> “It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” Traverso explains, “so as you favored the more consistently colored apples, you were essentially disfavoring the same genes that coded for great flavor.
This is also why so many cultivars of tomato and cucumber taste like moist cardboard. Once you taste what they’re actually supposed to taste like, you’ll never be able to go back to a shrink-wrapped English cucumber grown in a hot house.
Nearly nobody under the age of 35 is aware that popcorn used to taste like corn. Not like modern ears of corn, which are bred mostly for sweetness; more like tortilla chips, whose corn is still (somehow) cultivated for corn flavor. Corny.
[edit] … also I’m baffled by how, every time I “hold the tomatoes” on my burger or salad, someone will invariably say “don’t you like tomatoes?” and I have to go on this dumb rant about how the flavor has been bred out.
Like, all these people have had marinara sauce and even ketchup, which are made from varieties of tomatoes that are still cultivated for flavor (and thus unsuitable for long-distance shipping). They know what tomatoes actually taste like!! yet still eat these slices of pink tomato that somehow have less flavor than American cucumbers and think “this is the same thing”
Its a book about the incentives and technologies that came together to result in the deflavorization of food and the rise of the "flavoring" industry as a whole.
Of the interesting things in there is one guy using a mass spectrometer to identify flavor compounds at scale to engineer a tomato that is hardy and ships well without sacrificing flavor.
I wish! in the book, the guy has created it and was giving samples to farmers. However, despite the vastly superior flavor, it wasn't quite as productive as the flavorless ones yet.
I thought I was the weirdo for thinking tomatoes on burgers didn't add any flavor. I love flavorful tomatoes everywhere else, generally, but the kind used on burgers are like mushy water.
You're not alone. I've never liked tomato slice on burgers, always ask to remove if present. Makes the burger wet and slushy for no benefit. Partial to a slice of beetroot as a substitute.
(Hopefully you didn't establish this throwaway account to confess your controversial tomato opinions.)
They want the burgers to taste the same all over the place. A shame because here in south western Ontario we have amazing tomatoes. I eat at least one a day just sliced with a bit of salt.
I'm not convinced this is the case: Why would you choose lesser tomatoes for this?
I'm more inclined to think that modern "grocery store" tomatoes are generally tomatoes that ship well while still fresh. Anything else means that tomatoes on burgers would not only be seasonal, but regulated to the sorts of places tomatoes can be shipped well from the farms.
I'm not even sure how you eat a good one daily, honestly. I've always lived in places with winter, and the tomatoes tend to lose any worth (cherry tomatoes might save you though). I used to grow or buy decent ones during the summer, but moved further north and that went away.
I think a lot of supermarket fruit and veg is picked underripe, and then ripening is induced in a controlled environment in some warehouse a few hours before it's sent to the shops, so that it's "perfectly" ripe as it's placed on display for sale.
Sweet corn was cultivated at least hundreds of years ago by native americans, it was never allowed to mature and be used as a grain, it makes up a minuscule fraction of corn production. Tortillas are made from varieties of corn that do fully mature “field corn”, essentially the same as the rest of corn production although there are more restrictions and preferences on which specific seed lines get into human food production.
Yah, I know the basic elementary school version of the history of corn, just trying to explain that “tastes like corn” doesn’t mean a backyard corn-on-the-cob. My impression of the latter is that they basically taste like sugar now but I guess my memory of childhood cobs is less vivid.
I've actually thought about this before. AFAICT, it's mostly a supply chain issue.
In order to ship fruit long distance, they're harvested before they're ready, and artificially ripened in frozen containers. This lets them survive long journeys but kills a lot of the taste.
So your company would end up being a traceability and logistics one - what's the nearest place to your customers that grow fruit, how can you prove it, and how can you get it in their hands.
(Last two contracts were in artificial fruit ripening and supply chain traceability respectively).
I lived in a city and had a roofdeck with full sun all day. Tomatos grew amazingly well up there, and the flavor of those ripe tomatoes was so amazing that we had them with nearly every meal. It also made buying tomatos from the grocery store totally impossible.
I've noticed that full sun makes a surprisingly big difference, even with the naturally good tasting heirloom varieties (Cherokee purple, Brandywine, etc.).
