I have always been a big pineapple eater. I like them tasty and sour, like a pineapple should be.

This year the supply dried up. All I can find (in Denver) is "Super Sweet" or "Ultra Sweet" or various other "sweet" labels. The market has been flooded this year with hybridized pineapples that are tasteless and sweet. Until now I had been getting old-fashioned sour pineapples at a local Vietnamese store, they were grown in Costa Rica. But now that supply dried up too.

Some Googling has led me to believe this pineapple story is worse than it seems on the surface. The unsour pineapple was developed back in 1996 but was found to be unpatentable last year because it was financed by a trade association. Del Monte, however, carried out a successful scare campaign by threatening any growers with a lawsuit if they marketed the sweet pineapple. During that time, the "Gold Extra"™ (also called MD-2) pineapple gave Del Monte a 10 year monopoly in the pineapple industry. There is now a class action lawsuit against Del Monte for anticompetitive practices.

The result for the consumer is that this year virtually all pineapple growers are selling the unsour pineapple. Names are trademarked, like "Gold Extra"™. Dole uses "Super Sweet"™ and Bonita uses "Ultra Sweet™. These pineapples are tasteless and not even sour. Evidently growers the world over thing consumers do not want a sour pineapple. I urge all readers to not even buy the sweet variety of pineapples, an maybe in a few years tasty pineapples will once again show up on the shelves.

One of my most memorable food experiences was on Maui a couple decades ago. I went into a pineapple field an cut one, too it to the beach and butchered it. It was so acidic it burned the corners of my mouth. While being a little painful to eat, it was one of the best things I've tasted in my life.

They've started to grow jalopenios now that are less hot to appeal to a wider market. If I had my way, they wouldn't change what nature intended.