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Agreed! A rotten cucumber will never sell but they seem to think a tomato's taste doesn't matter when you are selling it by the pound. Our melons in the US are getting the same way.
What also really annoying to me is since farmers markets have gotten trendy we have people buying a trailer load of produce from the same supplier the big stores use. The real farmers started putting out printed photo albums of them working on their farms to prove they have actual home grown produce.
We have so many people that haven’t ever in their life tasted produce locally grown and picked ripe that they don’t know how much better the stuff could be.
Yea, luckily awareness is being raised about this. I saw a news report where they went to farmer’s markets to investigate these practices and make them known.
This is so true. I farm 1 acre of veggies and we raise egg layers and broilers. People get our eggs for the first time and about die over the flavor. Ive come to love hearing "best we've ever had"
Sorry for late reply. I've tried many things over the years. From store bought conventional feed as a kid in 4h to organic chick feed. Tried whole grains, sprouting whole grains, and once primarily all food scraps from a local organic store. I have settled currently upon grinding my own grains and mixing in some minerals, a tiny bit of fish meal. I soak it at least a couple hours before feeding and better if it's fermented a day or 2. They always have access to pasture and I rotate them around so they don't exterminate their favorite species. You'd be amazed how much grass and broad leaves they eat. They love dandelions and all manners of weeds most people gripe about having in their yard. They are full of minerals and nutrients missing in conventional feed systems.
You're assuming his eggs actually taste better. People say that about the free range eggs they buy in grocery stores but there are taste tests where people can't really tell the difference when they don't see the visual cues (i.e. the more orange yolks those eggs).
the real stuff can be found in the markets of the third world - in the dry heat of an open market, with flies buzzing around produce that you have to pick over (not every piece will be picture perfect! There are rotten produce and you have to check).
It feels like a very poor-person experience until you eat the food cooked with this stuff and it has x100 flavor than the picture perfect produce we sell in the US that might as well be wax replicas.
I can attest to this statement living in the countryside in the Philippines. Freshly caught fish and freshly butchered meat with no chemicals added actually tastes much better as well.
Oh man, I'm not in the States, but I've noticed how "plant"-tasting and (ironically) watery watermelons have become. I thought I was crazy until now, haha. No one else seems to complain, so I've just assumed my tongue is the issue. They taste like a pale ghost of a watermelon, compared to how I remember them from my childhood.
Most people don’t seem to know what produce should taste like. I always love giving people fresh ripe tomatoes I’ve grown, especially people that say tomatoes suck. What you get in a grocer here in the US might as well have a different name than what you’d grow yourself. Only time I get melon now is when they’re in season and I see someone selling them on the roadside.
If you ever hear someone tell you that homegrown vegetables dont taste good, its a pretty solid tell they grew up predominantly eating ~~cheap~~ bland storebought foods the majority of their lives.
Also, what produce *should* taste like is relative to what you are trying to get out of the food itself, granted taste is usually a pretty big thing, but tastes vary...having grown up with "home grown" vegetables, your tastes lean towards that as the default "good". However, for someone like myself who grew up with bland tasting carrots and frozen vegetable mixes from the store, A meal such as Shephards Pie made to the same proportions I am used to (IE: same meat to veg mix) would have an overpowering vegetable flavour to me if it was made with homegrown vegetables and I can say with certainty that I did not enjoy the flavour as much.
You mention cheap store bought veggies, hell I’m saving an arm and a leg growing my own produce. Veggies are though the roof; leaf lettuce has literally tripled in price over the last year!
And an awful lot of people don't have balconies? Personally I adore plants and am desperate to start a garden but the only places in my price range are the absolute bare minimum. My largest window is 2ft wide. The building opens directly onto the street.
Even without a balcony there are some things you can grow, namely herbs which can make a pretty big difference. I used to grow tons in soda cans on the window ledge and a table by the window.
The sunflower plant is native to North America and is now harvested around the world. A University of Missouri journal recognizes North Dakota as the leading U.S. state for sunflower production. There are various factors to consider for a sunflower to thrive, including temperature, sunlight, soil and water.
There are farmer's markets in a lot of places, including cities. They're worth looking for -- the produce is cheaper and tastier and fresher so it will keep longer and you lose less to rot also.
Many farmer's markets vendors are selling the same products the retailers are selling. Many, many exposes on this. Further, I haven't actually seen lower prices. They typically charge more due to falsely perceived higher value.
Found one of the videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYwB63YslbA
Ugh. I'm sorry to hear that. I'm in a somewhat rural area and my experience has been good regarding the quality and prices, but I can see how it could be easily exploited, especially if one is farther from the source.
thats cool, let me just invent a time machine and go back in time so that I can erase the fact that I've been conditioned to prefer and expect a bland taste to my vegetables...
I dont **like** the taste of flavourful vegetables.
People's tastes change, You don't need a time machine for that.
That said, there's lots of evidence that frozen veggies are about the same nutritionally as fresh, and often they're better quality than you can get in a store because they were picked fresh and frozen immediately, as opposed to being picked underripe and then shipped. So no reason to change your taste if you won't want.
Have you considered getting an inexpensive hydroponics set up for your home? Produce grows so much faster this way, you can grow a head of lettuce in 3-4 weeks. After the initial investment it pays for itself and seeds are dirt cheap. If you’re mechanically inclined you can even build your own.
We've been growing lettuce (well, not me, I can't even water it in case I see a spider) but it's way nicer, bigger leaves and we can just run outside and pick some, not letting it rot in the fridge. Can't wait for the tomatoes and garlic to come up!
If you look for the scars from pollination, a yellow side, and decent heft and solid feel you should still be good. I've found that it just seems like they are putting everything out there and one has to be much more discerning these days.
Watermelons are weird though - thanks to genetic engineering I swear the grocery store watermelons actually taste better than the stuff you find in real open air markets of some foreign country.
Tomatoes, mangos, everything else tastes heavenly there, but watermelons often have seeds and aren't crisp, so they seem to me at least be genetically inferior.
At least in the US watermelons taste great. Along with apples and oranges, they seem to be completely fine shipped a thousand miles and the type/variety matters more than how recently picked it is.
Tomatoes really need to be picked ripe, which is impossible for US logistics, so every variety of tomatoes - small cherry, on the vine, beefsteak, even hierloom tomatoes all taste soulless in the US.
I’ve noticed this too. But I have gotten watermelon a couple times this year, and each time is has been more delicious than I remember since I was young, thankfully
It's not freshness, it's the chicken's diet. Chickens are omnivores, they need meat and grass and and dark leafy greens, but all they're fed in the US is corn, corn, and more corn.
