Scientists discover why grocery store tomatoes don’t taste like anything

[corbe]

Scientists discover why grocery store tomatoes don’t taste like anything

Mike Wehner
 
2 hrs ago
 


Have you ever eaten a perfectly ripe tomato and wondered why you even bother? Tomatoes are a staple in sandwiches and salads, and you can throw them into just about any dish and come up with something edible. Tomato flavor, however, has apparently been going downhill for a while now, and scientists think they know why.

In a new study published in Nature Genetics, researchers including those from the Agricultural Research Service and the Boyce Thompson Institute have mapped the genome of the modern cultivated tomato as well as tomatoes that still grow in the wild. The team marked thousands of genes that were previously unknown, comparing the genomes of cultivated tomatoes with their wild relatives, and made more than a few interesting discoveries.

<..snip..>

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-discover-why-grocery-store-tomatoes-dont-taste-like-anything/ar-AABmlWW?ocid=ientp&fullscreen=true#image=1

[NavyCanDo]

We grow our own, and strongly agree that store bought is tasteless, compare to fresh picked. Lettuce too we grow andb its the same story.

[Sanguine]

This is important.  To us tomato lovers anyway.

[mrclose]

@corbe

@NavyCanDo

@Sanguine


The 'Real' reason the tomatoes have no taste is because ... they are picked while still green and unripened!

Since moving Northward from South Florida, I've never found a flavorable, store bought tomato in 15 years ... except for one!
(More on that in a minute)

Here in Virginia it seems like ALL of the tomatoes are shipped from Mexico!
Why?
Florida is right down the road!

As a teen growing up in Fort Lauderdale, I use to visit the fields around the sewage treatment processing plants where I could find Every variety of tomato in every size you could imagine!

Always took a saltshaker with me too!
Picked em right off the vine I did! lol
(Tomato seeds don't break down in digesting)
EWWWWWW!

THOSE were the most wonderful tasting tomatoes you could EVER want to put on two slices of bread with mayo!

Oh, Don't be fooled with that: "Ripened On The Vine" crappola that you see in the supermarkets!

Yeah, they are Ripened on the vine but what they don't tell you is that ... the vine is cut with the Green tomatoes still attached!

Now, about that flavorable, store bought tomato ...



The Wonderful and Tasty ... KUMATO

 https://outline.com/UYVkJ4

I saw some of these in my produce section one day and Even Though they were almost purplish black in color, I threw caution to the wind and bought a package of them!

What An Experience!

These things must be what all that "Nectar of the Gods" rhetoric must have been about!
The problem is that regular tomatoes are red in color to most shoppers and they just wont touch these because of the brown  or purplish color!

I was about the only one buying them and the produce manager stopped stocking them due to low sales! grrrrr

If you ever run across them .. grab all that you can, while you can!

[Sanguine]

@mrclose, those sound wonderful.  I'll look for them. 

[roamer_1]

As a teen growing up in Fort Lauderdale, I use to visit the fields around the sewage treatment processing plants where I could find Every variety of tomato in every size you could imagine!

Always took a saltshaker with me too!
Picked em right off the vine I did! lol

One of the things I best remember from when I lived back east...
We used to travel often from my hometown, Chicago, to visit relatives on my mothers side down in Kansas and Missouri... Quite often at harvest.

At the time, farmers along the freeway would have a sort of portable stand, a wagon in the form of a shed or some such, which they would fill with produce and haul down to the freeway to sell their wares.

We would always take advantage of that, with my mother packing bread and fixins in a cooler...
Those big, beautiful, fully ripened beefsteak tomatoes were a marvel to me - a kid who at that time had never had anything other than store-bought -  Absolutely magic!

And yes, before we left, we always made certain there was a salt shaker in the glovebox, at my father's insistence. He was the one who taught me how, eating a tomato like an apple, sitting on the bumper of the car.

And to this day, when it gets too hot and dusty, a tomato. a saltshaker, and a shady tree is still one of the very best things one can have in an afternoon.

[Sighlass]

Ahh, the Hornworms on home grown tomatoes.... Huge buggers that you squish at evening/nighttime...

Why do tomatoes taste like crap, cause folks buy them reddest largest they can find, breed to keep their firmness and shape to market instead of for taste.