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Nearly 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 to
by Eric_WVGG 5y ago
Nearly 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
- titzer 5y agoJust move to Europe.
- dnzkw 5y agoSorry to tell you tomatoes are flavourless in Europe as well.
- watwut 5y agoYep. You have to grow own tomatoes to have good ones. Which is something only few people are willing and have option to do.
- hoseja 5y agoExcept the available seeds are probably decreasing in quality as well.
- bserge 5y agoIs there a market for good tasting tomato seeds? :D It's actually fascinating - I remember my grandmother scooping out the seeds out of vegetables and drying them, to be used next year. The villagers also traded them as apparently they had different varieties.
- dekhn 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burpee_Seeds_and_Plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burpee_Seeds_and_Plants
- Vrondi 5y agoNo, there are places dedicated to preserving and making available heirloom seeds. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: https://www.southernexposure.com/ https://www.southernexposure.com/ Seed Savers Exchange https://www.seedsavers.org/ https://www.seedsavers.org/ Open Source Seed Initiative partners with multiple seed exchanges: https://osseeds.org/ https://osseeds.org/
- titzer 5y agoI lived almost 7 years in Germany, and the average tomato at a supermarket was lightyears beyond the US. Then farmers markets are even better.
- tajustice1 5y agoI lived almost 7 years in the USA, and the average tomato at a supermarket was lightyears beyond Germany. Then farmers markets are even better.
- LAC-Tech 5y agoI am willing to participate in a blind taste test to resolve this issue.
- bserge 5y agoFunny enough, the further east you go, the better they taste. But tbf, only for a few months when the many small farmers grow them outdoors and sell them for unbelievably cheap. Rest of the time it's greenhouse tomatoes like everyone else.
- dagw 5y agoMost tomatoes here suck as well.
- jbverschoor 5y agoBulgaria, Greece
- yread 5y agoJust always get beefsteak tomatoes for burgers
- randerson 5y agoOr Africa. Each time I've visited I've remarked on how much more flavor things have.
- liotier 5y agoFrequent travels to Africa have made me incapable of swallowing pineapple and mangoes in Europe - they can't compete against fruit picked ripe.
- LAC-Tech 5y agoI've actually thought about this before. AFAICT, it's mostly a supply chain issue. In order to ship fruit long distance, they're harvested before they're ready, and artificially ripened in frozen containers. This lets them survive long journeys but kills a lot of the taste. So your company would end up being a traceability and logistics one - what's the nearest place to your customers that grow fruit, how can you prove it, and how can you get it in their hands. (Last two contracts were in artificial fruit ripening and supply chain traceability respectively).
- fatnoah 5y agoI lived in a city and had a roofdeck with full sun all day. Tomatos grew amazingly well up there, and the flavor of those ripe tomatoes was so amazing that we had them with nearly every meal. It also made buying tomatos from the grocery store totally impossible.
- AlanYx 5y agoI've noticed that full sun makes a surprisingly big difference, even with the naturally good tasting heirloom varieties (Cherokee purple, Brandywine, etc.). I wonder what the science there is. You'd think the slower ripening in partial shade (often a week or more slower) would result in a more complex tasting tomato, but perhaps the flavor compounds never reach a critical mass.
- Evidlo 5y agoGrape tomatoes in plastic containers are usually more flavorful because the seller doesn't have to ship them underripe to keep them from squishing.
- Ygg2 5y agoThey too are starting to taste more like cardboard.
- cudgy 5y agoSan marzanos are pretty good … oops I shouldn’t have said that … now the words out and the geneticists are working hard to screw them up too
- jfengel 5y agoSan Marzanos are origin-protected in Italy, so if you get Italian San Marzano's they're legally limited in ways that promote quality. Unfortunately, there is a large black market in mis-labeled San Marzanos, so it's not a full guarantee of quality. But it's something that they're at least working on, rather than just giving up.
- phkahler 5y ago>> San Marzanos are origin-protected in Italy What does that mean? Protected under what laws?
- dagw 5y agoProtected under what laws? Protected under EU law. Only tomatoes of a specific type AND from the specific region can use the name "San Marzanos". Outside the EU I don't think there is anything stopping yoou from labling any random tomato as "San Marzano".
- riffraff 5y agoI may be wrong but I believe the canada-eu and eu-japan treaties also protect most denominations of origin (or rather, most by value rather than by specific items, but San Marzano should be included).
- KineticLensman 5y agoIt's a regulation [0] that says that products that are associated with a specific geographic location cannot be manufactured elsewhere and then passed off as the original. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi...
