4 ms·

I agree that mass-produced tomatoes seem to have been bred to also have no flavor. I'm not going to blame this on greenhouses though - there's a local family f

by smoyer 11y ago

I agree that mass-produced tomatoes seem to have been bred to also have no flavor. I'm not going to blame this on greenhouses though - there's a local family farm that produces tomatoes that are just as tasty as those from my garden but are available for an extra 3-4 months of the year. (Note that I'm in central Pennsylvania)

sametmax 11y ago
I'm really suspicious when americans are stating some vegetable/fruit is "tasty". Everytime I go to the US, what strikes me is the very low quality of the food products. Even in France, what I consider a shitty tomato taste better than the regular ones in the US I tried. It's not a misplaced patriotism, it's just that I fear a lot of americans really don't know what food is supposed to taste like anymore. Which is very scary. The same thing is happening here in Europe, but at a much slower rate. Not sure if it's reassuring though.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > it's just that I fear a lot of americans really don't know what food is supposed to taste like anymore How can the Matrix know how Tastee Wheat really tastes? /s That's the problem with our capitalism focused approach to food: fill it with sugar and kids will eat it, and still eat it when they're grown up and weigh >100kg and suffer from diabetes. Also, you can hide a lot of sub-par ingredients (like old meat or meat of e.g. horses) with the right amount of seasoning. Big Food gets the profit and society gets the bill for diabetes treatment. Privatize profit, socialize risks.
  - lrem 11y ago
    Why exactly is horse meat sub-par? From what I've heard it's actually better than cow meat, but harder to market.
    - mschuster91 11y ago
      It's other meat than was written on the packaging, I didn't mean the meat quality itself.
- narrowrail 11y ago
  I'm curious if you went to any farmer's markets while in the US, or tried anyone's home grown produce? Personally, I keep my garden with only heirloom varieties, and they are far better than grocery stores (and even better than most of my friends that aren't as picky about their seeds).
- rattray 11y ago
  > Which is very scary. They really do seem to take food more seriously in France.
  - sametmax 11y ago
    Well, taste and nutrutional quality go hand to hand for vegetable and fruits. And eating them is the very basis of health with sleep and exercice. So it's a major health issue, even before being a tastebud one :)
- ashark 11y ago
  I'm no expert on French food in general, as I've only been to Paris, and just once, but what struck me most about the food wasn't that cooked restaurant food was better than what I could get in the US—sometimes it was very good, sometimes it wasn't, I had a couple really bad steaks and the second worst slice of pizza I've ever tried while I was there—but that the basic, average ingredients were as good as or better than the very best I could find at home. Produce (and I was there in December!), cheese, bread, that kind of stuff.
- arnorhs 11y ago
  well, you should shop at whole foods when you go to the US :)
  - sametmax 11y ago
    I did. That's why I'm saying that. The fact that whole foods product are considered premium is really an indicator of what's wrong.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  IMO French food is horrible, bordering on inedible. Mexicans, Italians, and even Germans know how to cook. French people don't. See how that works? You're assuming that your personal food prejudices and "what food is supposed to taste like" are identical. They aren't.
  - sametmax 11y ago
    Oh no, I'm not assuming anything about cooking, just about the quality of ingredients.
    - Turing_Machine 11y ago
      One person's "high quality ingredient" is another person's rotten cheese. I note that McDonalds sells billions of euros of burgers in France. They aren't all being eaten by American tourists.
