3 ms·

These unfounded aphorisms are quite tiring. I went to the store today and bought tomatoes. 100% was red and fine.

WJW 6y ago
Presumably the 90% of tomatoes that were not red and fine were made into ketchup or something like that. Of course if you select for an attribute first then that attribute is going to be over-represented.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  I giggled a bit, but the nice red tomatoe yield is quite high in my small garden experience.
  - ska 6y ago
    Otoh the seeds you got for your small garden were already heavily filtered... so maybe still applies?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Of the remaining 10% that reached the shop, 90% were probably not perfect photo-like quality, and you can find them dumped in the trash can at the end of the day (if you can grab them before local freegans do, that is).
username90 6y ago
When items have reliable quality we call them commodities and suddenly stop noticing their quality.
PeterisP 6y ago
In a random store most likely 100% of tomatoes are crap, as stores overwhelmingly pick the varieties of tomatoes which are optimized so that they can be transported and stored and transported without damage and spoilage (and since logistics takes time, they have to be picked before they're fully ripe), trading off flavor, taste and nutrients. There are many tomato varieties that objectively taste much better (you don't have to be a snob or supertaster, the difference is obvious), but they are hard or impossible to distribute through modern logistics, you would have to live very close to the grower (or grow them yourself) so that you can eat them the day they're picked without driving them around half the country. And, of course, you get them when they're in season, not year-round. That's impractical, so most of us rather choose to eat crap tomatoes most of time - and so 90% of tomatoes are crap. Even if they're red and we consider that crap as normal, they're still crap in comparison.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Well I agree except that I don't want to think of mundane things as crap. Where I live tomatoes are either green at harvesting or grown at least part time in green houses during spring. Imports is a must in practice. Fruits like oranges or pineapples are thready and blend. I couldn't believe how good fresh such tasted when I was in the tropics. The blend tomatoes in stores being crap are tangential to the "programmers can't program" mythos or how guys rate girls on a very not normally or uniformly distributed 10 points scale. Mediocre is still OK.

WJW 6y ago

Presumably the 90% of tomatoes that were not red and fine were made into ketchup or something like that. Of course if you select for an attribute first then that attribute is going to be over-represented.

rightbyte 6y ago
I giggled a bit, but the nice red tomatoe yield is quite high in my small garden experience.
- ska 6y ago
  Otoh the seeds you got for your small garden were already heavily filtered... so maybe still applies?
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Of the remaining 10% that reached the shop, 90% were probably not perfect photo-like quality, and you can find them dumped in the trash can at the end of the day (if you can grab them before local freegans do, that is).

username90 6y ago

When items have reliable quality we call them commodities and suddenly stop noticing their quality.

PeterisP 6y ago

In a random store most likely 100% of tomatoes are crap, as stores overwhelmingly pick the varieties of tomatoes which are optimized so that they can be transported and stored and transported without damage and spoilage (and since logistics takes time, they have to be picked before they're fully ripe), trading off flavor, taste and nutrients. There are many tomato varieties that objectively taste much better (you don't have to be a snob or supertaster, the difference is obvious), but they are hard or impossible to distribute through modern logistics, you would have to live very close to the grower (or grow them yourself) so that you can eat them the day they're picked without driving them around half the country. And, of course, you get them when they're in season, not year-round. That's impractical, so most of us rather choose to eat crap tomatoes most of time - and so 90% of tomatoes are crap. Even if they're red and we consider that crap as normal, they're still crap in comparison.

rightbyte 6y ago
Well I agree except that I don't want to think of mundane things as crap. Where I live tomatoes are either green at harvesting or grown at least part time in green houses during spring. Imports is a must in practice. Fruits like oranges or pineapples are thready and blend. I couldn't believe how good fresh such tasted when I was in the tropics. The blend tomatoes in stores being crap are tangential to the "programmers can't program" mythos or how guys rate girls on a very not normally or uniformly distributed 10 points scale. Mediocre is still OK.