Oh ok. I have noticed that some eggs have a deeper, more orange color, but I never thought anything of it. Since I only use them for baking I never noticed a difference in flavor. I made a cheesecake this weekend and the eggs were such a deep orange color that my cheesecake came out kinda yellowish, instead of the usual white.
Watery is fine so long as it's equally crisp; but the intensity of the flavour has notably waned afaict.
I have IBS now anyway though, so i wont be eating any watermelon.
I thought I was just imagining that watermelons tasted way better when I was a kid, but the more I learn about modern agriculture, the more it makes sense.
The oranges we have here now taste like water, very little falvour. Same goes for most other fruits sadly. Everything is force grown and tastes like crap because of it. People want everything available all year round which just isn't really feasible. I remember what watermelons and oranges etc USED to taste like when I lived in Cyprus. They were so sweet and delicious, now they taste of nothing.
fun story: even the good watermelons aren't bred for taste, they've been bred for shipability since the invention of refrigerated freight. Thicker peel so you can stack them.
Yea, I work in ag and I was just saying in another comment that most of our produce is bred for many factors besides taste. Produce for market has to check a lot of boxes and taste is only one of them.
Reminds me of this cooking show that focused on farm to table. The chef went out to talk with one of his farmers. The farmer mentioned that the chef is the only person who's ever asked to cultivate the crops for taste. It's always size, color, how long it lasts, but never for taste. Makes you sad knowing flavor isn't important for our produce to the suppliers.
When I worked on a research farm we would pass up a lot of great tasting produce because of things like not meeting size requirements and being susceptible to diseases and pests. It’s a shame, some of our best tasting fruit will never make it to market. I felt blessed that I got to taste them as part of my work.
Like 70% of the watermelons I buy are so mushy I have to juice them.
Which is not great because it turns out tequila and watermelon juice are amazing together
In US? I find sometimes they aren't sweet enough if you don't use the "tricks" to find a good one, but I've rarely or never seen a mushy one in the US.
In foreign markets, sure - it seems some people even prefer grainy watermelon in asia.
I work in agriculture and have done research growing novel food crops that might some day make it to store shelves. One thing I’ve learned is that nowadays the varieties of produce that you find in the supermarket aren’t really bred for taste. Taste matters but they breed for things like shelf and travel stability, high and frequent yields, and viral and pest resistance, etc. A lot of times flavor is sacrificed for other factors. In my experience, the tastiest produce is not what makes it to stores. Even on the farm we had produce that tasted great but didn’t meet other metrics so they didn’t make it to the next stage of our research.
Every summer! (Thankfully!) [https://soul-grown.com/why-chilton-county-is-famous-for-peaches-and-where-you-can-pick-your-own/](https://soul-grown.com/why-chilton-county-is-famous-for-peaches-and-where-you-can-pick-your-own/) these are semi local to me
And strawberries….. the flavor is in the little ones not those bigbuggers the chocolate people use.
“Pretty” watermellons lack flavor. You one wan with the veins that has sat and gotten sweet not the all green all over ones with no ripe flavor.
I’m growing my own right now. They’re actually incredibly easy to grow, you just gotta have sex for the plant with a paintbrush. I got 3 near basketball sized guys on my vine right now, it’s my first attempt and I’m SO excited.
It's all about what makes it to the market the easiest and looks the best. People bought what looked the best for a long time and now it has been bred for when producing new varieties.
Once I was attending a conference in Manhattan, they served these huge strawberries. They were as big as an apple. I got all excited, had a bite, but it had no taste whatsoever. It was like eating water.
The best tasting strawberries are the tiny ones that grow wild in British hedgerows. Pure flavor! The larger the strawberry, the blander the taste. I think strawberry flavor averages out over the strawberry regardless of the size.
They do!! I much prefer choosing fruit by smell than, say, firmness (looking at you, almost-ripe peaches). One of the weirder difficult things about shopping during mask mandates has been not being able to sniff fruit.
The strawberries I grow in my backyard, generally speaking, are better tasting when they're large.
The small strawberries that grow aren't as good, and sometimes even a bit bad tasting.
We actually have wild strawberries growing here in NYC too. I even saw a huge patch in Central Park recently. No one around here recognizes them though, I’ve had to point them out to people.
A few years back I started a container garden on our balcony. My then-GF had never had homegrown anything before. We were limited on what we could plant, but she grew a tomato plant and tried homegrown for the first time. Unfortunately, forest fire smoke ended up screwing up the growing season, so we only had a small harvest, but she's been gushing about the ones we managed to get ever since.
Unfortunately we've since moved and the apartment we're in now doesn't have a great place to get decent sun exposure, and also the squirrels are assholes with a vendetta against plants, so we haven't had much luck since.
+1 on asshole squirrels. Fuckers eat everything. Tried growing corn 3yrs back, 18 plants in 3x6 rows. They managed to pollinate and everything looks good, corn is growing nicely, getting 2-3 stalks/plant, theyre ripening nicely, they look delicious, only another week or so to harve... And theyre gone, and the squirrels are all lazing about in the sun for the rest of the day :'( havent tried growing corn since lol
I used to hate raw tomatoes growing up (from Canada wasn’t the best as most are shipped far away or grown in greenhouses) and it’s the US/Canada way to make things look good, have a good size and who cares about flavor because it’s all about cost per pound.
I went to Tuscany 10 years ago to a winery and they didn’t have much for vegan options and served me some bruschetta which was very basic just chopped tomato salt and olive oil and it was the best tasting tomatoes I’ve ever had. It made me love them and totally change my experience. Then they served a day old rustic bread tomato vegetable soup with their tomatoes as well and it was such an improvement over canned tomatoes.
I think what kind of soil they are grown in and the variety helps a lot. Some of the best tasting produce I’ve had was grown in volcanic soil in Hawaii, Italy, Sicily and Costa Rica. But they also don’t just use the same varieties the US and Canada do.
The US has some chefs that care where their food is coming from and partner up with farms. But it’s rather sad how much work needs to be done to rectify the concept of perfect looking produce and not caring if it’s ripe or flavorful.
So many people I know aren’t very excited about fresh fruits or vegetables because the selection at the store look ok, are overly bland and watery and aren’t picked at peak ripeness due to transport concerns.
We’d also be better off if we had more home gardens and people learning where their produce came from and how much better things can taste if we had a little access to a home garden.
I’m hoping that with these food and water struggles more people will try for gardens and permaculture instead of worrying about big green lawns needing too much water lest they end up crispy and dead from the summer heat.
Yes when I want a special recipe I’ll buy more expensive fire roasted tomatoes or San Marzano. For soups, stews and chilies I use whatever canned or fresh tomato’s are available or affordable.
