What OP doesn't realise is that most of that comes from air, not dirt. Dirt gives nutrients, but most of the mass, i.e. carbon comes from the air.
Plants literally conjure fruits from thin air.
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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we conjure consciousness from electric impulses.
I mean the planet grows those things, we just get to experience them
And indirectly, our brains are made out of air too?
Airheads. This explains a lot actually.
Dirt doesn't taste good, water doesn't taste like much
Conclusion: light is delicious
Epicurean philosophers be like
Strawberries, peaches, and mangoes are nothing terribly special in a cosmic sense. You think they taste amazing for two reasons:
A) You evolved to crave the sugar and other nutrients in these fruits. They don't taste great because they're special -- they taste great because your body and brain are hard-wired to enjoy their taste.
B) All three of these plants have been subjected to a lot of selective breeding to further optimize them to human-specific tastes, causing them to trigger all of those subjectively pleasurable flavors far more than any naturally occurring fruit ever would.
Yesyesyes of course the gestalt entity comprised of trillions of cells acting in chaotic concert would say this, they love esteeming themselves
Approximately 4 billion years of evolution.
No its the guy in the sky doing that
More like decades of cross breeding to get them where they are now (bought, at least).
I love wild strawberries, but they are so tiny.
TBF we also developed to really like how these things taste.
To other creatures some things we like a lot might taste horrible or even be poisonous, and the reverse is true for us as well.
Dung beetle: this is the most glorious tasting shit ever! The finest semi-digested grasses! Magnificent! Humans: *..urk!*🤢
Not dirt, soil.
Soil is alive & full of nutrients, microorganisms & such.
I think using the word 'dirt' instead of 'soil' is a north american thing. We don't use them interchangeably as nouns here in the UK.
I hadn't thought about it but you're right. Dirt as in dirt from a mess shouldn't really be sharing the same name as the stuff that everything grows out of
Exudates is like the coolest fucking concept. The plant can't extract the specific nutrients it needs from non soluble minerals so what does the plant do? It fucking bribes microbes that can do it with tiny cookies, eventually the microbes die and leave behind water soluble nutrients. The plant has like its own microfarm going on.
For anyone curious about this magical process & wanting to learn more:
Plant exudates include saps, gums, latex, resin, and kino. Sometimes nectar is considered an exudate.Plant seeds exudate a variety of molecules into the spermosphere, and roots exudate into the rhizosphere; these exudates include acids, sugars, polysaccharides and ectoenzymes, and collectively account for 40% of root carbon. Exudation of these compounds has various benefits to the plant and to the microorganisms of the rhizosphere.
Raspberries are better than strawberries
Because they can run Arch, btw
*strawpberries
No
Though both are way better than apples. Which is better than cantiloupe. Which sits at about the bottom of the fruit goodness hierarchy.
That is simply not true, strawberries don't come from just dirt, water, and light. Air is also a necessary component. So strawberries are dirt, water, light, and air. Once you include that, it should be obvious why they are so delicious.
Better in syrup, blended with tequila, triple sec, and ice.
Aka reduced plant blood, juices from rotten blue agave, and juices from rotten oranges, and water.
Simplified to more dirt, water, light, and air.
Though that dirt can also be simplified to minerals, other elements, water, light, and air.
Ah screw it, let's keep going and simplify it all to hydrogen. You can add some trace amounts of helium and lithium, but it isn't necessary as long as you add enough hydrogen (but it's a LOT).
this guy's a strawberry bender.
And then the agro industry comes in, selects or genetically-engineers the fruit varieties with the longest shelf life, standardizes all the crops around those varieties at the expense of older, often hardier ones, harvests them green so they mature onboard cargo vessels on their way to supermarkets thousands of miles away, and ends up making all of them taste like shit.
selects or genetically-engineers the fruit varieties with the longest shelf life
Now this is an unfair over-simplification.
They're also selecting for color, uniformity, and size (still at the expense of everything else, though).
They don't care about crops being hardy, don't care about nutrition, barely care about taste. They want fruit that looks good on the shelf, which will get more people to buy it and make them more money.
I've noticed a big shift towards juiciness and sweetness at the expense of flavour over the last few years, grapefruit being the biggest example. Sweetness and texture seem to be getting selected for. Mangoes are another example.
Where have the aromatics gone 🤌
dirt and water and light also made your brain. Your brain is interpreting the taste of strawberries/peaches/mangoes..... IE, dirt/water/light is tasting dirt/water/light
Another Lemmy user recently made me aware that proteins are built from nitrogen, and therefore on a non-organic diet much of our bodies are made from fossil fuels, via fertiliser!
This guy doesn't even know about space sugar.
Anthropic Principle. Those things taste good because our ancestors with the mutation that made them taste good to us reproduced before dying (and likewise with the berries that made themselves taste better).
The krebs cycle, mostly.
Dirt contains millennia of shit from all sorts of animals, so it contains all of the flavors. Yum!
The ruling class does not want you to know how easily you can meet your caloric needs by literally showing some potatoes into the ground.