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The story of heirloom fruit and vegetables is sad. People spent their entire lives sometimes creating delicious varieties only to be blown out by produce that w

The story of heirloom fruit and vegetables is sad. People spent their entire lives sometimes creating delicious varieties only to be blown out by produce that was cheap to grow and looked good on the supermarket shelf (taste didn’t matter). Apples are a great example. Almost everything in the supermarket (save for a few varieties) is bland and mealy. It LOOKS great though, and that’s all that matters.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> People spent their entire lives sometimes creating delicious varieties only to be blown out by produce that was cheap to grow and looked good on the supermarket shelf (taste didn’t matter). Why would taste not matter? Surely people take into account taste when purchasing food. But they also decide to make tradeoffs in how much extra money to spend for the additional rate versus other things they could try with the additional money. But given two foods at the same price and nutritional qualities, surely taste is a prominent factor.
- sbassi 5y ago
  it should be, but it is not the way it works. The same happens with the tomato.
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    Homegrown tomatoes and tomatoes from the supermarket are two totally different fruits. They don’t even taste the same. Same goes with strawberries and probably a lot of things.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I tasted heirloom tomatoes and they weren’t special
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  It's a pretty widely studied artifact of mass retail that appearance was valued over taste, because appearance is immediately obvious while taste must be remembered and most consumers don't. In other words, it's immediately obvious what produce looks good, while knowing what produce tastes good requires time and attention. Most people don't really remember the difference between varieties of apples, for example, which are currently undergoing a bit of a renaissance as breeders have discovered the value of branding and marketing campaigns similar to those used for manufactured goods. The general perception is that this trend is starting to go away only now, as a largely internet driven food culture has emerged that values unusual varieties. Moreover, for the retailer themselves, durability and shelf life is perhaps the single most important property in today's long supply chains, because produce is subject to rough handling and consumers absolutely do not purchase bruised fruit or wilted greens. Unfortunately it often runs opposite to other metrics of quality for produce.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > because appearance is immediately obvious while taste must be remembered and most consumers don't. I find this hard to believe. Foods and taste is one of the most common experiences people have and converse about. Your last paragraph is just supporting that people might not be willing or able to spend the extra money for the tastiest fruits and vegetables.
- wikibob 5y ago
  Taste doesn’t matter in the majority of the fruit and vegetable market because it is not perceivable at the time of purchase.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Unless people are generally more forgetful than me, they can probably remember that the red delicious or gala apple they bought last week tastes worse than a honey crisp or cosmic crisp or whatever. People might be choosing less tasty fruits and vegetables because they are cheaper, but they are not ignoring tastier ones because they do not care about taste.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      A huge amount of the marketplace just thinks "apple" and doesn't note the variety. A lot of us pay attention now, but did my mom pay so much attention to varietal when shopping? I don't think so.
      - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
        I thought I hated apples growing up. The only thing my mom bought was a red delicious. Later in life I tried a honeycrisp and wow! Turns out I actually love apples.
    - rdtwo 5y ago
      There is no choice they simply aren’t available because they don’t transport or store well
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Right, so it is too expensive to have those fruits flown in, not that people care about looks over taste.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    Plus--Americans don't eat much fruit, or vegetables. They buy them though. Exception--the fruit that goes into sugary drinks. I think it's like exercise.
- noah_buddy 5y ago
  Little known fact but mass-agriculture varieties of fruits and vegetables often have far less nutrition than heirloom varieties.
  - markdown 5y ago
    This is a myth. They usually taste worse, because they've been bred to grow to a uniform size, to be pretty, and to have a long shelf-life. As far as nutrition is concerned, it only seems this way because they're pumped full of water and end up tasting just like bags of mildly tomato flavoured water. If you take a heirloom variety and a mass-produced hybrid variety and grow them in the same good soil in full sun, their nutritional value should be about the same.
jrussino 5y ago
I was with you until the second paragraph. Aren’t we having a kind of apple renaissance right now? Admittedly I know very little about apples, but when I was a kid the supermarkets basically just had red delicious and Granny Smith. Then came the galas & fujis and now my local supermarket has like 5 or 6 types of red apple, all of which are way better than anything I ate growing up (honey crisp are my current favorites).
- ianai 5y ago
  Probably depends on where you shop and live. My parents live a few states over. Their local grocery will sometimes devote 2-3 whole rows (back/front) to different apple varieties (like 6+ varieties, I think). Local to me, we get green/red and sometimes other varieties in specialty grocery stores.
- chihuahua 5y ago
  Red Delicious, the worst apple in the world, is finally on the way out. For decades people have bought it because they were used to it or that's what was available. Truly terrible, with thick skin and a bitter, mealy interior. My team's admin used to buy apples for us, including some Red Delicious. I explained that they were terrible so she stopped. It was easy to find supporting evidence in the form of 5 articles with titles like "Red Delicious is the worst apple in the world." No reason to buy them, except that they look pretty. Recently there have been lots of new varieties, mostly distinguished by their good flavor and texture. Honey Crisp, as you mentioned, is one example. Cosmic Crisp is another: first available in 2019?, developed and grown in Washington state. Not sure if it's available in other states yet.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Red Delicious was actually a great apple when it was introduced. Read up on it the history of how this changed is interesting and kind of sad. The problem wasn’t the fruit, the issue was people could slowly change it while keeping the name. As consumers began to purchase more of their food from large supermarkets, the apple's popularity encouraged commercial growers to increasingly select for longer storage and cosmetic appeal rather than flavor and palatability, which resulted in a less palatable fruit.[8][9][2] In particular the selection of redder fruit caused deselection of flavor, and the genes that produced the yellow stripes on the original fruit were on the same chromosomes as those for the flavor-producing compounds.[2] Breeding for uniformity and storability favored a thicker skin.[2] Later, as other cultivars entered supermarkets, demand for the 'Red Delicious' declined.[9][10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious
chiph 5y ago
Not just Apples and veggies - check out Jimmy Red corn. It used to be a favorite of bootleggers, making illicit corn whiskey (aka moonshine), but was nearly lost. It's now available for sale again, both as seed corn and as a whiskey. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/02/574367086/from-hooch-to-haute-cuisine-a-nearly-extinct-bootleggers-corn-gets-a-second-shot https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/02/574367086/fr...
rmk 5y ago
In the Bay Area, what you have said in the second sentence is thankfully not the case at all. A few varieties that I have tasted in the Bay Area (most of them quite regularly): 1. Red Delicious 2. Gala 3. Fuji 4. Pippin 5. Macintosh 6. Granny Smith 7. Golden Yellow 8. Mutsu 9. Pink Lady 10. Arkansas Black 11. Jonagold 12. Golden Ambrosia 13. Honeycrisp 14. Braeburn 15. Empire 16. Enterprise

