15 ms·

My anecdote from my garden is that my smaller cucumbers have way more taste, my smaller red bellpebbers are way more pebbery, potatoes have a richer taste, if t

My anecdote from my garden is that my smaller cucumbers have way more taste, my smaller red bellpebbers are way more pebbery, potatoes have a richer taste, if this is just freshnes i dont know, but there for sure is a huge difference.

amelius 4y ago
It was always the case that smaller vegetables are stronger in taste. I'm guessing that the larger ones took up more water, which diluted the taste, but without a difference of total nutrients.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I believe this could be true. We see that lead is also diluted by increased size. https://www.soils.org/news/science-news/lead-contamination-garden-soils https://www.soils.org/news/science-news/lead-contamination-g...
saiya-jin 4y ago
I don't think that's you. When I come home and eat stuff from my parents garden, the differences in some cases are massive. Carrots for example taste 10x more intense, even one that was taken from soil weeks ago. And I am comparing to bio carrots we buy in Switzerland, so can't go much higher than that when shopping (apart from farmers markets maybe but that depends what kind of farm). Maybe its about transport and premature harvest, like bananas - if you ever taste some in exotic locations where they harvest them in the morning, its hard to ever enjoy bleak taste of those available in western world.
- orlp 4y ago
  Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe, shipped in this more durable state, and in the destination country are rapidly artificially ripened in ethylene gas chambers. The same commercial mass-produced fruits and vegetables also have been cultivated for decades for resistance against disease, size, and shelf life. Taste is often only secondary to those. On one hand it allows year-round affordable fruit and vegetables to lie in our stores. On the other hand it means we are now stuck buying tasteless bags of water. It is an erosion of the 'middle class' of products that economies of scale across all products seem to cause. There are only two kinds of product left: the small-scale artisanal extremely pricy product (e.g. farmer's market), and the mass-produced MBA-optimized to death commercial product. Any product that becomes 'too successful' and reaches economies of scale falls victim to this and is subsequently repeatedly penny-pinched until nothing of value is left.
  - sizzle 4y ago
    I have a local CSA organic veggie box dropped at my door picked from local farms. It is delicious and no pesticides, highly recommended anyone who can afford it to try. You can search for CSA companies in your area here: https://www.localharvest.org https://www.localharvest.org
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    Random: ethylene is psychoactive. Haven’t tried it. But, some evidence that it was the abiogenic gas at the temple of Apollo at Delphi: Foster, J., & Lehoux, D. (2007). The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis. Clinical Toxicology, 45(1), 85-89.
    - yesenadam 4y ago
      > The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis Thanks, interesting read. The paper seems rather against the hypothesis, to say the least - it's a demolition. "this hypothesis is implausible since it is based on problematic scientific and textual evidence, as well as a fallacious argument. ...the evidence did not support the conclusion. ... if it was not the positivist bent of the argument that made it so widely attractive, then how did such an implausible argument get such wide press?" I don't want to give long quotes, but it says "developing the explanatory hypothesis required the combined efforts of an archeologist, a geologist, a chemist, and a toxicologist", but they offered a pathetically flimsy argument, which only seemed convincing due to the appearance of its scientific trappings, appeals to the glamour of the "interdisciplinary" and of explaining ancient mysteries with Science. It mostly looks at why it convinced anyone, and became widely known, although extremely low quality work. paper PDF: https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/15563650601120800 https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/15563650601120800
      - dr_dshiv 4y ago
        Quite so. Here’s a rather well written reply: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15563650701477803 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778... It’s funny that in neither paper was there ever an attempt to just try the stuff and, you know, attempt mantic divination. What has science come to?
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  As you mention Switzerland, this newspaper article might be interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/sonntagszeitung/warum-die-tomate-immer-gleich-fad-schmeckt/story/15844610 https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tages... I.e. apart from the general trade-off problem between maximum yield and maximum taste, things are also exacerbated by the big supermarket chains demanding varieties that are delivering a "consistent taste year-round". As even the best tomatoes are only mediocre-tasting during winter, that apparently means standardising on mediocre-tasting tomatoes all year round, instead of mediocre tomatoes during winter and tasty tomatoes in the summer.
  - boringg 4y ago
    Oh yah supermarket tomatoes are crap - literally all of them. They shouldn't be called tomatoes as they are more like soulless, tasteless, poor textured trash.
greggsy 4y ago
Same goes for zucchini and eggplant. People often bring their excess zucchini’s into the office as a trophy, and potentially prize to some lucky staff member, but they’re tasteless.
ne0flex 4y ago
I've noticed this too with tomatoes. My parents grow tomatoes in their backyard during the summer. The amount of "meat" in the backyard grown tomatoes is noticeably a lot more than store-bought tomatoes. Stock-bought tomatoes are a lot more watery. and have less "meat" in them. Similarly, I've started buying a lot more organic fruits and vegetables. The organic strawberries have way more taste than non-organic strawberries.

