[ska]

> Produce is colorful, plentiful, and delicious thanks to American embrace of GMO's and subsidies for farmers.

There are two problems with this statement. One is that the availability of plentiful and colorful produce is very much dependent on where you are in the US, and there are a large number of people who really don't have convenient access to it.

The other is that while produce is generally inexpensive, it is hardly generally delicious. Perfect looking tasteless hothouse tomatoes and peppers etc. are the rule, not the exception in a typical grocery store. Lot's of 'convenience' packaging (e.g. "baby spring mix" boxes), mountains of last years apples, not so much flavor.

If you have the means and live in the right places, you can buy very good produce from farmers markets and specialty stores, but it is expensive; the baseline is often pretty mediocre. And if you don't have the location and time and money to use these alternative sources, that's often what you are stuck with.

The silver lining on all this is that the industrial food system in the US has proven to work well as a very large scale optimization algorithm; unfortunately it's been optimizing on thing like shelf-stability, appearance, shipping convenience and food-science inputs while mostly ignoring flavor and nutritional content (see also why there are so many Holstien cows and so little decent butter). If the consumer demand is there for better food though, it should respond to that also.