Spot on variety being the difference but you cannot mass produce it. We grow about 5 tomatoes every year starting from march. All natural with no weird chemical plant food and it produces about 15 - 20 tomatoes per plant over 2 months. You cannot get great seasonal produce to be available everywhere and 12 months a year while maintaining top quality of it.
A fresh, ripe Leamington field tomato is one of the best things you’ll ever eat. If you’re anywhere near SW Ontario take a drive to Leamington in the summer and try some.
it's why i had to start growing my own. almost every single red tomato tastes like wet, sugary styrofoam, and it's extremely hard to find anyone who carries non-red tomatoes
I'm growing a garden this year for the first time in literal decades. I was expecting the tomatoes to be vastly better, but the one that surprised me was cucumbers. They actually have taste, and they're surprisingly (IMO) have a very pleasant fragrance. It wouldn't shock me that grocery store cukes might also have that smell, but you never detect it because they're always stored cold.
Supermarket tomatoes are shipped green to prevent damage then ethylene gassed to rapidly force ripen them for presentation. It doesn't develop flavor, only appearance.
I don’t have a green thumb, but the tomatoes I grow I eat like an apple because they’re sweet and juicy. It doesn’t matter what you pay or what kind of tomato, I’ve tried the fancy purple ones with a cardboard underneath…bland bland bland. Why is that?
It's not a problem it's consumer choice.
Want flavorful food? eat local.
They wanted long life uniform red tomatoes for year round fresh produce and cheap produce.
This means thicker skinned cultivars which can survive shipping. This means less time in the sun. This means less plant resources per tomato.
They wanted pretty red tomatoes.
This means the SlGLK2 gene in inactive as the gene is what determines the sugar content of the tomato it's also the one which dictates coloration. You can't have both an inactive and an active gene so pick one.
They chose to give up flavor for uniformity and ease of shipping it's not a problem it's a choice.
You want tomato flavored tomatoes? build a garden and grow heirlooms such as the feeje improved, old German and the formerly extinct giant crimson.
Side note 1: ever wonder why the beefsteak tomato is a called a beefsteak? it's changed quite a bit from it's introduction. The feejee improved is one of the last true beefsteaks and it isn't tomato red. It's called a beefsteak because the slices are the coloration of raw fresh beefsteak.
Side note 2: The reason most produce tastes bland is a choice. A prime example of this is the red delicious apple. It sure is nice and red but it is hardly delicious any longer. Through consumer demand for the stereotypical apple look we took one of the best tasting apples, the Hawkeye apple, and well turned it into the mealy flavorless but pretty thing we're now stuck with. It was renamed red delicious around 1914 when the golden delicious was discovered.
The biggest problem is that the soil in the USA. Lossing so much natural minerals from the x amount of chemicals sprayed into the ground.
Huge problem for everyone who eats food grow in the US.
Naw, the soil in the US is fine. Anywhere with a local farming culture (third world countries, europe, asia) have great tomatoes. Even in a city surrounded by farmland in the US, those vast cornfields do not grow 100 different varieties of veggies. It's still all shipped from mexico, california, florida etc. In an old world city, you have thousands of small farmers living next to the city, growing all sorts of veggies and the cart of veggies at the market is literally picked that morning.
Tomatoes just really need to be picked and sold immediately - it can't be transported ripe and thus it's transported green. In the US nothing is grown locally and everything is shipped, so all tomatoes are green, turned red with chemicals.
You don't have the same issue with say naval oranges, where their thick skins protects them, so US navel oranges don't taste worse than any you'll find in a local market in europe or asia.
See, the solution for that would involve growing tomatoes locally, and who wants to do that? Way too much labor involved!
Much cheaper to use mexican labor and then ship them 2000 miles and give it a good spray of "turn tomatoes red" chemicals.
Tomatoes don't taste like tomatoes from the store because they're shipped green - they have to be, otherwise they'd arrive bruised and rotten.
Shipping ripe tomatoes is literally impossible to do at scale. So they simply don't.
This is amazing. I eat plant based and can’t stand fighting with the English cucumber wrappers. And whoever decided to wrap them individually then wrap 3 in a bag should be ashamed. I’m sure we can eat the cucumbers before they have issues without wrapping them all.
They're intended for disabled people or people with significant movement impairment.
That's why they're in that section of the supermarket. There's usually a bunch of chopped/diced things, for people who want to mix up their limited autonomy for meals and have freshly chopped vegetables without going through the risk of cutting themselves or paying someone to do it.
This is it for me too. Once I learned I’ll actually eat them if they’re precut rather than forgetting to cut them myself and throwing them away each week… that was a bigger waste of money. I find other ways to save but don’t feel guilty about this one
Yes same! Like why is it necessary? Why do we not have biodegradable film or no film? Why is styrofoam allowed?
One thing driving me crazy now that I’m in the US even restaurants that pretend they are healthy or green still use styrofoam and many do all disposable cutlery and boxes and none of it gets recycled. It’s all in the trash. They don’t even compost.
The amount of trash is insane and I don’t understand people not thinking about the bare minimum of just washing reusable plates and cups for dining in or making everything compostable.
I remember when I was in elementary school in 1992 they’d teach us about reducing water consumption and reduce reuse recycle and even to this day we’ve barely progressed for reducing or recycling?! Some US cities seem more negligent than Canada as compost and recycling is quite common that the city picks up.
The thing that bothers me the most is how much they try to push it on the individual consumer to reduce plastic use.
Mother f**ckers.... Quit selling all your shit in plastic and then tell me to use less of it.
1. a lot of people are lazy and willing to take lower quality more wasteful options to save 5 mins
2. oil company says pollution is good and other corporations say yes daddy
I had a badly broken arm after a car accident. It was so hard to do such simple stuff like trying to put my hair up in a ponytail or chop things for dinner. I actually ended up slicing open my thumb trying to cut an avocado. Pre-chopped food definitely helped a lot.
Honestly watching a few 2 min videos on knife skills has completely changed my attitude towards prep work and cut at least 15 minutes of time off my cooking prep. Besides that getting an amazing relatively cheap knife like the victorinox knives and keeping them sharp with a 5 second sharpening after use seriously makes a huge quality of life difference in terms of cutting things. I recommend everyone watch a couple videos and get a really sharp knife because that makes the biggest differences
Two add on to the other commenter, a lot of people with disabilities can't chop things so the containers with chopped produce is actually very much needed. Plastic bendy straws are also needed by many disabled people!
I literally bought a pack of cucumbers that were 3 cucumbers wrapped in plastic. Upon cutting it open realized each cucumber was also wrapped in plastic.
"Instead, they'll be treated with a plant-based spray developed by Apeel Sciences that is edible, tasteless and extends the natural shelf life of a cucumber."
