Lies! Lies, Damn it all! Lies!
Fellow fruit eaters! Look up from your mangos, pears, and apples and lend me your lobes. I stand before you today as one of your own, oh connoisseurs of melons and grapes and kiwis, here to confirm what many among you have already guessed—strawberries are a lie. This so-called "candy of nature" is no sweeter than any other fruit, but Big Strawberry has fooled you into believing otherwise.
Go to the store and race to the produce section, letting your eyes play over the bountiful selection: oranges, bananas, ugli fruit, all are yours for the asking, but then—ah, there they are—strawberries. What comes to mind with strawberries? Visions of sun hats, and tall grass, picnics and whipped cream. Maybe jello, or ice cream, or cheesecake, drenched in strawberry sauce.
Dreams, my friend. These are little more than quaint dreams concocted through careful product placement in commercials for sugary foods, and by the widespread popularity of caramelized syrups and preserves. Strawberries are not as sweet as you remember, they do not make your taste buds sing any more than most of their fellow berries, in fact, they do so significantly less than most blackberries, if the latest research is to be believed. They are no more a part of summer than the average refrigerator.
The deception does not end there, friends. Look at the strawberry's form. Heart-shaped, covered in seeds, green spiky top. By now most of you have probably figured this out: the strawberry is supposed to inspire lust.
The shiny heart shape. The strawberry wants you to believe it loves you. This is no more true than to say that any common street walker loves you because, my friends, the strawberry is the common whore of the fruit world. "Go on," says the strawberry, "Pay the nice produce man and take me home. We can do whatever you want. Wash me. Smell me. Preserve me. I'll even let you eat me." What fruit could possibly be dirtier? Certainly not the stoic orange. Certainly not the naturalistic furry brown kiwi.
As for the seeds, the strawberry promises you the potency of a baleen whale! At least other berries, such as raspberries and boysenberries have the decency to hide their seeds somewhat. Only the strawberry stoops so low as to actually expose dozens of fertile little rings to anyone just walking by.
Just look at it, it's like a juicy little erect nipple! The thing grows on a bush, for God's sake!
Strawberries are sour little bags of pus. Do not eat them. Do not jam them. By no means act to preserve them.
Thank you.