

Why supermarket tomatoes tend to taste bland - esalazar
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-tomato-taste-20120630,0,4449608.story

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droithomme
"researchers have discovered one reason why: a genetic mutation, common in
store-bought tomatoes"

This reason stated in the article is not the primary reason. Store tomatoes
are picked hard and green so they will not be bruised during transport. They
are then sprayed with nitrogen before being put out so that the skin turns
orangish and looks sort of ripe. But it's not ripe, and won't ripen properly
since it's a green tomato that was picked long before it was ripe.

You can grow the exact same varieties that they sell at the store and allow
them to ripen and they will taste considerably better than store bought. This
shows that the popular hybrid varieties are not the primary cause of the taste
and texture problems.

Yes, some varieties of heritage tomatoes will taste even better, due to
genetics. But the overwhelming primary issue here is the picking when
completely non-ripe.

source: decades of growing tomatoes

~~~
qwert321
>They are then sprayed with nitrogen before being put out so that the skin
turns orangish and looks sort of ripe.

Stores spray the tomatoes with Ethelyene gas. Not Nitrogen. The difference
matters here. Ethelyene gas is naturally produced by tomatoes and other fruits
that ripen after picking. This gas catalyzes the ripening process. In nature,
ripening happens relatively slowly because the gas is excreted into the open
air. In a supermarket, this gas is given in much higher doses than would
happen in nature, accelerating the ripening process. This turns the tomatoes
red, but because it happens more quickly the sugars in the tomatoes don't have
as much time to fully develop which is the main reason home-grown and ripened
tomatoes can taste better.

However, as I explained this is still just an accelerated version of a natural
process. You can do a smaller scale version by sticking your tomatoes in a
paper bag with an apple (apples produce a lot of Ethelyene gas) for a couple
days. The article is describing tomatoes that theoretically taste even better
than home grown varieties, which still have similar genetic makeup to
supermarket variety tomatoes.

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pka
Coming from Europe, when I was in America (CA) 3 years ago I was shocked that
supermarket tomatoes just didn't have any taste; literally, they tasted like
water.

When I tell my friends about this they think I surely must be exaggerating.
Yeah, industrial tomatoes here in Austria don't taste like real farmers'
tomatoes either, but it's not comparable to the situation in the US.

All this somehow reminds me of Soylent Green. Hope our children don't end up
not knowing what real vegetables / fruits taste like.

~~~
ido
Interesting, I've been living in Vienna for more than 7 years now and didn't
notice the fruits and vegetables tasting any worse when I visited Atlanta,
Georgia.

They did cost more than here in Austria tho, which surprised me (I assumed
everything consumable would be cheaper in the US).

~~~
pka
Yeah, I was overgeneralizing - what I meant were industrial Californian
tomatoes. The taste is probably much better in other regions of the US.

Also it probably depends on what chain you buy them from - it wasn't Walmart
but it was still some big retailer iirc. If you buy tomatoes from Hofer here
they won't taste very good either (but still a lot better than the ones I had
in CA).

~~~
ido

        Yeah, I was overgeneralizing - what I meant 
        were industrial Californian tomatoes. The 
        taste is probably much better in other 
        regions of the US.
    

I'd actually be surprised that a rich and organic/health obsessed place like
California wouldn't have much better produce than Atlanta/Georgia :)

~~~
excuse-me
It always amazed me how bad the supermarket produce was in California. Almost
all of it is grown within 100miles of LA, even Mexico is only a couple of
hours away and yet all of it was terrible factory-grade long life varieties
and expensive.

That's the other weird thing for a european, the supermarkets are more
expensive than the corner vegetable stores, there are no fruit/veg markets -
only either farm gate trucks or fancy expensive farmers markets

~~~
rprasad
Supermarket food is grown in the Central Valley, which is at least 100 miles
from L.A.

Only Farmer's Market foods are grown in quantity close to L.A.

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cstross
Here in the UK, I've got two main sources of tomatoes: supermarkets, or the
local once-a-week farmers' market.

At the supermarket, they tend to be packaged. At the farmers' market, they're
on display loose or on the vine.

I don't buy by colour: I buy by _smell_. No kidding -- the tomatoes on the
vine bought from the speciality farm stall smell _utterly different_ to the
supermarket variety; a pungent, 'green' scent that you can pick up by sniffing
the vine. The supermarket variety, even vines of tomatoes, barely smell at all
when you get them out of the packaging.