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> People spent their entire lives sometimes creating delicious varieties only to be blown out by produce that was cheap to grow and looked good on the supermarket shelf (taste didn’t matter). Why would taste not matter? Surely people take into account taste when purchasing food. But they also decide to make tradeoffs in how much extra money to spend for the additional rate versus other things they could try with the additional money. But given two foods at the same price and nutritional qualities, surely taste is a prominent factor.

sbassi 5y ago
it should be, but it is not the way it works. The same happens with the tomato.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Homegrown tomatoes and tomatoes from the supermarket are two totally different fruits. They don’t even taste the same. Same goes with strawberries and probably a lot of things.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I tasted heirloom tomatoes and they weren’t special
jcrawfordor 5y ago
It's a pretty widely studied artifact of mass retail that appearance was valued over taste, because appearance is immediately obvious while taste must be remembered and most consumers don't. In other words, it's immediately obvious what produce looks good, while knowing what produce tastes good requires time and attention. Most people don't really remember the difference between varieties of apples, for example, which are currently undergoing a bit of a renaissance as breeders have discovered the value of branding and marketing campaigns similar to those used for manufactured goods. The general perception is that this trend is starting to go away only now, as a largely internet driven food culture has emerged that values unusual varieties. Moreover, for the retailer themselves, durability and shelf life is perhaps the single most important property in today's long supply chains, because produce is subject to rough handling and consumers absolutely do not purchase bruised fruit or wilted greens. Unfortunately it often runs opposite to other metrics of quality for produce.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > because appearance is immediately obvious while taste must be remembered and most consumers don't. I find this hard to believe. Foods and taste is one of the most common experiences people have and converse about. Your last paragraph is just supporting that people might not be willing or able to spend the extra money for the tastiest fruits and vegetables.
wikibob 5y ago
Taste doesn’t matter in the majority of the fruit and vegetable market because it is not perceivable at the time of purchase.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Unless people are generally more forgetful than me, they can probably remember that the red delicious or gala apple they bought last week tastes worse than a honey crisp or cosmic crisp or whatever. People might be choosing less tasty fruits and vegetables because they are cheaper, but they are not ignoring tastier ones because they do not care about taste.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    A huge amount of the marketplace just thinks "apple" and doesn't note the variety. A lot of us pay attention now, but did my mom pay so much attention to varietal when shopping? I don't think so.
    - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
      I thought I hated apples growing up. The only thing my mom bought was a red delicious. Later in life I tried a honeycrisp and wow! Turns out I actually love apples.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    There is no choice they simply aren’t available because they don’t transport or store well
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Right, so it is too expensive to have those fruits flown in, not that people care about looks over taste.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Plus--Americans don't eat much fruit, or vegetables. They buy them though. Exception--the fruit that goes into sugary drinks. I think it's like exercise.
noah_buddy 5y ago
Little known fact but mass-agriculture varieties of fruits and vegetables often have far less nutrition than heirloom varieties.
- markdown 5y ago
  This is a myth. They usually taste worse, because they've been bred to grow to a uniform size, to be pretty, and to have a long shelf-life. As far as nutrition is concerned, it only seems this way because they're pumped full of water and end up tasting just like bags of mildly tomato flavoured water. If you take a heirloom variety and a mass-produced hybrid variety and grow them in the same good soil in full sun, their nutritional value should be about the same.

