[halapro]

I don't understand why the west is so focused on apples. There are thousands of fruits and people just stick to apples, bananas, oranges and grapes. They're not bad, but, like, it's like going to a restaurant and ordering sausage every time.

[throwaway7328]

Maybe it's because of logistics. At least from an European point of view.

All of those you mentioned can be grown in Europe, except bananas that are shipped from South America and arrive in good condition despite the long travel. Many other tropical fruits may be too fragile or expensive to transport at scale.

I remember reading an article about banana import and it's a surprisingly complex process involving a lot of R&D to get to where we are today.

[FarmerPotato]

Supposing you're right, I can think of some reasons:

apples have spread from Kazakhstan in their thousands of varieties adapted to climates from cool to frigid (the original liked the slopes of a breezy river valley.)

So since the colonies in North America, you could easily have an apple grove. If you were fancy, you bought imported cultivars from Stark Bros, see Thos Jefferson.

In the United States, the #1 beverage until Coca-Cola was apple cider. Lots of factors there.

It's kinda like saying "why is France so focused on wine?" Or California! But if you go to California, it's apricots, almonds, peaches plums pears persimmon blackberry blueberry boysenberry which have all got shorter shelf-life and season.

[halapro]

Unless you live in the desert, most likely you can have better local seasonal fruits than apples, you don't need to transport them from across the globe.

It's really quite unfortunate because the overabundance of apples and oranges means that nobody cares about the local seasonal fruits and they risk going extinct.