Refrigerated containers-starting with railcars, then trucks, and then taking it a step further to air carriers-allow us to enjoy a more global cuisine. We get to eat mushrooms from the Pacific Northwest and tuna from Asia. We're in the middle of white truffle season right now, and they'd be terrible if we couldn't get them from Italy or Croatia. But here's the downside: It moves us away from local food systems. This is obviously awful for our carbon footprint. And even though we're shipping stuff and it gets refrigerated, fruits and vegetables are typically picked when they're not ripe, then gassed with chemicals to stay supple. Everything is very uniform. None of those big red tomatoes are going to get beat up in their perfectly sized box. We also expect things that are out of season to be available all the time. So people's standards have dropped completely-they think they don't like strawberries because they're these giant, tasteless cotton ball-like things most of the year.
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