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> (large, blue skin, but white and tasteless on the inside). That's just farmed blueberries. Wild blueberries are smaller, with blue and much more flavourful i

> (large, blue skin, but white and tasteless on the inside). That's just farmed blueberries. Wild blueberries are smaller, with blue and much more flavourful insides. It's an unfortunate reality with grocery stores that since people buy based on looks, farms will optimize for what looks good rather than what tastes good.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zdragnar 3y ago
They also optimize for transportation, which in the US tends to be very far indeed. Many kinds of fruit and veg are picked when they are just ripe, or not yet ripe and artificially ripened with ethylene or similar.
- joecool1029 3y ago
  The sad state of grocery store tomatoes is a testament to optimizing for transportation. The best tasting ones blemish/spoil easily. The tougher ones usually sold in stores just don't have much flavor.
Turskarama 3y ago
It's not even about optimizing for looks so much as size. A given blueberry bush will grow a certain _number_ of blueberries, while they are sold by weight. For that reason the farmer makes more money by getting the bush to grow the largest blueberries possible, and the larger ones tend to taste less good.
- scottlamb 3y ago
  Agreed, and so I'm a little skeptical of this article talking about tasty giant blueberries.
- o11c 3y ago
  From my experience (with homegrown berries) I would disagree; it's probably just that farmers have to optimize for "will not go bad on the way to the store". Maximum size and number of berries are determined by variety, and largely trade off against each other, though (probably climate dependent) some varieties just don't seem to do well at all. Actual size and sweetness is determined by how much water you give them and how long you leave them on the bush. Optimal picking time is determined by: go down and see when you think they're ready, then wait 2 more weeks before actually picking them; there should be just a handful starting to go bad. With some (but not all) varieties, you can also go by feel: if barely touching the berry makes it fall off, it's ready. If you only have a small number of bushes and they aren't fully enclosed, the birds will eat them all before they actually ripen. At commercial scale this isn't very significant since the area can't support that many birds for the rest of the summer.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Thick skin on a large blueberry is probably more palatable than thick skin on a small blueberry.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    >sweetness is determined by how much water you give them and how long you leave them on the bush with wine grapes, sweetness (and other flavor qualities) depend on the sunlight times ratio of surface area of leaves to number of "berries". If the weather is great, you can grow more great grapes, but if the weather is poor you prune off half the fruit when it is still small and green (it's called the green harvest), and the remaining grapes come out higher quality, concentrating the sugar from more leaves. You might try it with a blueberry bush to see if those fruits taste better.
Alex3917 3y ago
> Wild blueberries are smaller, with blue and much more flavourful insides. If you remove all the excess water from farmed blueberries, the taste is about the same. You just need to aggressively sweat them. This obviously doesn’t work if you want to eat them fresh, but there are better berries for eating fresh anyway.
declan_roberts 3y ago
Not only farmed blueberries, but probably grown in South America and shipped to the USA.
calf 3y ago
Are wild blueberries = huckleberries? I read that huckleberries are delicious but could not be domesticated, many attempts were made but failed.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Unfortunately the name "huckleberry" is applied to a number of berries across two genera. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry
henrikschroder 3y ago
> That's just farmed blueberries. No, it's a different species, vaccinium corymbosum. It's farmed, because it can be farmed, because of the bush size and growing conditions. Wild European blueberries, vaccinium myrtillus, can't be farmed. If we could, we would, but we can't, so instead we employ hordes of seasonal workers to go out in the forests and harvest them during the month-long season.
- jamincan 3y ago
  Myrtillus is the bilberry. High-bush blueberries (corymbosum) are the farmed variety in North America and while there are wild high-bush varieties, wild blueberries most commonly referring to the smaller, sweeter, low-bush varieties.
DropInIn 3y ago
Actually it's about ROI. Larger blueberries weigh more and so there is selective pressure and growing preferences which lead to large watery tasteless but heavy berries as the preference for crop outcomes. It's all about ROI.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zdragnar 3y ago

They also optimize for transportation, which in the US tends to be very far indeed. Many kinds of fruit and veg are picked when they are just ripe, or not yet ripe and artificially ripened with ethylene or similar.

joecool1029 3y ago
The sad state of grocery store tomatoes is a testament to optimizing for transportation. The best tasting ones blemish/spoil easily. The tougher ones usually sold in stores just don't have much flavor.

Turskarama 3y ago

It's not even about optimizing for looks so much as size. A given blueberry bush will grow a certain _number_ of blueberries, while they are sold by weight. For that reason the farmer makes more money by getting the bush to grow the largest blueberries possible, and the larger ones tend to taste less good.

scottlamb 3y ago
Agreed, and so I'm a little skeptical of this article talking about tasty giant blueberries.
o11c 3y ago
From my experience (with homegrown berries) I would disagree; it's probably just that farmers have to optimize for "will not go bad on the way to the store". Maximum size and number of berries are determined by variety, and largely trade off against each other, though (probably climate dependent) some varieties just don't seem to do well at all. Actual size and sweetness is determined by how much water you give them and how long you leave them on the bush. Optimal picking time is determined by: go down and see when you think they're ready, then wait 2 more weeks before actually picking them; there should be just a handful starting to go bad. With some (but not all) varieties, you can also go by feel: if barely touching the berry makes it fall off, it's ready. If you only have a small number of bushes and they aren't fully enclosed, the birds will eat them all before they actually ripen. At commercial scale this isn't very significant since the area can't support that many birds for the rest of the summer.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Thick skin on a large blueberry is probably more palatable than thick skin on a small blueberry.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  >sweetness is determined by how much water you give them and how long you leave them on the bush with wine grapes, sweetness (and other flavor qualities) depend on the sunlight times ratio of surface area of leaves to number of "berries". If the weather is great, you can grow more great grapes, but if the weather is poor you prune off half the fruit when it is still small and green (it's called the green harvest), and the remaining grapes come out higher quality, concentrating the sugar from more leaves. You might try it with a blueberry bush to see if those fruits taste better.

Alex3917 3y ago

> Wild blueberries are smaller, with blue and much more flavourful insides. If you remove all the excess water from farmed blueberries, the taste is about the same. You just need to aggressively sweat them. This obviously doesn’t work if you want to eat them fresh, but there are better berries for eating fresh anyway.

declan_roberts 3y ago

Not only farmed blueberries, but probably grown in South America and shipped to the USA.

calf 3y ago

Are wild blueberries = huckleberries? I read that huckleberries are delicious but could not be domesticated, many attempts were made but failed.

resolutebat 3y ago
Unfortunately the name "huckleberry" is applied to a number of berries across two genera. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry

henrikschroder 3y ago

> That's just farmed blueberries. No, it's a different species, vaccinium corymbosum. It's farmed, because it can be farmed, because of the bush size and growing conditions. Wild European blueberries, vaccinium myrtillus, can't be farmed. If we could, we would, but we can't, so instead we employ hordes of seasonal workers to go out in the forests and harvest them during the month-long season.

jamincan 3y ago
Myrtillus is the bilberry. High-bush blueberries (corymbosum) are the farmed variety in North America and while there are wild high-bush varieties, wild blueberries most commonly referring to the smaller, sweeter, low-bush varieties.

DropInIn 3y ago

Actually it's about ROI. Larger blueberries weigh more and so there is selective pressure and growing preferences which lead to large watery tasteless but heavy berries as the preference for crop outcomes. It's all about ROI.