jrussino 5y ago

I was with you until the second paragraph. Aren’t we having a kind of apple renaissance right now? Admittedly I know very little about apples, but when I was a kid the supermarkets basically just had red delicious and Granny Smith. Then came the galas & fujis and now my local supermarket has like 5 or 6 types of red apple, all of which are way better than anything I ate growing up (honey crisp are my current favorites).

ianai 5y ago
Probably depends on where you shop and live. My parents live a few states over. Their local grocery will sometimes devote 2-3 whole rows (back/front) to different apple varieties (like 6+ varieties, I think). Local to me, we get green/red and sometimes other varieties in specialty grocery stores.
chihuahua 5y ago
Red Delicious, the worst apple in the world, is finally on the way out. For decades people have bought it because they were used to it or that's what was available. Truly terrible, with thick skin and a bitter, mealy interior. My team's admin used to buy apples for us, including some Red Delicious. I explained that they were terrible so she stopped. It was easy to find supporting evidence in the form of 5 articles with titles like "Red Delicious is the worst apple in the world." No reason to buy them, except that they look pretty. Recently there have been lots of new varieties, mostly distinguished by their good flavor and texture. Honey Crisp, as you mentioned, is one example. Cosmic Crisp is another: first available in 2019?, developed and grown in Washington state. Not sure if it's available in other states yet.
- Retric 5y ago
  Red Delicious was actually a great apple when it was introduced. Read up on it the history of how this changed is interesting and kind of sad. The problem wasn’t the fruit, the issue was people could slowly change it while keeping the name. As consumers began to purchase more of their food from large supermarkets, the apple's popularity encouraged commercial growers to increasingly select for longer storage and cosmetic appeal rather than flavor and palatability, which resulted in a less palatable fruit.[8][9][2] In particular the selection of redder fruit caused deselection of flavor, and the genes that produced the yellow stripes on the original fruit were on the same chromosomes as those for the flavor-producing compounds.[2] Breeding for uniformity and storability favored a thicker skin.[2] Later, as other cultivars entered supermarkets, demand for the 'Red Delicious' declined.[9][10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious

chiph 5y ago

Not just Apples and veggies - check out Jimmy Red corn. It used to be a favorite of bootleggers, making illicit corn whiskey (aka moonshine), but was nearly lost. It's now available for sale again, both as seed corn and as a whiskey. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/02/574367086/from-hooch-to-haute-cuisine-a-nearly-extinct-bootleggers-corn-gets-a-second-shot https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/02/574367086/fr...

rmk 5y ago

In the Bay Area, what you have said in the second sentence is thankfully not the case at all. A few varieties that I have tasted in the Bay Area (most of them quite regularly): 1. Red Delicious 2. Gala 3. Fuji 4. Pippin 5. Macintosh 6. Granny Smith 7. Golden Yellow 8. Mutsu 9. Pink Lady 10. Arkansas Black 11. Jonagold 12. Golden Ambrosia 13. Honeycrisp 14. Braeburn 15. Empire 16. Enterprise