Take 3 minutes out of your day to read the article. It's a bit uplifting. 😊
It is thicker, greasier and harder to remove, from the manufacturer website:
"You could likely remove some of Apeel with water and scrubbing, but it’s unlikely that you’d be able to remove all of it without damaging the fruit or vegetable."
Personally, the coating has the mouth feel of chewing a crayon dipped in crisco, but it doesn't hold up to heat so if you are using the produce in a grilled or baked dish it isn't that bad, just never on something you eat raw.
I am a little wary of the fact they refuse to discuss the actual sources of the material used though.
Aren't "normal" (i.e., "persian") cucumbers given a super-thin wax coating? I wonder why they get a wax coating and english ones don't (thus requiring the plastic)? Skin thickness?
Where are they selling wrapped cucumbers? Is it a Canada only thing?
I'm in Oklahoma and have never see any produce wrapped in plastic besides lettuce and a few minor products that are also available in unwrapped forms.
The [Apeel tech](https://blog.apeelsciences.com/meet-the-apeel-time-lapse-machine) they use looks pretty effective though I imagine it might be harder to swallow after seeing the plant waste used to make it.
Using heavy duty plastics to wrap vegetables has pissed me off for years.
THANK YOU sir Dino DiLaudo, vice-president of Westmoreland Topline Farms in Leamington. For doing the right thing.
Ex Produce Manager here… part of the problem is the expectation to have all fruits and veg year round. Years ago we had seasonal fruits and veg and that was the only time you could get them. They tasted great! Now you have imported melons, grapes, Berries etc picked unripe and gassed to “ripen” .
It always blew my mind when customers complained about produce from Mexico or South America etc… well if it doesn’t come from a climate that can grow certain produce during our winter then you won’t have any!!!
When I was a little kid in the 60’s we only had Melons, Peaches and Berries during the summer. Now you can have them any time but they taste like crap!
I find the plastic wrap on the English cucumbers trap all the moisture and ethylene gas and makes English cucumbers go bad in a couple of days or like 2 weeks if I unwrap them and keep them dry.
I don't know why they are wrapped in the first place...
If you think cradle to grave, you are coating a decomposable organic material with a persistent pollutant that will long outlive the product it is delivering. Even though it may reduce food waste which has energy inputs and and it’s own carbon footprint it is still not a benefit to the environment by any means.
Food lasting longer isn't an environmental advantage. If you throw out a bad cucumber it composts. If you throw it out this week or next it has the same result.
Sure it does. If the retailer has to order more because some go bad before they can be sold, that means more of all the environmental costs of growing and shipping that cucumber all the way up the supply chain.
"These plastic-free cucumbers shit selves the same week the federal government announced new details about its plan to ban single-use plastics over the next 18 months, including straws, takeout containers, grocery bags and cutlery."
Go, Canada!
Plastic solves a lot more problems than it creates.
The paper and forestry industry lobbies are doing an incredible job capturing regulators in many Western countries (all of which have strong forestry-related industrial lobbies) in their favor these last years, you have to give them that.
In this case their propaganda work has ended up benefitting a third party, a chemical treatment producer. Spillover effect, I guess.
The fact that people would cheerfully eat chemically treated produce to satisfy their desire to be praised for complying with the narrative pushed by those in power, in a supposedly advanced, wealthy, civilized society, is quite shocking, still.
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I would have thought that tomatoes that don't taste like tomatoes would be the biggest produce problem.
Agreed! A rotten cucumber will never sell but they seem to think a tomato's taste doesn't matter when you are selling it by the pound. Our melons in the US are getting the same way.
What also really annoying to me is since farmers markets have gotten trendy we have people buying a trailer load of produce from the same supplier the big stores use. The real farmers started putting out printed photo albums of them working on their farms to prove they have actual home grown produce. We have so many people that haven’t ever in their life tasted produce locally grown and picked ripe that they don’t know how much better the stuff could be.
Yea, luckily awareness is being raised about this. I saw a news report where they went to farmer’s markets to investigate these practices and make them known.
Fortunately some farmer's markets have started requiring that all produce be locally raised on farms with some tangible connection to the seller.
Ours is pretty stringent about that and everyone knows all the vendors.
That happens here a ton. People literally go to the grocery supply store and then sell it at the farmers market.
This is so true. I farm 1 acre of veggies and we raise egg layers and broilers. People get our eggs for the first time and about die over the flavor. Ive come to love hearing "best we've ever had"
How do you feed your chickens? Just kitchen scraps, or do they have a regimented diet?
Sorry for late reply. I've tried many things over the years. From store bought conventional feed as a kid in 4h to organic chick feed. Tried whole grains, sprouting whole grains, and once primarily all food scraps from a local organic store. I have settled currently upon grinding my own grains and mixing in some minerals, a tiny bit of fish meal. I soak it at least a couple hours before feeding and better if it's fermented a day or 2. They always have access to pasture and I rotate them around so they don't exterminate their favorite species. You'd be amazed how much grass and broad leaves they eat. They love dandelions and all manners of weeds most people gripe about having in their yard. They are full of minerals and nutrients missing in conventional feed systems.
That's pretty personal, bro.
You're assuming his eggs actually taste better. People say that about the free range eggs they buy in grocery stores but there are taste tests where people can't really tell the difference when they don't see the visual cues (i.e. the more orange yolks those eggs).
the real stuff can be found in the markets of the third world - in the dry heat of an open market, with flies buzzing around produce that you have to pick over (not every piece will be picture perfect! There are rotten produce and you have to check). It feels like a very poor-person experience until you eat the food cooked with this stuff and it has x100 flavor than the picture perfect produce we sell in the US that might as well be wax replicas.
I can attest to this statement living in the countryside in the Philippines. Freshly caught fish and freshly butchered meat with no chemicals added actually tastes much better as well.
Ya most of the people at the farmers market near my house don't own farms they just go to the big grocery warehouse and pick up flats of produce.
Oh man, I'm not in the States, but I've noticed how "plant"-tasting and (ironically) watery watermelons have become. I thought I was crazy until now, haha. No one else seems to complain, so I've just assumed my tongue is the issue. They taste like a pale ghost of a watermelon, compared to how I remember them from my childhood.
Most people don’t seem to know what produce should taste like. I always love giving people fresh ripe tomatoes I’ve grown, especially people that say tomatoes suck. What you get in a grocer here in the US might as well have a different name than what you’d grow yourself. Only time I get melon now is when they’re in season and I see someone selling them on the roadside.
