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I disagree that consumers didn't find taste important, but probably was trumped by other factors. The major factor (not mentioned in your list) was a result of

I disagree that consumers didn't find taste important, but probably was trumped by other factors. The major factor (not mentioned in your list) was a result of the industrialisation of farming and marketing (I.e. supermarkets). Vegetables had to be able to transport and store well, and maintain appearance at the end of that. So process (both breeding and other) were adapted to those goals.

aries1980 9y ago
When I was kid (in the 80s, in Hungary), we ate according to the season. More vegetable in the spring, more fruits in the summer, vegetables, beans, fruits in the autumn and mostly meats and apples, (oranges, bananas - when they were on sale) in the winter. Now you can buy everything every time, but even the meat is less tasty. Personally, I'd still rather buy food according to the season.
mcv 9y ago
If people found taste so important, tasteless vegetables wouldn't have been so successful. And it wasn't just tomatoes either; the most common potato, the bintje, and later the superbintje, are also famous for having very little taste. In my youth, this was considered normal. During my student days in the early 1990s, I started buying organic whenever possible, and organic potatoes weren't bintjes. When fellow students came over to eat, they were stunned at the taste. "What did you do with your potatoes?" I just boiled them, nothing more. (I'm a pretty mediocre cook.) They just had no idea that potatoes could taste like that. Tasteless crap was the standard. Even when people could afford better, they didn't know it existed.