe or just inherently bad. Honeydew is a filler fruit, taking up space to bulk up your purchase in the same way an ice-heavy drink deceives the eye, or a seemingly massive bag of chips that is largely air when opened.
I’ve long assumed that the reason for including them is financial — that it’s cheaper than the most obvious alternatives. But at my local grocery store, a whole cantaloupe melon is the same price as a pineapple, and it’s $1 more expensive than cantaloupe. Am I alone here in wanting — no, begging — for restaurants and vendors to substitute one of these more flavorful alternatives?
Sure, my price check isn’t a scientific price comparison (though we are talking about one of the biggest grocery chains in the nation here). But it seems like honeydew’s inclusion may be more about providing a variety of colors in your little fruit cup side. And I really can’t abide prioritizing visual variety over quality taste and experience.
You want to buy honeydew on its own? Go ahead — people waste their money on all kinds of things. But please, restaurant owners and food vendors — stop subjecting us to this infinitely inferior fruit as part of your medleys. No more honeydew in fruit cups.
If you’re assembling your own party platter, I don’t particularly care. That’s easy enough for me to skip at a buffet for your kid’s third birthday. But if it’s taking up a third of the real estate in a petite cup.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if, long ago, the honeydew melon tasted almost pleasant. Or if there were heirloom varieties floating around, or grown in other parts of the world, that were actually enjoyable. But in my decades of experience, I’ve yet to encounter one that would be mildly worthwhile. Instead, they’ve all tasted like a copy of a copy of a copy — a whisper of what it once was. As if a 3D printer spat out an impression of a fruit, as imagined by a hallucinogenic AI model.
You get it — I hate it. And I know I’m not alone.