I wonder what the science there is. You'd think the slower ripening in partial shade (often a week or more slower) would result in a more complex tasting tomato, but perhaps the flavor compounds never reach a critical mass.
Yes this is the key. Most of Europe is in the same boat. Eating produce in Greece however is astoundingly better. Italy was less consistent on this but still better.
Which leads me to wonder if its really the genetic choices or is it just something about the farming, nutritional rich soils, or transportation/timing?
> Which leads me to wonder if its really the genetic choices or is it just something about the farming, nutritional rich soils, or transportation/timing?
- the soil plays no great role in taste but is of course the farmer most precious resource.
- the plant genetics is preponderant in taste.
- the consumers and farmer genetics and culture are loosely related to the plant genetics.
- the missing pieces, distribution and seed providers, are the most important pieces, deciding on prices, margins and on the characteristics necessary of the products to improve those.
Local products are always best. But I can’t grow exotic fruits in Paris.
France is good for tomatoes too. I think it's definitely partly about local availability. But probably also a bit to do with cultural consumer choices too. France/Italy/Greece all have big food cultures in a way that isn't quite matched by northern European countries.
That said, it seems to be getting easier to get high quality vegetables (including tomatoes) here in the UK. It's not from a supermarket and you pay more, but it is available (maybe still not quite as good as other countries, but certainly much improved on the flavourless stuff).
In France, standard supermarket tomatoes are standard bad - but we see increasing availability of different species obviously taking genes from heirloom varieties... They taste great and consumers are beginning to understand that weird shapes and colours mean flavour.
Sunshine is the other big variable. Most fruit will only get sweet during ripening if it's receiving enough sunlight. This is why red grapes are seldom grown in northern latitudes - their dark skin blocks sunlight and prevents them from sweetening during ripening.
Is it really about sunlight and not heat though?
Otherwise one would expect to see more sweet fruit coming from northern europe than is the case. Given the near absence of "night."
Forget about local markets. Most of the tomatoes eaten in Central Europe came from the 'sea of plastic' in the Mediterranean Spain and Morocco. Cultured from dutch seeds selected to grow really fast. Is a combination of long travel, green picked and so-so cultivars breed for market.
Yeah, in Italy you have to buy the local varieties. Non-PDO/PGI (protected designation of origin/protected geographical indication) cherry tomatoes are going to be tasteless (and cheaper).
You can get good ones in supermarkets in the UK, you just have to spend more and know what you’re looking for.
Recently I tried Bull’s Heart, which were stupid expensive but delicious. But you can get San Marzano in a bunch of places, and various other plum and cherry varieties with good flavours.
It’s just the average “salad tomato” that tastes like crunchy water.
Anyone can grow a pot of heirloom tomatoes outside in the summertime and end up with tomatoes that blow everything at the supermarket out of the water, if you can manage the pests. You can get pretty great produce at certain farmers markets, too.
After shelling out ~$50-$100 for intitial setup, you too can harvest $5 worth of tomatoes! And as you say, if you can keep the pests free, but that also requires for money to add to that inital purchase.
The insect/worms/catepillars in my area are more vicious than rodent invasions. If you get catepillars, they can wipe out an entire plant in a day.
Tomatoes get big. They need a decent sized pot. I would recommend a 12" pot, defintely no smaller than 10".[0] Dirt aint cheap. "Cheap as dirt" wasn't formed from shopping at garden centers with bagged dirt, and you don't need a truck load for container gardening.[1] Tomoatoes need up right supports like cages, etc.[2] Seedlings are cheap individually, but each one needs a container.[3]
Well you're right that it doesn't scale down to single pots.
When I grew tomatoes in containers, I went for the 5-gal buckets from Lowes ($4), and bought soil in larger bags. Also your cage is more expensive than I recall paying.
On the plus side, most of those are one-time startup costs.
Our tomatoes are self-seeding at this point. We literally do nothing except pick them, and put away several dozen jars of sauce every year, from a couple neglected garden beds. It sounds like we have less trouble with pests here than you do though.