      - sametmax 11y ago
        Indeed, the problem is moving in Europe too. Again, it's not misplaced patriotism. It's just story telling : I went there, I tried that, I talked to these people, and this is what I got.
- jerf 11y ago
  It's not a new phenomenon; it's actually a very old one. Much of this US food culture that you (IMHO rightfully) decry comes from our cultural heritage, which, despite our post-WWII wealth, was then a poor country. Go back a hundred years in the US and what you'll find is a country mostly full of farmers, who are mostly concerned about A: having any food at all and B: making sure they don't die from the parasites in the food, one way or another. I was born in 1978, and I was still raised in a culture of blasting my meat until all the pink is gone, and boiling my vegetables until all flavor was gone. My influential-grandparents were both raised on a farm, which influenced what my parents ate. (To this day, neither of my parents will even consider trying sushi, because it's raw fish. That's it. That ends the argument for them. You Don't Eat Raw Meat. You don't even eat slightly pink meat.) While this may have produced generations of people with low standards, it was caused by trying to make dubious food safe-to-eat. Even today, many of our official government standards still source from this heritage, being rather excessively conservative and recommending cooking meat as if it's still full of parasites, just to be safe. So, it's not that "Americans" don't know what food is "supposed" to taste like anymore... many of us have never known what food is "supposed" to taste like, for many generations. This isn't a situation created by "Big Food", it's a pre-existing situation that allowed Big Food to drop in, and offer Americans food that tasted better than what they were used to. That it turns out to itself have been quite mediocre is a measure of just how bad what came before it is! The trend in the US is quite clearly upwards; I think perhaps if you aren't at least 30 right now that might not be obvious, but believe me, it's getting better, not worse. Yeah, you can still buy Doritos, which haven't hardly changed in 30 years, but the produce sections! Holy shit the produce sections. If you were presented with a produce section from 1985 you'd reach to clean your glasses, if you have them. Absolutely night and day. And the other selections too; I can't go back in time but I wonder if my mom could even have bought any sort of extra-virgin olive oil back then, to take just one example, let alone have 10 different selections.
  - marak830 11y ago
    I have always wondered about this, thank you for the good explanation.
  - sametmax 11y ago
- Symbiote 11y ago
  Tomatoes are an excellent indicator of this, I think. In the cheaper British supermarkets (e.g. Asda) or the normal range of the middle ones (Tesco, Sainsbury's) you could play billiards with the tomatoes, and they taste of nothing. They've been grown under glass in the Netherlands or (less often) England, and are bred and harvested for ease of transport, uniform appearance and shelf life. In the more expensive supermarkets (Waitrose), or choosing the 'luxury' version in Tesco/Sainsbury's, they actually taste like tomatoes, but cost double. Yet last time I went to Germany, I bought tomatoes from one of the ultra-budget shops and they were at least as good as Waitrose. (Last time I went to the USA, I couldn't actually find fresh produce for sale…)
flatline 11y ago
They were chosen/bred to be flavorless, but that was a side effect of breeding for looks: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/28/155917345/how-the-taste-of-tomatoes-went-bad-and-kept-on-going http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/28/155917345/how...
- smoyer 11y ago
  "Looks" And the somewhat related ability to be shipped and stored without bruising or rotting.
random778 11y ago
Anecdotally the taste is lost when they breed tomatoes to not burst when falling 3 feet to the floor.