- cultofmetatron 5y agoyou would probably love the dorito effect https://www.amazon.com/Dorito-Effect-Surprising-Truth-Flavor-ebook/dp/B00LD1RWVK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1SRAI6FSOM017&dchild=1&keywords=the+dorito+effect&qid=1627919641&sprefix=the+dorito+effect%2Caps%2C235&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Dorito-Effect-Surprising-Truth-Flavor... Its a book about the incentives and technologies that came together to result in the deflavorization of food and the rise of the "flavoring" industry as a whole. Of the interesting things in there is one guy using a mass spectrometer to identify flavor compounds at scale to engineer a tomato that is hardy and ships well without sacrificing flavor.
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoI have a feeling that “love” might not be the right word, but adding it to the queue ;)
- hvidgaard 5y agoDo you happen to know what this variety is called?
- cultofmetatron 5y agoI wish! in the book, the guy has created it and was giving samples to farmers. However, despite the vastly superior flavor, it wasn't quite as productive as the flavorless ones yet.
- hvidgaard 5y agoNot quite as productive for a farmer can be plenty productive for private use - he should release it!
- cdelsolar 5y agoI always thought tomatoes were pretty good and then I had tomatoes in Europe.
- vanderZwan 5y agoI guess that means you had them in a Mediterranean country, because elsewhere in Europe they still are rather bland in my (northern European) opinion
- spywaregorilla 5y agoYes this is the key. Most of Europe is in the same boat. Eating produce in Greece however is astoundingly better. Italy was less consistent on this but still better. Which leads me to wonder if its really the genetic choices or is it just something about the farming, nutritional rich soils, or transportation/timing?
- idlemind 5y agoSunshine is the other big variable. Most fruit will only get sweet during ripening if it's receiving enough sunlight. This is why red grapes are seldom grown in northern latitudes - their dark skin blocks sunlight and prevents them from sweetening during ripening.
- AfterShave 5y agoIs it really about sunlight and not heat though? Otherwise one would expect to see more sweet fruit coming from northern europe than is the case. Given the near absence of "night."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nicoburns 5y agoFrance is good for tomatoes too. I think it's definitely partly about local availability. But probably also a bit to do with cultural consumer choices too. France/Italy/Greece all have big food cultures in a way that isn't quite matched by northern European countries. That said, it seems to be getting easier to get high quality vegetables (including tomatoes) here in the UK. It's not from a supermarket and you pay more, but it is available (maybe still not quite as good as other countries, but certainly much improved on the flavourless stuff).
- jbverschoor 5y agoNot just flavor. Also nutrition. You can’t make something good from just water and cotton balls. Although we’re very good at that here in NL
- notJim 5y agoA sandwich place near me does BLTs, but ONLY in the summertime when the tomatoes are worthy. I love it.
- kook_throwaway 5y agoI thought I was the weirdo for thinking tomatoes on burgers didn't add any flavor. I love flavorful tomatoes everywhere else, generally, but the kind used on burgers are like mushy water.
- flycaliguy 5y agoThey want the burgers to taste the same all over the place. A shame because here in south western Ontario we have amazing tomatoes. I eat at least one a day just sliced with a bit of salt.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoI'm not convinced this is the case: Why would you choose lesser tomatoes for this? I'm more inclined to think that modern "grocery store" tomatoes are generally tomatoes that ship well while still fresh. Anything else means that tomatoes on burgers would not only be seasonal, but regulated to the sorts of places tomatoes can be shipped well from the farms. I'm not even sure how you eat a good one daily, honestly. I've always lived in places with winter, and the tomatoes tend to lose any worth (cherry tomatoes might save you though). I used to grow or buy decent ones during the summer, but moved further north and that went away.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago> ship well while still fresh I think a lot of supermarket fruit and veg is picked underripe, and then ripening is induced in a controlled environment in some warehouse a few hours before it's sent to the shops, so that it's "perfectly" ripe as it's placed on display for sale.
- simondotau 5y agoYou're not alone. I've never liked tomato slice on burgers, always ask to remove if present. Makes the burger wet and slushy for no benefit. Partial to a slice of beetroot as a substitute. (Hopefully you didn't establish this throwaway account to confess your controversial tomato opinions.)
- colechristensen 5y agoSweet corn was cultivated at least hundreds of years ago by native americans, it was never allowed to mature and be used as a grain, it makes up a minuscule fraction of corn production. Tortillas are made from varieties of corn that do fully mature “field corn”, essentially the same as the rest of corn production although there are more restrictions and preferences on which specific seed lines get into human food production.
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoYah, I know the basic elementary school version of the history of corn, just trying to explain that “tastes like corn” doesn’t mean a backyard corn-on-the-cob. My impression of the latter is that they basically taste like sugar now but I guess my memory of childhood cobs is less vivid.
- JohnFen 5y ago> I have to go on this dumb rant about how the flavor has been bred out. Why not just say "no, I don't like tomatoes" and save the effort? Nobody has to justify why they like or dislike the things that they do.