Imported produce is also sometimes fresher than the domestic equivalent. In spring, newly harvested Gala apples from New Zealand may be crunchier than the same variety from American orchards, which were picked the previous fall. And some imports are simply superb, like flavorful pink seedless muscat grapes from Chile, now in season.

But unlike imported furniture or washing machines, produce is perishable and may suffer from transport. It may be picked less ripe. Varieties may be selected for durability at the expense of flavor, and treatments mandated to kill pests (hot water for mangoes, cold temperatures for citrus) can degrade flavor or texture.

In many fruits, acidity drops over time, and off flavors develop; weeks-old cherries, for example, may still look fine but taste flat. Vegetables, too, can decline. Domestic asparagus, grown mostly in California, Michigan and Washington, tends to be plumper, juicier and more flavorful than the more fibrous and rubbery imports from Mexico and Peru.

It might seem logical that older produce is also less nutritious, and for some compounds such as vitamin C, levels do decline with time. But there does not appear to be any evidence that the overall nutrient content degrades significantly. From a public health standpoint, the benefits of increased availability and consumption of imported produce outweigh any such worries, nutritionists say.

Image Credit... Source: U.S.D.A. Economic Research Service

It might also seem that imported fruits and vegetables are more likely than domestic produce to cause food-borne illness, but there’s no evidence that this is so. “I don’t think that produce grown outside the United States is less safe,” said Bill Marler, a lawyer in Seattle who often represents consumers in food-borne illness cases.

Of some concern is a 2015 report from the Food and Drug Administration that found that 9.4 percent of imported fruit samples violated federal standards for pesticide residues, compared with 2.2 percent of domestic samples. (For vegetables, the figures were 9.7 percent for imported and 3.8 percent for domestic.) But that’s probably not enough to justify avoiding imported produce.