by smoyer 11y ago

sametmax 11y ago

I'm really suspicious when americans are stating some vegetable/fruit is "tasty". Everytime I go to the US, what strikes me is the very low quality of the food products. Even in France, what I consider a shitty tomato taste better than the regular ones in the US I tried. It's not a misplaced patriotism, it's just that I fear a lot of americans really don't know what food is supposed to taste like anymore. Which is very scary. The same thing is happening here in Europe, but at a much slower rate. Not sure if it's reassuring though.

mschuster91 11y ago
> it's just that I fear a lot of americans really don't know what food is supposed to taste like anymore How can the Matrix know how Tastee Wheat really tastes? /s That's the problem with our capitalism focused approach to food: fill it with sugar and kids will eat it, and still eat it when they're grown up and weigh >100kg and suffer from diabetes. Also, you can hide a lot of sub-par ingredients (like old meat or meat of e.g. horses) with the right amount of seasoning. Big Food gets the profit and society gets the bill for diabetes treatment. Privatize profit, socialize risks.
- lrem 11y ago
  Why exactly is horse meat sub-par? From what I've heard it's actually better than cow meat, but harder to market.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    It's other meat than was written on the packaging, I didn't mean the meat quality itself.
narrowrail 11y ago
I'm curious if you went to any farmer's markets while in the US, or tried anyone's home grown produce? Personally, I keep my garden with only heirloom varieties, and they are far better than grocery stores (and even better than most of my friends that aren't as picky about their seeds).
rattray 11y ago
> Which is very scary. They really do seem to take food more seriously in France.
- sametmax 11y ago
  Well, taste and nutrutional quality go hand to hand for vegetable and fruits. And eating them is the very basis of health with sleep and exercice. So it's a major health issue, even before being a tastebud one :)
ashark 11y ago
I'm no expert on French food in general, as I've only been to Paris, and just once, but what struck me most about the food wasn't that cooked restaurant food was better than what I could get in the US—sometimes it was very good, sometimes it wasn't, I had a couple really bad steaks and the second worst slice of pizza I've ever tried while I was there—but that the basic, average ingredients were as good as or better than the very best I could find at home. Produce (and I was there in December!), cheese, bread, that kind of stuff.
arnorhs 11y ago
well, you should shop at whole foods when you go to the US :)
- sametmax 11y ago
  I did. That's why I'm saying that. The fact that whole foods product are considered premium is really an indicator of what's wrong.
Turing_Machine 11y ago
IMO French food is horrible, bordering on inedible. Mexicans, Italians, and even Germans know how to cook. French people don't. See how that works? You're assuming that your personal food prejudices and "what food is supposed to taste like" are identical. They aren't.
- sametmax 11y ago
  Oh no, I'm not assuming anything about cooking, just about the quality of ingredients.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    One person's "high quality ingredient" is another person's rotten cheese. I note that McDonalds sells billions of euros of burgers in France. They aren't all being eaten by American tourists.
    - sametmax 11y ago
      Indeed, the problem is moving in Europe too. Again, it's not misplaced patriotism. It's just story telling : I went there, I tried that, I talked to these people, and this is what I got.
jerf 11y ago
It's not a new phenomenon; it's actually a very old one. Much of this US food culture that you (IMHO rightfully) decry comes from our cultural heritage, which, despite our post-WWII wealth, was then a poor country. Go back a hundred years in the US and what you'll find is a country mostly full of farmers, who are mostly concerned about A: having any food at all and B: making sure they don't die from the parasites in the food, one way or another. I was born in 1978, and I was still raised in a culture of blasting my meat until all the pink is gone, and boiling my vegetables until all flavor was gone. My influential-grandparents were both raised on a farm, which influenced what my parents ate. (To this day, neither of my parents will even consider trying sushi, because it's raw fish. That's it. That ends the argument for them. You Don't Eat Raw Meat. You don't even eat slightly pink meat.) While this may have produced generations of people with low standards, it was caused by trying to make dubious food safe-to-eat. Even today, many of our official government standards still source from this heritage, being rather excessively conservative and recommending cooking meat as if it's still full of parasites, just to be safe. So, it's not that "Americans" don't know what food is "supposed" to taste like anymore... many of us have never known what food is "supposed" to taste like, for many generations. This isn't a situation created by "Big Food", it's a pre-existing situation that allowed Big Food to drop in, and offer Americans food that tasted better than what they were used to. That it turns out to itself have been quite mediocre is a measure of just how bad what came before it is! The trend in the US is quite clearly upwards; I think perhaps if you aren't at least 30 right now that might not be obvious, but believe me, it's getting better, not worse. Yeah, you can still buy Doritos, which haven't hardly changed in 30 years, but the produce sections! Holy shit the produce sections. If you were presented with a produce section from 1985 you'd reach to clean your glasses, if you have them. Absolutely night and day. And the other selections too; I can't go back in time but I wonder if my mom could even have bought any sort of extra-virgin olive oil back then, to take just one example, let alone have 10 different selections.
- marak830 11y ago
  I have always wondered about this, thank you for the good explanation.
- sametmax 11y ago
Symbiote 11y ago
Tomatoes are an excellent indicator of this, I think. In the cheaper British supermarkets (e.g. Asda) or the normal range of the middle ones (Tesco, Sainsbury's) you could play billiards with the tomatoes, and they taste of nothing. They've been grown under glass in the Netherlands or (less often) England, and are bred and harvested for ease of transport, uniform appearance and shelf life. In the more expensive supermarkets (Waitrose), or choosing the 'luxury' version in Tesco/Sainsbury's, they actually taste like tomatoes, but cost double. Yet last time I went to Germany, I bought tomatoes from one of the ultra-budget shops and they were at least as good as Waitrose. (Last time I went to the USA, I couldn't actually find fresh produce for sale…)

flatline 11y ago

They were chosen/bred to be flavorless, but that was a side effect of breeding for looks: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/28/155917345/how-the-taste-of-tomatoes-went-bad-and-kept-on-going http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/28/155917345/how...

smoyer 11y ago
"Looks" And the somewhat related ability to be shipped and stored without bruising or rotting.

random778 11y ago

Anecdotally the taste is lost when they breed tomatoes to not burst when falling 3 feet to the floor.