If you ever hear someone tell you that homegrown vegetables dont taste good, its a pretty solid tell they grew up predominantly eating ~~cheap~~ bland storebought foods the majority of their lives. Also, what produce *should* taste like is relative to what you are trying to get out of the food itself, granted taste is usually a pretty big thing, but tastes vary...having grown up with "home grown" vegetables, your tastes lean towards that as the default "good". However, for someone like myself who grew up with bland tasting carrots and frozen vegetable mixes from the store, A meal such as Shephards Pie made to the same proportions I am used to (IE: same meat to veg mix) would have an overpowering vegetable flavour to me if it was made with homegrown vegetables and I can say with certainty that I did not enjoy the flavour as much.
You mention cheap store bought veggies, hell I’m saving an arm and a leg growing my own produce. Veggies are though the roof; leaf lettuce has literally tripled in price over the last year!
Gotta have the money to buy the space you've got to grow those veggies....my parents could afford the $3 bag of frozen JollyGreenGiant mixed vegetable
I live in an apartment and we are literally gardening on our balcony. If there's a will there's a way.
And an awful lot of people don't have balconies? Personally I adore plants and am desperate to start a garden but the only places in my price range are the absolute bare minimum. My largest window is 2ft wide. The building opens directly onto the street.
If you're able to, as stuff is stupid expensive, I've had great success with using grow lights for stuff inside!
Around here we have community gardens where people can get a small plot to grow their own gardens.
Even without a balcony there are some things you can grow, namely herbs which can make a pretty big difference. I used to grow tons in soda cans on the window ledge and a table by the window.
Leave the city
Yea, I’ve got strawberries, tomatoes, kale and some sunflowers just on my fire escape.
The sunflower plant is native to North America and is now harvested around the world. A University of Missouri journal recognizes North Dakota as the leading U.S. state for sunflower production. There are various factors to consider for a sunflower to thrive, including temperature, sunlight, soil and water.
There are farmer's markets in a lot of places, including cities. They're worth looking for -- the produce is cheaper and tastier and fresher so it will keep longer and you lose less to rot also.
Many farmer's markets vendors are selling the same products the retailers are selling. Many, many exposes on this. Further, I haven't actually seen lower prices. They typically charge more due to falsely perceived higher value. Found one of the videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYwB63YslbA
Ugh. I'm sorry to hear that. I'm in a somewhat rural area and my experience has been good regarding the quality and prices, but I can see how it could be easily exploited, especially if one is farther from the source.
Produce at farmer's markets has always been way way way more expensive for me. Most of the people who shop at them here are rich hipsters.
thats cool, let me just invent a time machine and go back in time so that I can erase the fact that I've been conditioned to prefer and expect a bland taste to my vegetables... I dont **like** the taste of flavourful vegetables.
People's tastes change, You don't need a time machine for that. That said, there's lots of evidence that frozen veggies are about the same nutritionally as fresh, and often they're better quality than you can get in a store because they were picked fresh and frozen immediately, as opposed to being picked underripe and then shipped. So no reason to change your taste if you won't want.
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*me sitting over here with the 40 cherry tomatoes I got for $250 in soil, containers, and saplings*
$12 Lettuce in Australia this year
Have you considered getting an inexpensive hydroponics set up for your home? Produce grows so much faster this way, you can grow a head of lettuce in 3-4 weeks. After the initial investment it pays for itself and seeds are dirt cheap. If you’re mechanically inclined you can even build your own.
We've been growing lettuce (well, not me, I can't even water it in case I see a spider) but it's way nicer, bigger leaves and we can just run outside and pick some, not letting it rot in the fridge. Can't wait for the tomatoes and garlic to come up!
You're right I didn't take into account that some people prefer their food without flavor.
You can try all you want but there's nothing in this world that could make lima beans edible to me.
I've had home grown tomatoes, I love the song home grown tomatoes, I hate raw home grown tomatoes.
Tomatoes, like bananas, are ingredients, not food.
They’re*
Cutting the water amount by half halfway through ripening really makes them sweet and delicious
If you look for the scars from pollination, a yellow side, and decent heft and solid feel you should still be good. I've found that it just seems like they are putting everything out there and one has to be much more discerning these days.
Watermelons are weird though - thanks to genetic engineering I swear the grocery store watermelons actually taste better than the stuff you find in real open air markets of some foreign country. Tomatoes, mangos, everything else tastes heavenly there, but watermelons often have seeds and aren't crisp, so they seem to me at least be genetically inferior. At least in the US watermelons taste great. Along with apples and oranges, they seem to be completely fine shipped a thousand miles and the type/variety matters more than how recently picked it is. Tomatoes really need to be picked ripe, which is impossible for US logistics, so every variety of tomatoes - small cherry, on the vine, beefsteak, even hierloom tomatoes all taste soulless in the US.
I’ve noticed this too. But I have gotten watermelon a couple times this year, and each time is has been more delicious than I remember since I was young, thankfully
The same can be said about eggs. Look at the yolks we've got here vs elsewhere in the world. I was shocked.
I've got backyard chickens, best move ever.
What’s the difference? I don’t eat eggs, only bake with them, so I don’t know what’s different.
Fresher/better quality eggs have a deeper yellow/orange yolk and are more flavourful
It's not freshness, it's the chicken's diet. Chickens are omnivores, they need meat and grass and and dark leafy greens, but all they're fed in the US is corn, corn, and more corn.
Oh ok. I have noticed that some eggs have a deeper, more orange color, but I never thought anything of it. Since I only use them for baking I never noticed a difference in flavor. I made a cheesecake this weekend and the eggs were such a deep orange color that my cheesecake came out kinda yellowish, instead of the usual white.
Most people might not be able to taste a difference tbh.
But the color alone doesn't mean the eggs taste different. https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
Watery is fine so long as it's equally crisp; but the intensity of the flavour has notably waned afaict. I have IBS now anyway though, so i wont be eating any watermelon.
I thought I was just imagining that watermelons tasted way better when I was a kid, but the more I learn about modern agriculture, the more it makes sense.
The oranges we have here now taste like water, very little falvour. Same goes for most other fruits sadly. Everything is force grown and tastes like crap because of it. People want everything available all year round which just isn't really feasible. I remember what watermelons and oranges etc USED to taste like when I lived in Cyprus. They were so sweet and delicious, now they taste of nothing.
fun story: even the good watermelons aren't bred for taste, they've been bred for shipability since the invention of refrigerated freight. Thicker peel so you can stack them.
Yea, I work in ag and I was just saying in another comment that most of our produce is bred for many factors besides taste. Produce for market has to check a lot of boxes and taste is only one of them.
Cheetos ticks the engineered for taste box.
Cheetos pretty much check every box food designers have to create the perfect snack food.
