1. Taste: There is none, unless "insipid" is a taste. Please don't think that all table grapes taste like this. This bunch was picked green and they don't ripen off the vine.
2. Torture: Most seedless grapes are sprayed with gibberellic acid, to make the berries bigger. I don't know if that acid is OK for us, and for the ground, or not. It just seems weird to me.
3. Travel: In May, most ripe seedless grapes in the US come from the Southern Hemisphere. Think of all the jet fuel it takes to move tons of (unripe) grapes from Chile to the US. That is a LONG way.
You do have to wait until the late summer and fall, but then you can get wonderful French-American hybrid table grapes locally. If you know where to look, or what to grow for yourself, just look at the benefits:
a. A wide variety of grapes, each with a unique and bold flavor.
b. Many of those are seedless (though seeded grapes are much healthier for us (good roughage/fiber, and the grapeseed oil is very healthy) and with a little practice you can either just eat the seeds or chew them first and then swallow). And many of the seedless hybrid table grapes are large, without the need for an acid spray.
c. High disease resistance, which means no or little spraying for fungal diseases. I don't spray any of my hybrid grapes. Talk about "green" gardening! And if you have a lot of grapevines, you save a ton on unused/unbought tractor fuel to power all that spraying. That is double green.
d. Ripe fruit give you much more disease-fighting chemicals (resveratrol; flavonoids; antioxidants; vitamins), which lets you live longer, so you can eat more grapes!
I wish for all of us a world in which we can eat more locally-grown, riper, fruit. There is no reason to give in to the major corporate forces that are trying to dumb down the quality in your food life.
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