I thought he was trying to pick me up in the produce section of my local grocery store when he asked, “Do you know how to pick out the best peppers?”

Turns out he was trying to educate me, not date me. 

“See the bottom?” he says. “See how there are either three or four bumps on the bottom? The one with four is the female. It has more seeds.”

Well, a quick search on Google revealed he was perpetuating a myth. The bumps are related to the variety, not the gender, but it got me thinking - how do you know if you are picking out the best fruit and vegetables?

I mean, we’ve all brought home that watermelon only to cut it open and find it’s not a melon full of water at all. Then there’s the avocado that you are hoping to make guacamole with but it is as hard as a rock.

It’s kind of like dating - at least how I remember it.

You meet a person either at school, church, work, or a bar. The person looks great at first, at least on the outside. But then after further examination, it turns out you’ve picked a dud - something you wish you didn’t take home in the first place. 

This generation has found a solution - online dating. 

Instead of meeting just one person in a physical location, there are a multitude of people to meet at your fingertips through an app on your phone. And you can pre-qualify them based on what you read in their online profile.

Let’s say you’re trying a new recipe and it calls for jackfruit. You don’t know what it looks like or how to pick it out. You want to be sure you pick the tastiest one, not the rotten one. And you have no idea where to find it or what store might carry it. 

You could drive to your local grocery store, head over to the produce section, and then aimlessly search for signs on the shelves that identify jackfruit. You may need to go from store to store until you find one. And then once you do, how do you know what you’re picking? How do you know that once you bring it home and look beneath the surface that you will like what you find?

Wouldn’t it make sense to go online first? You type in the word, jackfruit, and find a ton of pictures. Now you can see what it looks like. There’s plenty of information and you learn more by reading a profile - where it comes from, how it’s grown. It even tells you where you’re likely to find it. Boom. 

No more running from store to store. No more guessing about its physical appearance. No more wondering if you’ve picked the right one.

Seems pretty efficient to me. 

Even so, I’m happy my shopping days looking for specialty produce are over.