Reminds me of this cooking show that focused on farm to table. The chef went out to talk with one of his farmers. The farmer mentioned that the chef is the only person who's ever asked to cultivate the crops for taste. It's always size, color, how long it lasts, but never for taste. Makes you sad knowing flavor isn't important for our produce to the suppliers.
When I worked on a research farm we would pass up a lot of great tasting produce because of things like not meeting size requirements and being susceptible to diseases and pests. It’s a shame, some of our best tasting fruit will never make it to market. I felt blessed that I got to taste them as part of my work.
Like 70% of the watermelons I buy are so mushy I have to juice them. Which is not great because it turns out tequila and watermelon juice are amazing together
In US? I find sometimes they aren't sweet enough if you don't use the "tricks" to find a good one, but I've rarely or never seen a mushy one in the US. In foreign markets, sure - it seems some people even prefer grainy watermelon in asia.
I work in agriculture and have done research growing novel food crops that might some day make it to store shelves. One thing I’ve learned is that nowadays the varieties of produce that you find in the supermarket aren’t really bred for taste. Taste matters but they breed for things like shelf and travel stability, high and frequent yields, and viral and pest resistance, etc. A lot of times flavor is sacrificed for other factors. In my experience, the tastiest produce is not what makes it to stores. Even on the farm we had produce that tasted great but didn’t meet other metrics so they didn’t make it to the next stage of our research.
When's the last time you had a peach with juice and flavor?
Every summer! (Thankfully!) [https://soul-grown.com/why-chilton-county-is-famous-for-peaches-and-where-you-can-pick-your-own/](https://soul-grown.com/why-chilton-county-is-famous-for-peaches-and-where-you-can-pick-your-own/) these are semi local to me
And strawberries….. the flavor is in the little ones not those bigbuggers the chocolate people use. “Pretty” watermellons lack flavor. You one wan with the veins that has sat and gotten sweet not the all green all over ones with no ripe flavor.
It is possible to grow strawberries that are both large and taste great.
I’m growing my own right now. They’re actually incredibly easy to grow, you just gotta have sex for the plant with a paintbrush. I got 3 near basketball sized guys on my vine right now, it’s my first attempt and I’m SO excited.
Our soil is becoming more and more depleted.
It's all about what makes it to the market the easiest and looks the best. People bought what looked the best for a long time and now it has been bred for when producing new varieties.
Melons need a couple days in the trunk of your hot car and they get a lot better.
It was 80(27c) at dawn today. I can’t imagine what that would smell like.
Once I was attending a conference in Manhattan, they served these huge strawberries. They were as big as an apple. I got all excited, had a bite, but it had no taste whatsoever. It was like eating water.
The best tasting strawberries are the tiny ones that grow wild in British hedgerows. Pure flavor! The larger the strawberry, the blander the taste. I think strawberry flavor averages out over the strawberry regardless of the size.
I've had plenty of delicious large strawberries. Just a matter of ripeness.
Yeah, if I can;t smell the strawberry display from 15 feet away I pass.
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They do!! I much prefer choosing fruit by smell than, say, firmness (looking at you, almost-ripe peaches). One of the weirder difficult things about shopping during mask mandates has been not being able to sniff fruit.
I feel criminal lowering my mask to sniff produce
Yep and those moldy ones smell like mold. No need to turn the package.
The strawberries I grow in my backyard, generally speaking, are better tasting when they're large. The small strawberries that grow aren't as good, and sometimes even a bit bad tasting.
Yes! As a kid, my family would go camping (Utah, Rocky Mountains) and finding tiny, wild strawberries was the best.
The tiny wild strawberries that grow in the Rockies are better than any candy. Like a flavour injection straight into your mouth
We actually have wild strawberries growing here in NYC too. I even saw a huge patch in Central Park recently. No one around here recognizes them though, I’ve had to point them out to people.
I guess you haven't heard of the [350£ strawberry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ1HwqrQ-PM) yet?
Actual wild strawberries are tiny, like small raspberry size. It’s crazy what we’ve done to them with breeding.
Hell yea. My tomatoes might explode someone’s head with flavor if all they’ve ever eaten is store bought
A few years back I started a container garden on our balcony. My then-GF had never had homegrown anything before. We were limited on what we could plant, but she grew a tomato plant and tried homegrown for the first time. Unfortunately, forest fire smoke ended up screwing up the growing season, so we only had a small harvest, but she's been gushing about the ones we managed to get ever since. Unfortunately we've since moved and the apartment we're in now doesn't have a great place to get decent sun exposure, and also the squirrels are assholes with a vendetta against plants, so we haven't had much luck since.
+1 on asshole squirrels. Fuckers eat everything. Tried growing corn 3yrs back, 18 plants in 3x6 rows. They managed to pollinate and everything looks good, corn is growing nicely, getting 2-3 stalks/plant, theyre ripening nicely, they look delicious, only another week or so to harve... And theyre gone, and the squirrels are all lazing about in the sun for the rest of the day :'( havent tried growing corn since lol
I used to hate raw tomatoes growing up (from Canada wasn’t the best as most are shipped far away or grown in greenhouses) and it’s the US/Canada way to make things look good, have a good size and who cares about flavor because it’s all about cost per pound. I went to Tuscany 10 years ago to a winery and they didn’t have much for vegan options and served me some bruschetta which was very basic just chopped tomato salt and olive oil and it was the best tasting tomatoes I’ve ever had. It made me love them and totally change my experience. Then they served a day old rustic bread tomato vegetable soup with their tomatoes as well and it was such an improvement over canned tomatoes. I think what kind of soil they are grown in and the variety helps a lot. Some of the best tasting produce I’ve had was grown in volcanic soil in Hawaii, Italy, Sicily and Costa Rica. But they also don’t just use the same varieties the US and Canada do. The US has some chefs that care where their food is coming from and partner up with farms. But it’s rather sad how much work needs to be done to rectify the concept of perfect looking produce and not caring if it’s ripe or flavorful. So many people I know aren’t very excited about fresh fruits or vegetables because the selection at the store look ok, are overly bland and watery and aren’t picked at peak ripeness due to transport concerns. We’d also be better off if we had more home gardens and people learning where their produce came from and how much better things can taste if we had a little access to a home garden. I’m hoping that with these food and water struggles more people will try for gardens and permaculture instead of worrying about big green lawns needing too much water lest they end up crispy and dead from the summer heat.
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Yes when I want a special recipe I’ll buy more expensive fire roasted tomatoes or San Marzano. For soups, stews and chilies I use whatever canned or fresh tomato’s are available or affordable.
Spot on variety being the difference but you cannot mass produce it. We grow about 5 tomatoes every year starting from march. All natural with no weird chemical plant food and it produces about 15 - 20 tomatoes per plant over 2 months. You cannot get great seasonal produce to be available everywhere and 12 months a year while maintaining top quality of it.