My original post said ~$50-$100 in initial setup, so you're not being fair to my original post. You need multiples of the things or similarly functioning things as posted. Yes, buying bigger bags of dirt is an option, or cheap plastic pots. If you're going to be doing this, you'll appreciate the clay pots as they don't bet brittle from UV exposure. I prefer clay as I just dislike plastic.
It's a typical reaction when suggestions that gardening can be more expensive than people realize. Yes, if you use the same pots, start taking seeds generationally, etc the price amortizes to near $0. That first year though can put a dent in a wallet. If you've been doing it for awhile, it's easy to forget.
We haven't even discussed getting into drip irrigation or similar. Each of the individual parts are cheap (tubing, sprayers/drippers, etc), but again it adds up with a timer etc.
To be abundantly clear, I'm not trying to dissuade anyone, but just giving realistic expectations. It's just like getting into Arduino and what not. The controller itself is cheap. The shields are cheap. Electronic components are cheap. Then you add up all your receipts and realize, you've spent more money than originally anticipated. It's just the nature of DIY.
Well to be fair to my unfairness to your original post, you'll also get a lot more than $5 of produce out of a single pot.
So, per pot, you'll spend $20 in the first year by my (updated) math, then $5-10 each successive year -- and you'll get about $15 of produce each season. Sometimes much more than $15. Cherry/grape tomatoes are expensive, and the plants are more fruitful than the larger varieties.
Drip irrigation is out of scope. A minute or two, per container, per day, with a hose (or watering can) while you check for hornworms is the operational expectation.
Anyway I don't disagree with your larger point. Little things definitely add up. I've been to IKEA!
I also dislike plastic, but I liked the form factor of the bucket (straight vertical sides) to pack multiples into a small space. I still have the buckets 15 years later, and I use them for all sorts of misc jobs around the garden.
There do exist these things called "dwarf tomatoes". Also, a large pot and a few good cherry tomato seeds can blow away everything in a supermarket with little flavor bombs.
I have determinate dwarf tomato plants (3 feet tall max), which I grew from seed ($2.99), planted in old milk crates (free) lined with plastic from old bags (free) and filled from one huge bag of potting mix (~$20-30), and this gives me half a dozen plants that are superior to anything in a supermarket. I staked them with tree branches trimmed from my trees (free).
I have grown them in the actual ground many years, eliminating the cost of the potting mix, but after a few years, you need to let the soil lie fallow to avoid blights, so this year it's the milk crate planters.
You can reuse most of those things for years, you can also use common household items to improvise replacements for cages and such. We bought little plants this year for 3 bucks each, we had no expenses otherwise.
I just tossed some seeds in the dirt on the side, and now I have a giant tomato plant like 3' high.. pretty cheap unless you're in an apartment I guess.
Your attitude is the problem - DONT equate $5 of supermarket tomatoes with an equivalent weight of home grown tomatoes.
I go out of my way to buy “expensive” tomatoes, because I don’t think of good tomatoes as being cheap produce, but more like an expensive vegetable (although price is still seasonal).
My attitude? I love gardening and growing my own vegetables. It is a simple truth, and the numbers don't lie. It gives me pleasure and enjoyment to do it. So the "entertainment" factor alone is worth it.
At the end of the day for new people trying gardening, it can be a bit disappointning. To make it all 100% magical panacea without actual realization of monetary factors, you're not being honest with potential new growers.
San Marzanos are origin-protected in Italy, so if you get Italian San Marzano's they're legally limited in ways that promote quality.
Unfortunately, there is a large black market in mis-labeled San Marzanos, so it's not a full guarantee of quality. But it's something that they're at least working on, rather than just giving up.
"only this company can decide who can use the trademark"
It's like:
"only if it's production fulfills certain criteria can you use the name"
It's made as a consumer protection so that people can not just claim their product is this kind of "traditional" product when it isn't. Except that it's less used like a consumer protection as it's mainly used like a trademark. Controlled by a small group of people and directly profiting some regional government/economy.
Most commonly it requires the main ingredient to come from a specific region (also e.g. used for Wine or Sect).
EDIT: I kinda did throw different regulations into one explanation here.
Cheddar in most places outside the UK is "not cheddar". If I go to the supermarket here in Sweden and buy the first "cheddar" I see prominently displayed, I'm not getting cheddar from the UK.
