I believe that strawberries are overall the best fruit. Strawberries should be an integral part of your diet and especially in the US where an average diet consists of things like sugars, sodium, and saturated fats. Strawberries are full of good vitamins and nutrients that help offset the more unhealthy diets that most people now tend to have. And you may be asking “Why strawberries?” Well besides their nutrients and whatnot they’re easy to snack on, versatile in a lot of ways, and have a balance of tastes that is very delicious.

“How can I incorporate them into my life?”, you may be asking. Well they’re great just as a snack by themselves as they don’t need to be prepared much or at all actually in order to enjoy them. With the stem you could use it as little handle and then just eat around it or you could take off the stem and just pop each fruit one by one which is pretty easy to do and across the globe, many cultures around the world have snacks and desserts based on this delicious fruit. In the U.K. and Mexico for example, strawberries and cream is a pretty staple snack and in Greece they cover strawberries with sugar and dip them in alcohol and many other cultures just have the strawberries as the dessert itself. That just shows how versatile they can be. They can be used for things like fillings, toppings, or flavorings, for many different types of food. Things like smoothies, ice cream, crepes, salads, cakes, macarons, tarts, pies, drinks and just so much there’s an endless possibility.

They have a balance of sweetness and tartness which makes them less boring to eat. The best way to understand the importance of heterogeneity and in food is with chocolate. If you’re eating chocolate then one piece is pretty good and it tastes pretty good but once you start eating more and more you start to feel sick because it gets too rich and too sweet and there’s nothing to really offset that but with the perfect strawberry the slight tartness helps contrast to the strawberry’s natural sweetness so that it doesn’t taste too one-dimensional. It’s also why people do things like squeeze lemon or lime over their food which adds acid and cuts through rich flavors.
So why are they so incredibly versatile? Strawberries are so great because they have nice, basic, fruit taste that can be complementary to a lot of different flavors from other berries or fruits. Smoothies are one of the best ways to make use of a strawberry because they do not clash with other flavors. A simple strawberry banana smoothie is equally as delicious as a strawberry smoothie that has 7 other fruits because the strawberry acts as a good supporting role for all the other flavors. Strawberries can also be very delicious in a cake. The slightly tart taste and firm texture of strawberries contrast well against the sweet and soft cake. The strawberry is kind of like the “jack of all trades” for fruit.

Why are they so delicious? Well they’re simply grown to be that way. They’re bred to increase and enhance their best attributes with emphasis on sweetness, acidity, and fragrance. Because who wants to eat a nasty smelling strawberry? Modern science and many years of growing strawberries has greatly enhanced how we are able to enjoy this fruit and the many health benefits it provides. Things such as manganese, potassium, and loads of antioxidants are packed into these tiny fruits. Modern breeding also allows for the growth of strawberries that are more resistant to harsher conditions and diseases. But why should fragrance matter? Like how could that possibly affect anything? A huge amount of our perception of flavor is from smell. Something you can try is to close your eyes and pinch your nose and eat something like froot loops or skittles. Can you tell the difference between them? Probably not. Smell is such a huge part of how we think something tastes. Because strawberries can be bred to help fragrance, that can also help how the strawberry tastes as well.

Some people may say something like “Why not another fruit like bananas?!?!” Although bananas are a great fruit with lots of ways to use and eat them, they don’t have any contrast of flavor or texture. Strawberries, as previously mentioned, have a nice balance of sweet and tart while also having a nice firm and juicy flesh. Bananas are mostly very soft and sometimes mushy.

So a quick recap. Due to their natural flavors and textures they can be quite enjoyable to eat by themselves or with slight additions. But when they are paired with something else, it makes things taste greater than the sum of its parts. Their contrasting flavors and textures and whatnot, help to make eating them less boring and flat.