amelius 4y ago

It was always the case that smaller vegetables are stronger in taste. I'm guessing that the larger ones took up more water, which diluted the taste, but without a difference of total nutrients.

giantg2 4y ago
I believe this could be true. We see that lead is also diluted by increased size. https://www.soils.org/news/science-news/lead-contamination-garden-soils https://www.soils.org/news/science-news/lead-contamination-g...

saiya-jin 4y ago

I don't think that's you. When I come home and eat stuff from my parents garden, the differences in some cases are massive. Carrots for example taste 10x more intense, even one that was taken from soil weeks ago. And I am comparing to bio carrots we buy in Switzerland, so can't go much higher than that when shopping (apart from farmers markets maybe but that depends what kind of farm). Maybe its about transport and premature harvest, like bananas - if you ever taste some in exotic locations where they harvest them in the morning, its hard to ever enjoy bleak taste of those available in western world.

orlp 4y ago
Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe, shipped in this more durable state, and in the destination country are rapidly artificially ripened in ethylene gas chambers. The same commercial mass-produced fruits and vegetables also have been cultivated for decades for resistance against disease, size, and shelf life. Taste is often only secondary to those. On one hand it allows year-round affordable fruit and vegetables to lie in our stores. On the other hand it means we are now stuck buying tasteless bags of water. It is an erosion of the 'middle class' of products that economies of scale across all products seem to cause. There are only two kinds of product left: the small-scale artisanal extremely pricy product (e.g. farmer's market), and the mass-produced MBA-optimized to death commercial product. Any product that becomes 'too successful' and reaches economies of scale falls victim to this and is subsequently repeatedly penny-pinched until nothing of value is left.
- sizzle 4y ago
  I have a local CSA organic veggie box dropped at my door picked from local farms. It is delicious and no pesticides, highly recommended anyone who can afford it to try. You can search for CSA companies in your area here: https://www.localharvest.org https://www.localharvest.org
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Random: ethylene is psychoactive. Haven’t tried it. But, some evidence that it was the abiogenic gas at the temple of Apollo at Delphi: Foster, J., & Lehoux, D. (2007). The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis. Clinical Toxicology, 45(1), 85-89.
  - yesenadam 4y ago
    > The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis Thanks, interesting read. The paper seems rather against the hypothesis, to say the least - it's a demolition. "this hypothesis is implausible since it is based on problematic scientific and textual evidence, as well as a fallacious argument. ...the evidence did not support the conclusion. ... if it was not the positivist bent of the argument that made it so widely attractive, then how did such an implausible argument get such wide press?" I don't want to give long quotes, but it says "developing the explanatory hypothesis required the combined efforts of an archeologist, a geologist, a chemist, and a toxicologist", but they offered a pathetically flimsy argument, which only seemed convincing due to the appearance of its scientific trappings, appeals to the glamour of the "interdisciplinary" and of explaining ancient mysteries with Science. It mostly looks at why it convinced anyone, and became widely known, although extremely low quality work. paper PDF: https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/15563650601120800 https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/15563650601120800
    - dr_dshiv 4y ago
      Quite so. Here’s a rather well written reply: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15563650701477803 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778... It’s funny that in neither paper was there ever an attempt to just try the stuff and, you know, attempt mantic divination. What has science come to?
iggldiggl 4y ago
As you mention Switzerland, this newspaper article might be interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/sonntagszeitung/warum-die-tomate-immer-gleich-fad-schmeckt/story/15844610 https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tages... I.e. apart from the general trade-off problem between maximum yield and maximum taste, things are also exacerbated by the big supermarket chains demanding varieties that are delivering a "consistent taste year-round". As even the best tomatoes are only mediocre-tasting during winter, that apparently means standardising on mediocre-tasting tomatoes all year round, instead of mediocre tomatoes during winter and tasty tomatoes in the summer.
- boringg 4y ago
  Oh yah supermarket tomatoes are crap - literally all of them. They shouldn't be called tomatoes as they are more like soulless, tasteless, poor textured trash.

greggsy 4y ago

Same goes for zucchini and eggplant. People often bring their excess zucchini’s into the office as a trophy, and potentially prize to some lucky staff member, but they’re tasteless.

ne0flex 4y ago

I've noticed this too with tomatoes. My parents grow tomatoes in their backyard during the summer. The amount of "meat" in the backyard grown tomatoes is noticeably a lot more than store-bought tomatoes. Stock-bought tomatoes are a lot more watery. and have less "meat" in them. Similarly, I've started buying a lot more organic fruits and vegetables. The organic strawberries have way more taste than non-organic strawberries.