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What do you mean by quality? Fruits and vegetables in the US tend to have much higher visual quality than elsewhere.
by planteen 9y ago
What do you mean by quality? Fruits and vegetables in the US tend to have much higher visual quality than elsewhere.
- wyager 9y agoYou are absolutely right, but that visual quality comes at a huge cost in other areas. For example, I find tomatoes in the US disgusting (and don’t tell me “oh, you need to try fresh/cherry/whatever tomatoes”, I have). They look good but taste horrible. They’ve been bred for looks and weight, not flavor. In many places outside the US, the tomato breeds there are bred for flavor, not looks. They’re uglier, but they have a vastly higher sugar/fat/whatever content and taste much better. https://www.vox.com/2016/2/12/10972140/fruits-vegetables-taste-better-europe https://www.vox.com/2016/2/12/10972140/fruits-vegetables-tas...
- pcurve 9y ago"They’ve been bred for looks and weight, not flavor." Yes, and cost-effective long-haul transport-ability and long shelf-life.
- astura 9y agoIt's well known that tomatoes you buy in the store in the US are pure garbage, even among Americans. I live in the Northeast. Around here practically every single person plants tomatoes if they have a backyard, even if they never plant any other vegetables ever. Chatting about how your tomatoes are doing and what type of tomatoes you are growing is a classic pasttime around these parts. Of course the reason is there's nothing you can buy in the store that tastes like what you plant in your yard. I know quite a few people who don't like store tomatoes but like home-grown tomatoes.
- pcurve 9y agoI'm in Northeast too I'm going to miss my backyard cherry tomato until next year. It's quite fun being able to control acidity, sweetness, texture depending on when you pick them off vine.
- Broken_Hippo 9y agoTo be fair, the gross tomoato issue isn't just the US. I am from Indiana, where summer tomatoes from farmer markets (or a backyard) were wonderful. Grocery store tomatoes were foamy, tasteless things. I'm in Norway now. Same issue, only I've never found yummy summer tomatoes.
- Symbiote 9y agoYeah, but Norway is north of the USA. It's not possible to have local tomatoes, so ones optimised for transport should be expected. Many US states should be able to grow tomatoes like they do in Italy.
- pq0ak2nnd 9y agohere's an exception to that rule: san marzanos are pretty cute and they're IMHO the best tasting tomato, and they look the same in Gabicce Mare or in Sacramento.
- oblio 9y agoNot visual quality, that's for sure :)
- nsebban 9y ago> visual quality When it comes to food --and specifically fruits and vegetables-- visual aspect is not a good indicator of taste or nutrition value. I would actually argue the opposite.
- stevenwoo 9y agoI would guess that the commenter who said that is making the statement that the US farming market touts visual quality because consumers look for visual quality and that is the reason for visual quality being a premium in the USA. Tomatoes being an example for this where recent years find the taste being almost absent but visual quality and uniformity of grocery store tomatoes being very high.
- danmaz74 9y ago"Visual quality" is actually a big part of the problem. You can't optimize for visual while also optimize for taste...
- oliv__ 9y agoHow is this even a question?
- planteen 9y agoCan you show me a quality metric where American fruits or vegetables are consistently different compared to other countries? These are commodities, after all, so there is little differentiation. Is it visually, callorically, or nutritionally different somehow? I immediate went to visually, because one does notice this in the US compared to Latin America. Everyone is jumping on me about tomatoes, but Europe has the same bland greenhouse tomatoes in my experience.
- Nimitz14 9y ago> Europe has the same bland greenhouse tomatoes in my experience. Try any Mediterranean country (France is included in that btw).