I will have to try it next time over there, but please don't be offended when I say that based upon all the cheeses I have eaten over there I won't be holding my breath.
You know how "champagne" is technically only champagne if the grapes are from the Champagne region of France, and otherwise it's just sparkling wine? That's a legal designation in the EU.
> French producers are still allowed to use the word champagne on the front of bottles, but the use of "shampanskoye" is allowed only on local produce.
The EU is the main place that has these laws sorts of laws. I beleive that they will include it in trade deals so that it is enforceable in more of the world.
I may be wrong but I believe the canada-eu and eu-japan treaties also protect most denominations of origin (or rather, most by value rather than by specific items, but San Marzano should be included).
It's a regulation [0] that says that products that are associated with a specific geographic location cannot be manufactured elsewhere and then passed off as the original.
This is also why many AKC pure bred dogs have serious health problems. Turns of you select only on a simple metric like hair color, ear shape, of slope of the back, that you end up selecting for things that go against the very heart of what the breed was. So you lose characteristics that led to the breed in the first place.
With tomatoes, I thought it was more that most are not ripened on the vine, they are picked green so they ship better, then ripened artificially with ethelene gas. They turn red, but don't develop the same flavor or texture as a real ripe tomato.
Somehow I don't seem to have the same experience as most people in this thread. Sure, homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers taste quite a bit better than what I usually buy at the supermarket, but it certainly isn't perfect vs. inedible.
Possible explanations I can think of:
1. My taste perception is just broken because I am relatively young and have been raised on low-quality produce.
2. My local supermarkets just happen to stock excellent vegetables (I live in Central Europe).
3. There are some extremely high-quality breeds of tomatoes/cucumbers that I have never eaten before.
4. Other people are simply more enthusiastic about vegetable quality and therefore their claims seem exaggerated to me.
First is that some produce really is terrible -- "regular" cheap tomatoes can be utterly flavorless. But on the other hand, a lot of supermarkets stock tomatoes that range from fine to quite excellent, e.g. cherry tomatoes grown in greenhouses sold on the vine.
And second is that people really do exaggerate how great homegrown tomatoes are. There are tomato snobs in the same way there are coffee snobs, whiskey snobs, chocolate snobs, whatever. They insist something is 100x better, when really it's just 1.5x better, because for some reason that's important to them, part of their identity.
Yes, a farmer's-market heirloom tomato is utterly delicious. But store-bought cherry tomatoes on the vine are also super super tasty. Even the ones not on the vine can be really really good. (You can also find really bad ones though, it depends on the store.) I'd go so far as to say they're just different, neither obviously better than the other.
Heirloom varieties (more properly “open pollinated”) are themselves cultivars, which just means something that was selected/bred/domesticated.
I think you’re trying to get at “hybrids” (which just means the breeding isn’t stable, i.e., the next generation isn’t first red to match the parents, but even hybrids can be quite tasty.
The issue isn’t the breeding process per se; the issue is selectively breeding for the wrong things (or a single thing instead of a mix of things).
Ideally get "Japanese cucumbers" from a Japanese grocery store, or get the "Persian cucumbers" from any grocery store that has decent typography in its logo (yes there is a HUGE correlation between logo typography and cucumber quality in my experience).
The US Northeast has so many apples that don’t travel well and have so much flavor: Spenser, Macoun, Empire... on the West Coast they’re all lacrosse balls that taste OK to decent but mainly travel well.
It’s not just flavor that has been bred out. Also nutrition, and not just from tomatoes. Consumers can not visually see flavor or nutrition. They can see color, size, and uniformity of surface texture and shape. So the vegetables are bred for what can be seen and immediately considered in a buying decision.
Some of it is just size, as in the larger sized produce might have a similar amount of nutrition per unit (per tomato or per berry) but not per pound, so the nutrition is diluted with fiber and water but still there.
Though there are also a whole lot of edible plants out there that don’t hold up at all to distribution, if you aren’t picking it by hand and eating it the same day it will be ruined.
This is also why so many cultivars of tomato and cucumber taste like moist cardboard. Once you taste what they’re actually supposed to taste like, you’ll never be able to go back to a shrink-wrapped English cucumber grown in a hot house.