Feel like expelling all your rage and vitriol from this nightmarish week at a meaningless and arbitrary screed about fruit by some dumb asshole? Boy, have I got the post for you!
Come, bask in the plentiful ways in which I am clearly wrong.
29. Tomatoes
28. Watermelon
Easily the winner for "most overrated fruit in existence." Let's leave aside the almost-comical amount of work necessary to eat a watermelon and focus on the fact that they taste like cold watery garbage. At best, the taste of watermelon is that of run-off from a fruit that might've originally had flavor before it was left to soak overnight in pool water. Offering a kid dessert and then giving them watermelon should count as fucking child abuse.
27. Honeydew
These are not food, they are cunningly-disguised ballast. I'm not falling for that again.
26. Pineapple
I think I'm probably the only human being who thinks this tastes like the fruit version of a xenomorph's blood. How do people eat and enjoy pineapple? It is quite literally a painful dining experience. That shouldn't be surprising, because the fruit's outward appearance is the apotheosis of nature's ability to scream "DO NOT EAT THIS." It's telling that one of the nicknames for grenades is "pineapples."
25. Cantaloupe
The coveted title of "least disgusting melon" is a lofty one (no), but cantaloupe has certainly earned it, if only by default. Victory by default: the best kind of victory!
23-24. Lemons/Limes
I'm ranking these together because they're similar enough that it counts. If you don't like it, write your own damn article. Anyway, It's hard to rate a fruit that's delicious as a cooking ingredient but an epic disaster as a standalone food item. You try it some time.
22. Starfruit
Points to starfruit for actually being as advertised: it's fruit that looks like a star. Usually with things named after shapes, like a rocky outcropping called The Yodeling Congressman, it'll only look like like a Congressman in mid-yodel if you're drunk and suffering from syphilitic hallucinations (which I'm assuming everyone was when it was given that name in the 1800's).
Unfortunately, starfruit also tastes like nihilism, so the name is wasted. Shame.
21. Cherries
Cherries are either delicious or fucking awful, and there's no way to tell before you bite into them. They're like a less tragic version of Russian Roulette. The only thing you do know going in is that there's a depth charge hidden in there somewhere, just waiting to unleash hell on unwary teeth. Cherries are not for the weak of heart.
20. Papaya
Tastes like perfume.
19. Mango
At least it doesn't taste like perfume.
18. Blackberries
I'm genuinely confused by the fact that "juice grenade" is a quality people look for in their fruit.
17. Coconuts
I'm torn on coconuts. On the one hand, coconut milk is incredible when used in dishes like Tom Ka and Kao Soi (more colloquially known in the US as Chiang Mai). On the other hand, you have actual coconuts themselves, which both look and taste like Sasquatch's balls.* Seriously, look at the goddamn things; they're hairy spheres filled with white juice. If God is real, there's no WAY the creation of coconuts didn't involve the phrase, "let's see if I can get them to eat scrote-fruit."
16. Granny Smith Apples
Am I the only one who thinks Granny Smith apples taste like the fruit version of a really angry old lady with a shotgun? I'm just saying, if they were people, Granny Smith apples would definitely think the President's birth certificate was a fake and that the gays were causing all these turnaders lately.**
15. Pomegranate
No. No way. This isn't fruit, these are alien spores, and it's only a matter of time before they gestate and enslave us from the inside out. I, for one, will welcome our new Pom Wonderful overlords.
14. Blueberries
Blueberries always look like they're going to be great, but I can't remember a single time they've been anything but a soul-crushing disappointment. Blueberries are the Zack Snyder films of fruit.
13. Grapes
Pah.
12. Plums
Pahcahontas.
11. Gala Apples
X-Men: Days of Future Pah/American Pah/Pah and Recreation.
10. Cranberries
Cranberries would be fine if their flavor didn't have a curiously adhesive quality, like edible napalm. Cranberry juice is delicious for about five seconds, then progressively less so for the next half an hour. On the other hand, they make for a pretty good alt-rock band, so they have that going for them.
9. Oranges
Oranges are pretty good, I guess. I have reservations, though. I'm not sure what that shit is between the peel and the fruit, but it has the consistency of earwax and the taste of spackle.
Google just told me that stuff is called "pith." That's...that's honestly kind of the perfect name for spacklewax.
8. Peaches
Peaches would be a lot higher on this list if they didn't ejaculate all over my face every time I tried to eat one. Since I'm not really looking to star in fruit porn (and since I'm pretty sure people would pay to ensure that they never had to see me in fruit porn), it'll have to settle for a top ten spot rather than a top five.
7. Tangerines
They're just sleeker, sexier oranges, really. And I'm ok with that.
6. Pears
Ah, pears — my oldest foe, my dearest friend. My frenemy status with pears is well-established by now. Pears in their ideal state would easily be a top three entry, but you're never in your ideal state, are you, pears? No, you instead pollute the world with the vile calumny of your theoretical deliciousness.
I'm on to you.
5. Strawberries
Strawberries are pretty good, but I've never been able to figure out why people go so completely apeshit over them. I don't dislike them, I just really don't get what all the fuss is about. I feel the same way about Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Lord of the Rings, and Canada.***
I just realized my girlfriend loves all of those things. I may have made a terrible mistake.
4. Bananas
You might think I'm ranking bananas here just because they're phallic, and yeah, I'm not going to pretend that doesn't make them funnier to me than they'd be otherwise. But unlike pears, at least you can actually tell when bananas aren't ripe without going face-first into them (and their period of ripeness lasts longer than seven picoseconds). Bananas actually taste pretty good, too — unless we're talking about banana-flavored Runts, which are the Devil.
Bananas are also the reason I haven't done an Ice Cream Flavors, Ranked post — if people saw me give Chunky Monkey a top 3 spot I'm pretty sure I'd actually get a letterbomb sent to my apartment.
3. Kiwi
Shares the "looks like a weird testicle" quality with coconuts, except Kiwis are delicious. I also can't decide whether they lose or gain points for being so easy to accidentally crush and mangle — on the one hand, that's ruined fruit, but on the other, they make you feel like you've suddenly become the Hulk. Tough call.
2. Grapefruit
You have no idea how much it breaks my heart to rank this second. I consider ruby red grapefruit juice and grapefruit soda to be creations on par with the steam engine in their import to human history. But as much as I love them, even I can't deny that they're not going to top...
1. Raspberries
Perfect in every possible way. You can disagree, but you're wrong.
Feel free to tell me in the comments why I am wrong and bad and feel bad. But we both know you didn't need my permission for that; you were going to do it anyway.
* To the 5,000 people about to make the same hackneyed "how do you know what Sasquatch's balls taste like?" joke: you are neither original nor clever.
** Mark: granny smiths are the best aples
Mark: are you kidding me
Mark: they are the only ones that are fun to eat
Mark: you fucking sham
C.A.: they're horrible
Mark: youre horrible
C.A.: they taste like angry old lady balls
Mark: put that in there
*** Just kidding, Canadians! I love Springsteen.****
**** KIDDING, KIDDING! Canada's awesome. Seriously, I mean that.
Image via Vorobyeva/Shutterstock. For more ways in which C.A. is wrong and stupid and possibly a Communist, feel free to look here, here, here, and here.