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> “It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” Tr
by koolba 5y ago
> “It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” Traverso explains, “so as you favored the more consistently colored apples, you were essentially disfavoring the same genes that coded for great flavor.
This is also why so many cultivars of tomato and cucumber taste like moist cardboard. Once you taste what they’re actually supposed to taste like, you’ll never be able to go back to a shrink-wrapped English cucumber grown in a hot house.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wwweston 5y agoWhat's a good cucumber alternative and how do I get a hold of it?
- Spooky23 5y agoLook for regional producers or farmers markets. I’m lucky to live in upstate NY with ready access to farm stands about 30 minutes away. Usually smaller producers make different choices in terms of variety.
- quantified 5y agoThe US Northeast has so many apples that don’t travel well and have so much flavor: Spenser, Macoun, Empire... on the West Coast they’re all lacrosse balls that taste OK to decent but mainly travel well.
- Spooky23 5y agoEveryone complains about the northeast re: weather, etc. But there’s a ton of stuff like this that many of us who live here take for granted!
- quantified 5y agoI miss that aspect of New England. Agriculture there is much more local. Apple picking in the fall was a delight.
- dheera 5y agoIdeally get "Japanese cucumbers" from a Japanese grocery store, or get the "Persian cucumbers" from any grocery store that has decent typography in its logo (yes there is a HUGE correlation between logo typography and cucumber quality in my experience).
- SEJeff 5y agohttps://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/cucumbers https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/cucumbers Bakers Creek only sells heirloom seeds (no cultivars). I get most of my garden seeds from them as they have the lineage of the seeds they sell available.
- koolba 5y agoThese seeds are amazing. The Beit Alpha cucumbers are fantastic and the Purple Bumble Bee cherry tomatoes are some of the greatest I’ve ever eaten.
- jtc331 5y agoHeirloom varieties (more properly “open pollinated”) are themselves cultivars, which just means something that was selected/bred/domesticated. I think you’re trying to get at “hybrids” (which just means the breeding isn’t stable, i.e., the next generation isn’t first red to match the parents, but even hybrids can be quite tasty. The issue isn’t the breeding process per se; the issue is selectively breeding for the wrong things (or a single thing instead of a mix of things).
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoNearly nobody under the age of 35 is aware that popcorn used to taste like corn. Not like modern ears of corn, which are bred mostly for sweetness; more like tortilla chips, whose corn is still (somehow) cultivated for corn flavor. Corny. [edit] … also I’m baffled by how, every time I “hold the tomatoes” on my burger or salad, someone will invariably say “don’t you like tomatoes?” and I have to go on this dumb rant about how the flavor has been bred out. Like, all these people have had marinara sauce and even ketchup, which are made from varieties of tomatoes that are still cultivated for flavor (and thus unsuitable for long-distance shipping). They know what tomatoes actually taste like!! yet still eat these slices of pink tomato that somehow have less flavor than American cucumbers and think “this is the same thing”
- jareklupinski 5y agoi too stopped ordering tomatos for this reason some people mentioned looking for places that advertise using heirloom tomatos, but you still have to give them a good pinch of salt would love to join a startup that re-engineers flavor back into commercially-viable crops
- sliken 5y agoThis is also why many AKC pure bred dogs have serious health problems. Turns of you select only on a simple metric like hair color, ear shape, of slope of the back, that you end up selecting for things that go against the very heart of what the breed was. So you lose characteristics that led to the breed in the first place.
- aix1 5y agoThat, and inbreeding https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/although-purebred-dogs-can-be-best-in-show-are-they-worst-in-health/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/although-purebred... https://www.instituteofcaninebiology.org/blog/inbreeding-of-purebred-dogs-determined-from-dna https://www.instituteofcaninebiology.org/blog/inbreeding-of-...
- throwawayboise 5y agoWith tomatoes, I thought it was more that most are not ripened on the vine, they are picked green so they ship better, then ripened artificially with ethelene gas. They turn red, but don't develop the same flavor or texture as a real ripe tomato. Same with strawberries.
- leotaku 5y agoSomehow I don't seem to have the same experience as most people in this thread. Sure, homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers taste quite a bit better than what I usually buy at the supermarket, but it certainly isn't perfect vs. inedible. Possible explanations I can think of: 1. My taste perception is just broken because I am relatively young and have been raised on low-quality produce. 2. My local supermarkets just happen to stock excellent vegetables (I live in Central Europe). 3. There are some extremely high-quality breeds of tomatoes/cucumbers that I have never eaten before. 4. Other people are simply more enthusiastic about vegetable quality and therefore their claims seem exaggerated to me.
- crazygringo 5y agoI think there are two things involved. First is that some produce really is terrible -- "regular" cheap tomatoes can be utterly flavorless. But on the other hand, a lot of supermarkets stock tomatoes that range from fine to quite excellent, e.g. cherry tomatoes grown in greenhouses sold on the vine. And second is that people really do exaggerate how great homegrown tomatoes are. There are tomato snobs in the same way there are coffee snobs, whiskey snobs, chocolate snobs, whatever. They insist something is 100x better, when really it's just 1.5x better, because for some reason that's important to them, part of their identity. Yes, a farmer's-market heirloom tomato is utterly delicious. But store-bought cherry tomatoes on the vine are also super super tasty. Even the ones not on the vine can be really really good. (You can also find really bad ones though, it depends on the store.) I'd go so far as to say they're just different, neither obviously better than the other.
- ido 5y agoWhere in Central Europe are you? And are you buying the cheapest tomatoes available? The answer to these can vary results a lot.
- renewiltord 5y agoIt’s pretty much this skit https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg
- TroisM 5y agoStores sell heirloom tomatoes too... sometime at twice the price though...
- spfzero 5y agoIt’s not just flavor that has been bred out. Also nutrition, and not just from tomatoes. Consumers can not visually see flavor or nutrition. They can see color, size, and uniformity of surface texture and shape. So the vegetables are bred for what can be seen and immediately considered in a buying decision.
- colechristensen 5y agoSome of it is just size, as in the larger sized produce might have a similar amount of nutrition per unit (per tomato or per berry) but not per pound, so the nutrition is diluted with fiber and water but still there. Though there are also a whole lot of edible plants out there that don’t hold up at all to distribution, if you aren’t picking it by hand and eating it the same day it will be ruined.
- hazza_n_dazza 5y agoSearch for the good stuff https://tomatoeden.com/ https://tomatoeden.com/ There are many heirloom and flavour providers, put your money where your mouth is!