Ninety-four percent of American households consume strawberries, and 54% of nine-year-olds chose strawberries as their favorite fruit. Shocking? Not really, but are strawberries worth it?

Everybody has seen a strawberry before– a beautiful, red fruit with an average of two hundred seeds. You see them all over social media, in food and trends. When you bite into a strawberry from a plastic container expecting a sweet flavor, you may be disappointed by its sour and soggy taste. This was nothing like the media’s portrayal of a sweet, juicy and red strawberry. Is the sweetness you’re looking for worth the effort?

I don’t think the effort is worth it. Although you might get lucky and find a sweet, beautiful strawberry once in a while, most of the time, you’ll be disappointed.

When it comes to fruit, strawberries have a reputation for being sour more often than other fruits. It’s worth noting that mangos, grapes, raspberries and oranges tend to be sweeter in comparison. Sure, you will encounter the occasional sour fruit, but most of the time, it will be sweet, unlike strawberries.

A website article about growing the fruit explains the delicate process of planting them might explain the lack of sweetness.

The article states, “If the weather was cold, cloudy, or rainy during the growing season in May and June, or if temperatures soared to extreme levels, then your berries could be sour or bitter in response. Poor soil conditions, low sun levels, and planting at the wrong time can all lead to sour or bitter harvests.”

When you think of strawberries, most people think about the desserts and food combinations that come along with them, but what about the fruit itself?

Substitute Teacher, Luciano Ocampo seems to only talk about food combinations when asked about the flavor of strawberries instead of answering the question directly.

“I don’t think that they’re overrated, and I don’t think that they’re underrated either. People like strawberries, they go well with all sorts of other items: in smoothies, in sundaes, in ice cream… you could put strawberries on pancakes,” he said.

Sophomore, Jaylynn Garcia, mentions how strawberries are carried by their appearance instead of their taste.

“I think the appearance of strawberries contributes to their reputation of being ‘the best’ when in reality, most of the time, their taste is the opposite of their looks,” she said.

So the next time you eat strawberries, count how many you find sweet and how many you find sour— we’ll see if it lives up to your standards.