Why supermarket tomatoes tend to taste bland

Coming from Europe, when I was in America (CA) 3 years ago I was shocked that supermarket tomatoes just didn't have any taste; literally, they tasted like water.<p>When I tell my friends about this they think I surely must be exaggerating. Yeah, industrial tomatoes here in Austria don't taste like real farmers' tomatoes either, but it's not comparable to the situation in the US.<p>All this somehow reminds me of Soylent Green. Hope our children don't end up not knowing what real vegetables / fruits taste like.

Here in the UK, I've got two main sources of tomatoes: supermarkets, or the local once-a-week farmers' market.<p>At the supermarket, they tend to be packaged. At the farmers' market, they're on display loose or on the vine.<p>I don't buy by colour: I buy by <i>smell</i>. No kidding -- the tomatoes on the vine bought from the speciality farm stall smell <i>utterly different</i> to the supermarket variety; a pungent, 'green' scent that you can pick up by sniffing the vine. The supermarket variety, even vines of tomatoes, barely smell at all when you get them out of the packaging.<p>And smell is a major component of the human sense of taste, conveying many of the nuances of flavour.<p>Is supermarket over-packaging actually an attempt to disguise the lack of aroma of foodstuffs by forcing customers to evaluate by sight rather than by the more obviously applicable sense?

I asked a tomato farmer about this once, and he said that supermarkets only buy varieties that transport well without bruising; taste is secondary.

Barry Eastbrook has a book "Tomatoland" [1], about the taste of tomatoes in America, which is based on his earlier article [2]. Also there was a good interview with him on NPR [3]. Tomatoes are grown for easy transportation, and appearance, not for taste. They're harvested while still green, and then treated with ethylene gas, which "colors" them in an attractive color, but doesn't add any taste.<p>1. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-Destroyed-Alluring/dp/1449423450" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industrial-Agriculture-Dest...</a><p>2. <a href="http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes" rel="nofollow">http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-th...</a><p>3. <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=137371975" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...</a>

Another problem is shipping. A lot of produce is picked before it's ripe, because unripe fruit is less easily damaged during shipping.<p>This is a simple reason to buy local produce: if it was picked ripe, maybe today or yesterday, it will taste better.

In US as in most developed countries it takes four to seven days for vegetables to reach the supermarket shelves. That's why supermarkets seek crops that can last longer while taste is less significant.<p>Furthermore, all fruits and vegetables taste good when they're in season. Tomatoes for example are in their prime condition from July to October.

The problem is that we've been optimizing for food that looks like it will be tasty instead of food that is actually tasty: <a href="http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-02-16.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-02-16.html</a>

The real shame is that supermarket tomatoes train an entire generation to hate the taste of tomatoes. Anecdotally, I know a lot of people that opt for "no tomatoes" when eating out. Tomatoes are that annoying mushy pocket of water in your burger, or that mealy texture in your sandwich. That's unfortunate because vine-ripened tomatoes are deliciously sweet and tart--there is no confusion about whether it is a fruit or vegetable.

"Suggests," "tend to!" Insultingly soft-pedaled article! Supermarket tomatoes are horrible. If left to ripen, still horrible. Is there no one left who remembers what a tomato tastes like?

"researchers have discovered one reason why: a genetic mutation, common in store-bought tomatoes"<p>This reason stated in the article is not the primary reason. Store tomatoes are picked hard and green so they will not be bruised during transport. They are then sprayed with nitrogen before being put out so that the skin turns orangish and looks sort of ripe. But it's not ripe, and won't ripen properly since it's a green tomato that was picked long before it was ripe.<p>You can grow the exact same varieties that they sell at the store and allow them to ripen and they will taste considerably better than store bought. This shows that the popular hybrid varieties are not the primary cause of the taste and texture problems.<p>Yes, some varieties of heritage tomatoes will taste even better, due to genetics. But the overwhelming primary issue here is the picking when completely non-ripe.<p>source: decades of growing tomatoes

ha - this was published in Science. This is serious business. You could win a McNobel in Tomatorie.