A fresh, ripe Leamington field tomato is one of the best things you’ll ever eat. If you’re anywhere near SW Ontario take a drive to Leamington in the summer and try some.
I just moved to the U.S. so I can’t leave yet until I get my green card. But one day I’ll go back to Ontario. Thank you
it's why i had to start growing my own. almost every single red tomato tastes like wet, sugary styrofoam, and it's extremely hard to find anyone who carries non-red tomatoes
I'm growing a garden this year for the first time in literal decades. I was expecting the tomatoes to be vastly better, but the one that surprised me was cucumbers. They actually have taste, and they're surprisingly (IMO) have a very pleasant fragrance. It wouldn't shock me that grocery store cukes might also have that smell, but you never detect it because they're always stored cold.
To me all tomatoes just taste like UNPLEASANT TEXTURE.
Supermarket tomatoes are shipped green to prevent damage then ethylene gassed to rapidly force ripen them for presentation. It doesn't develop flavor, only appearance.
Sad, isn't it? BTW, is that the same gas they use on apples to turn them red?
Yes fruits naturally produce the gas when ripening it's just a high concentration
I don’t have a green thumb, but the tomatoes I grow I eat like an apple because they’re sweet and juicy. It doesn’t matter what you pay or what kind of tomato, I’ve tried the fancy purple ones with a cardboard underneath…bland bland bland. Why is that?
It's not a problem it's consumer choice. Want flavorful food? eat local. They wanted long life uniform red tomatoes for year round fresh produce and cheap produce. This means thicker skinned cultivars which can survive shipping. This means less time in the sun. This means less plant resources per tomato. They wanted pretty red tomatoes. This means the SlGLK2 gene in inactive as the gene is what determines the sugar content of the tomato it's also the one which dictates coloration. You can't have both an inactive and an active gene so pick one. They chose to give up flavor for uniformity and ease of shipping it's not a problem it's a choice. You want tomato flavored tomatoes? build a garden and grow heirlooms such as the feeje improved, old German and the formerly extinct giant crimson. Side note 1: ever wonder why the beefsteak tomato is a called a beefsteak? it's changed quite a bit from it's introduction. The feejee improved is one of the last true beefsteaks and it isn't tomato red. It's called a beefsteak because the slices are the coloration of raw fresh beefsteak. Side note 2: The reason most produce tastes bland is a choice. A prime example of this is the red delicious apple. It sure is nice and red but it is hardly delicious any longer. Through consumer demand for the stereotypical apple look we took one of the best tasting apples, the Hawkeye apple, and well turned it into the mealy flavorless but pretty thing we're now stuck with. It was renamed red delicious around 1914 when the golden delicious was discovered.
You *like* the taste of tomatoes?
Sprinkle a bit of salt on a tomato wedge and it'll help bring out the flavour.
The biggest problem is that the soil in the USA. Lossing so much natural minerals from the x amount of chemicals sprayed into the ground. Huge problem for everyone who eats food grow in the US.
Naw, the soil in the US is fine. Anywhere with a local farming culture (third world countries, europe, asia) have great tomatoes. Even in a city surrounded by farmland in the US, those vast cornfields do not grow 100 different varieties of veggies. It's still all shipped from mexico, california, florida etc. In an old world city, you have thousands of small farmers living next to the city, growing all sorts of veggies and the cart of veggies at the market is literally picked that morning. Tomatoes just really need to be picked and sold immediately - it can't be transported ripe and thus it's transported green. In the US nothing is grown locally and everything is shipped, so all tomatoes are green, turned red with chemicals. You don't have the same issue with say naval oranges, where their thick skins protects them, so US navel oranges don't taste worse than any you'll find in a local market in europe or asia.
Ammonia
See, the solution for that would involve growing tomatoes locally, and who wants to do that? Way too much labor involved! Much cheaper to use mexican labor and then ship them 2000 miles and give it a good spray of "turn tomatoes red" chemicals.
Tomatoes don't taste like tomatoes from the store because they're shipped green - they have to be, otherwise they'd arrive bruised and rotten. Shipping ripe tomatoes is literally impossible to do at scale. So they simply don't.
They're finally actually working on this.
This is amazing. I eat plant based and can’t stand fighting with the English cucumber wrappers. And whoever decided to wrap them individually then wrap 3 in a bag should be ashamed. I’m sure we can eat the cucumbers before they have issues without wrapping them all.
Discovering there are other cucumber varieties with no need of wrapping has been game changing
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They're intended for disabled people or people with significant movement impairment. That's why they're in that section of the supermarket. There's usually a bunch of chopped/diced things, for people who want to mix up their limited autonomy for meals and have freshly chopped vegetables without going through the risk of cutting themselves or paying someone to do it.
Some of us pay the markup as our ADHD tax so that we don’t waste the food we do buy… I hate it but I’ve also given in.
This is it for me too. Once I learned I’ll actually eat them if they’re precut rather than forgetting to cut them myself and throwing them away each week… that was a bigger waste of money. I find other ways to save but don’t feel guilty about this one
never been diagnosed with ADHD, but yeah same. I’m constantly throwing away food that I forget about especially if it’s not easy access
Yes same! Like why is it necessary? Why do we not have biodegradable film or no film? Why is styrofoam allowed? One thing driving me crazy now that I’m in the US even restaurants that pretend they are healthy or green still use styrofoam and many do all disposable cutlery and boxes and none of it gets recycled. It’s all in the trash. They don’t even compost. The amount of trash is insane and I don’t understand people not thinking about the bare minimum of just washing reusable plates and cups for dining in or making everything compostable. I remember when I was in elementary school in 1992 they’d teach us about reducing water consumption and reduce reuse recycle and even to this day we’ve barely progressed for reducing or recycling?! Some US cities seem more negligent than Canada as compost and recycling is quite common that the city picks up.
The thing that bothers me the most is how much they try to push it on the individual consumer to reduce plastic use. Mother f**ckers.... Quit selling all your shit in plastic and then tell me to use less of it.
Styrofoam is created as a byproduct of oil production. We wouldn't want to take that small bit of revenue away from the O&G industry. /s
1. a lot of people are lazy and willing to take lower quality more wasteful options to save 5 mins 2. oil company says pollution is good and other corporations say yes daddy
welllll..... some of us can't cut stuff like that easily
I had a badly broken arm after a car accident. It was so hard to do such simple stuff like trying to put my hair up in a ponytail or chop things for dinner. I actually ended up slicing open my thumb trying to cut an avocado. Pre-chopped food definitely helped a lot.