And smell is a major component of the human sense of taste, conveying many of
the nuances of flavour.

Is supermarket over-packaging actually an attempt to disguise the lack of
aroma of foodstuffs by forcing customers to evaluate by sight rather than by
the more obviously applicable sense?

~~~
euoia
I think - no evidence to justify this - that you're just smelling the vine.
The vine and the leaves of tomatoes smell really strong. I bet if you took one
of the vine tomatoes off the vine, washed it, left it for a few hours, you
wouldn't be able to smell that smell any more.

I have considered whether the leaves of tomatoes are edible, they do have such
a pungent smell. I was told they are poisonous. I could google it, but would
that not ruin the fun?

~~~
MattPearce
Just to 'ruin the fun' for you (and anyone else inspired by you), the leaves
of tomatoes contain cyanide. Same with potato leaves.

~~~
jrabone
Really? I thought it was an alkaloid (solanine) similar to other members of
the nightshade family.

~~~
meepmorp
You're correct, it's solanine, not cyanide.

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6ren
I asked a tomato farmer about this once, and he said that supermarkets only
buy varieties that transport well without bruising; taste is secondary.

~~~
simonsarris
That seems too bad but ultimately reasonable, as it is the eyeballs that
select the tomato, to the mouth's eventual misfortune.

People of course would prefer tasty vegetables, but I imagine that one of the
most common (if not the most common) reason after pricing that people do not
shop at supermarket X is that "the produce looks like shit there." If that's
at all a differentiating factor, well, this is what we get.

~~~
euoia
If it is a matter of bruising then it would ultimately effect the taste as
well - or at least the mouthfeel, which is arguably part of the taste if you
use the tomato in a salad rather than a stew.

Perhaps the solution is simply to educate consumers better.

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turar
Barry Eastbrook has a book "Tomatoland" [1], about the taste of tomatoes in
America, which is based on his earlier article [2]. Also there was a good
interview with him on NPR [3]. Tomatoes are grown for easy transportation, and
appearance, not for taste. They're harvested while still green, and then
treated with ethylene gas, which "colors" them in an attractive color, but
doesn't add any taste.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-
Dest...](http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-Destroyed-
Alluring/dp/1449423450)

2\. [http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-
th...](http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-
the-price-of-tomatoes)

3\.
[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=137371975)

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nathan_long
Another problem is shipping. A lot of produce is picked before it's ripe,
because unripe fruit is less easily damaged during shipping.

This is a simple reason to buy local produce: if it was picked ripe, maybe
today or yesterday, it will taste better.

~~~
DanBC
Growing tomatoes hydroponically, in greenhouses, all year round, then picking
them early, and then shipping them (from Holland to US?) seems really weirdly
sub optimal.

~~~
jodrellblank
It's optimising for _some_ metric, just not the one you care more about.

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elorant
In US as in most developed countries it takes four to seven days for
vegetables to reach the supermarket shelves. That's why supermarkets seek
crops that can last longer while taste is less significant.

Furthermore, all fruits and vegetables taste good when they're in season.
Tomatoes for example are in their prime condition from July to October.

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cbr
The problem is that we've been optimizing for food that looks like it will be
tasty instead of food that is actually tasty:
<http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-02-16.html>

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jinushaun
The real shame is that supermarket tomatoes train an entire generation to hate
the taste of tomatoes. Anecdotally, I know a lot of people that opt for "no
tomatoes" when eating out. Tomatoes are that annoying mushy pocket of water in
your burger, or that mealy texture in your sandwich. That's unfortunate
because vine-ripened tomatoes are deliciously sweet and tart--there is no
confusion about whether it is a fruit or vegetable.

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warmfuzzykitten
"Suggests," "tend to!" Insultingly soft-pedaled article! Supermarket tomatoes
are horrible. If left to ripen, still horrible. Is there no one left who
remembers what a tomato tastes like?

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its_so_on
ha - this was published in Science. This is serious business. You could win a
McNobel in Tomatorie.

~~~
its_so_on
People, this is about whether tomatoes taste bland! From the article: "But the
new study, published this week in Science, found that the mutation that leads
to the uniform appearance of most store-bought tomatoes..."

If you don't get it, Science, like Nature, is extremely prestigious (for a
general science journal) - Nobel territory. :)

