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It's also horrible because, in the quest for the perfect looking food, flavor and nutrition are often the first thing to go.
by debacle 8y ago
It's also horrible because, in the quest for the perfect looking food, flavor and nutrition are often the first thing to go.
- taneq 8y agoPerfect looking with unnaturally long shelf life, yeah. Tomatoes certainly aren't the same thing I remember them being, for instance.
- wishinghand 8y agoHow did they used to taste?
- rootusrootus 8y agoYou can grow excellent tomatoes yourself, or head to a local farmer's market for a reasonable selection of 'real' tomatoes. The short answer -- a properly ripe tomato doesn't need any help whatsoever from salt or sugar to make it tasty.
- jazzyjackson 8y agoKeep your eyes out for "Heirloom tomatoes" or my favorite, zebra-stripe tomatoes. They're a lot smaller, vary in color a lot. Pack a punch, I like to just snack on them whole.
- taneq 8y agoLike tomatoes, instead of like watery cardboard.
- wishinghand 8y agoThat doesn't help answer the question at all.
- ams6110 8y agoThe big problem with tomatoes is that the ones that go to supermarkets are harvested green and ripened artificially. They don't develop the same flavors as a natural sun-ripened tomato. But, a sun-ripened tomato at the peak of ripeness is both too fragile and too short lived to be shipped and sold in supermarkets. I think the same is true for a lot of other fruits.
- randomdata 8y agoThe science suggests that food is becoming less nutritious because of more abundant carbon dioxide, not directly due to farming practices.
- andrewflnr 8y agoI have never heard that. Link?
- randomdata 8y agoHere is a NY Times article discussing the topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/climate/rice-global-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/climate/rice-global-warmi...
- whatshisface 8y agoYou could just breed it back down to being slower-growing if that was the case, if that was what any big farmer wanted...
- randomdata 8y agoRealistically, what the farmer wants is irrelevant. A farmer who grows what a farmer wants is a farmer that is no longer in business. You need to have customers to stay in business, and so the customer always dictates what is grown. Customers don't buy product they don't want – why would they? If the customer desires a slower-growing plant, the customer will get a slower-growing plant (assuming the tech companies are able to make the science work, but that's outside of the hands of farmers). Although knowing the average consumer, there is a good chance they would never accept a slower-growing plant as it may cause autism or some other story that they start to spread around.
- jazzyjackson 8y agoThe breeding of a bigger, rounder, more beautiful tomato has absolutely come at the cost of nutrition. See https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-the-nutrition-out-of-our-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-t... "Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food" ". The loss of these beneficial nutrients did not begin 50 or 100 years ago, as many assume. Unwittingly, we have been stripping phytonutrients from our diet since we stopped foraging for wild plants some 10,000 years ago and became farmers." The rising CO2 doesn't help tho.