A lot of tropical fruit is uninteresting in the USA: bananas, pineapple, mangoes etc have little flavor and typically one variety is available at most. I sometimes have 50 year old memories in dreams of eating fresh fruit and they are so different in form and flavor I wonder if they are hallucinations.

But as you point out, they require a climate unavailable on the continent so have to be harvested unripe and transported a long distance. I should be amazed they exist at all.

This supply chain aspect operates both ways: pineapples are grown in Hawaii and shipped to the mainland; as a result the only pineapples I’ve ever eaten there are the big flavorless ones sold all around the country. Hopefully the small flavor-packed ones are still grown locally and just provided to locals.

It’s not just tropical foods either. Everything from tomatoes, melons, and grains to chickens and turkeys have been selected and modified for the needs of the supply chain. Although flavor, texture, and, I understand even nutrition has suffered, the net result is that there is a lot less hunger, so I have to consider it a net positive.

My hope is that widespread automation and cheap clean energy will allow more local production and make “small batch” varietals cheaper. And in such a world, instead of indiscriminately pouring herbicides and pesticides to protect the productive crops' robot labor can pluck the weeds and bugs individually from the crops which should improve the quality of the result.