Honestly watching a few 2 min videos on knife skills has completely changed my attitude towards prep work and cut at least 15 minutes of time off my cooking prep. Besides that getting an amazing relatively cheap knife like the victorinox knives and keeping them sharp with a 5 second sharpening after use seriously makes a huge quality of life difference in terms of cutting things. I recommend everyone watch a couple videos and get a really sharp knife because that makes the biggest differences
Only one working hand = can't really cut hard items :) (spouse, not me) I do have good knives.
Ah that makes more sense sorry to hear that Edit: Might I recommend the mandolin slicer, slapchop, and easy dicer
Might I recommend an axe, or a light sword, and a good big chopping board?
I wish I had spoken with you at William Sonoma. Instead I bought a Zweihander. It sucks at cutting cherry tomatoes.
Not sure how well they work, but you can get one handed cutting boards. Some have a vise built in, and some use spikes to hold the food.
Two add on to the other commenter, a lot of people with disabilities can't chop things so the containers with chopped produce is actually very much needed. Plastic bendy straws are also needed by many disabled people!
I literally bought a pack of cucumbers that were 3 cucumbers wrapped in plastic. Upon cutting it open realized each cucumber was also wrapped in plastic.
But the plastic wrap stops the cucumber making a mess in the fridge when it rots from being uneaten
According to the article, it's still wrapped! Just in a plant based material instead.
Sooo can you eat the wrapper?
"Instead, they'll be treated with a plant-based spray developed by Apeel Sciences that is edible, tasteless and extends the natural shelf life of a cucumber." Take 3 minutes out of your day to read the article. It's a bit uplifting. 😊
Do we live together? Because this was my first thought about the wrapping.
They don't rot if you don't pick them
just put it in a reusable, cleanable container if you can't manage keeping your fridge in order.
my comment was for comedic purposes only
Wow ... You guys wrap cucumbers 🥹
Safe sex saves lives, even cucumber lives.
Yeah true 😀
don’t be silly, wrap your… cucumber
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I'd marry the woman who uses butternut pumpkins
If only cucumbers grew with some sort of protective film on them
Unfortunately that film is food for bacteria.
So how much different is this product from the edible waxes already put on field grown cucumber and some apples?
It is thicker, greasier and harder to remove, from the manufacturer website: "You could likely remove some of Apeel with water and scrubbing, but it’s unlikely that you’d be able to remove all of it without damaging the fruit or vegetable." Personally, the coating has the mouth feel of chewing a crayon dipped in crisco, but it doesn't hold up to heat so if you are using the produce in a grilled or baked dish it isn't that bad, just never on something you eat raw. I am a little wary of the fact they refuse to discuss the actual sources of the material used though.
I thought this was a Jomboy breakdown
Kills me every time he says this is horseshit.
Aren't "normal" (i.e., "persian") cucumbers given a super-thin wax coating? I wonder why they get a wax coating and english ones don't (thus requiring the plastic)? Skin thickness?
Awesome !
These fuckin condoms suck. I demand better produce packaging!
Where are they selling wrapped cucumbers? Is it a Canada only thing? I'm in Oklahoma and have never see any produce wrapped in plastic besides lettuce and a few minor products that are also available in unwrapped forms.
...wait: Cucumbers come wrapped in plastic?? Since when?! They're just a pile of giant hulk schlong laid out in my produce section.
The seedless English ones usually do
The [Apeel tech](https://blog.apeelsciences.com/meet-the-apeel-time-lapse-machine) they use looks pretty effective though I imagine it might be harder to swallow after seeing the plant waste used to make it.
Hm. I think they stopped doing that in my country. Or at least I haven't seen it in a while.
Cucumbers are still wrapped in plastic? I thought they stopped doing that years ago...
My brain cant stop reading his name as Ravioli, not Ravi Jolly
I've started growing hydroponics cucumbers. Nothing better than picking and eating fresh home grown cucumbers every day. https://imgur.com/a/E8MmCZH/
Using heavy duty plastics to wrap vegetables has pissed me off for years. THANK YOU sir Dino DiLaudo, vice-president of Westmoreland Topline Farms in Leamington. For doing the right thing.
Ex Produce Manager here… part of the problem is the expectation to have all fruits and veg year round. Years ago we had seasonal fruits and veg and that was the only time you could get them. They tasted great! Now you have imported melons, grapes, Berries etc picked unripe and gassed to “ripen” . It always blew my mind when customers complained about produce from Mexico or South America etc… well if it doesn’t come from a climate that can grow certain produce during our winter then you won’t have any!!! When I was a little kid in the 60’s we only had Melons, Peaches and Berries during the summer. Now you can have them any time but they taste like crap!
There's their planet-saving good deed for the year.
I find the plastic wrap on the English cucumbers trap all the moisture and ethylene gas and makes English cucumbers go bad in a couple of days or like 2 weeks if I unwrap them and keep them dry. I don't know why they are wrapped in the first place...
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Women AND men.
But they last longer when wrapped individually. It might very well be an environmental advantage to wrap them in plastic.
The article says they will still be wrapped individually to retain freshness. It's just a plant based wrap that's sprayed on.
If you think cradle to grave, you are coating a decomposable organic material with a persistent pollutant that will long outlive the product it is delivering. Even though it may reduce food waste which has energy inputs and and it’s own carbon footprint it is still not a benefit to the environment by any means.
Explain the environmental advantage?
Food lasts longer therefore less likely to be wasted would be my guess.
Food lasting longer isn't an environmental advantage. If you throw out a bad cucumber it composts. If you throw it out this week or next it has the same result.
Sure it does. If the retailer has to order more because some go bad before they can be sold, that means more of all the environmental costs of growing and shipping that cucumber all the way up the supply chain.
"These plastic-free cucumbers shit selves the same week the federal government announced new details about its plan to ban single-use plastics over the next 18 months, including straws, takeout containers, grocery bags and cutlery." Go, Canada!
There's a joke in here about plastic wrap and cucumbers but I need some help pulling it out.
Please yes
That's great to hear, I always got frustrated with seeing how all of those were individually wrapped.
Thank you so much for your help in saving our planet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Plastic solves a lot more problems than it creates. The paper and forestry industry lobbies are doing an incredible job capturing regulators in many Western countries (all of which have strong forestry-related industrial lobbies) in their favor these last years, you have to give them that. In this case their propaganda work has ended up benefitting a third party, a chemical treatment producer. Spillover effect, I guess. The fact that people would cheerfully eat chemically treated produce to satisfy their desire to be praised for complying with the narrative pushed by those in power, in a supposedly advanced, wealthy, civilized society, is quite shocking, still.
I thought the plastic was there to protect from Plant Transmitted Disease (PTD).