91–100 of 159 posts
You should try importing tomatoes from Eastern Europe. They are still very tasty over here. :)
Temple Grandin had some interesting thoughts on how single trait breeding can lead to adverse affects in her discussion on "Rapist Roosters", and how this relates to software[0]. It seems like this is also happening here. Typically when single trait breeding leads to an adverse, undesirable affect (lack of taste), while the selected trait was obtained (in this case, possibly bigger size) breeders don't start from scr…
That explains why most every dog breed that competes on looks and becomes popular gets messed up. Also American breeders have this odd habit of taking large dogs that should be about 80 lbs and breeding them into behemoths, usually to the detriment of the dogs
EDIT: In addition to pushing for bigger dogs, it's also profitable to drive down food and vet costs. Kennel clubs like the American Kennel Club are scams. The kennel clubs just receive fees for processing paper. They don't inspect breeders. They don't care if you're a puppy mill. As long as you pay your fees, you will get your papers.
There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn , which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat fl…
I wish there was a brand dedicated to optimizing for taste of fruits and vegetables vs appearance. And by taste I don't mean sweetness. I'd actually optimize for less sweet fruits.
There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn , which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat fl…
I thought I disliked tomatoes as a kid, eating around them as you describe. Only when I discovered garden-grown cherry tomatoes did I flip the other way. So far the other way I'm surprised I didn't get sick eating so many of them. They're incredible.
I could totally be delusional about the popcorn, though — I'm not that old. But one could do a taste test: 5600 year old kernels were shown to still pop.
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Amazing tasting tomatoes are also very easy to grow yourself. Tomatoes are a hardy vine, and hard to mess up, you just need plenty of sunshine. There are seeds available for many heirloom varieties, and when you grow them yourself, you pick them at the peak of freshness. I particularly like the Early Girl variety. It's a bummer that you can't re-plant the seeds from most tomatoes, which are F1 hybrids, so the next ge…
I'll underline the "need plenty of sunshine". We've planted tomatoes for 16 years (hope springs eternal) in the SF Peninsula hills and gotten nearly nothing in return. Our next-door neighbor has far better sun exposure, and she gives us most of the tomatoes we eat in summer.
> I don’t want people to not eat a great-tasting tomato because they’re scared of it And we also don't want anyone to claim exclusive rights on producing such tomatoes, because some moron came up with the idea to patent genes.
Exactly, and there are plenty of existing varieties that taste as they should. The random colors and shapes are part of the fun. I'd much rather have one heirloom than 4 identical red tomatoes still on a vine sold in a plastic box.
I have taken some really tasty hybrids and grew them back down into a heirloom of sorts. I've started to grow tomatoes 5 years ago. http://unturf2.tumblr.com
That said, yeah we don't need to engineer the flavor back into tomatoes, we need people to vote with their wallets.
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> canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping This explains why I love canned/boxed tomatoes, but hate the slimy, bland sliced ones they put on sandwiches.
If a sliced tomato is slimy on your sandwich, that's not a variety problem, it's a preparation problem (in that application, tomatoes, regardless of variety, should be seeded.) Bland may be a variety problem, though it can also be a poor handling problem.
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You can make popcorn in a saucepan, it's easy and fun. Gourmet popcorn (different kernels) also tastes far better even than the bulk kernels you can find in the store.
I do this, and yeah, the results are pretty great, even with ordinary and easy-to-find Orville Redenbacher corn (off and store brands, not so much). Have you found any varieties that taste like the parent poster describes? I.E. with heavy corn flavor? I've tried a few "heirloom" varieties and they've usually been nuttier-tasting, with smaller pops and a much worse popped-to-unpopped ratio than the Redenbacher corn (t…
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I don't have the reference at hand, but I read a paper a few months ago that explained this. You prefer flavors you grew up with. Flavors change, so as you get older, you think flavors get worse. Except they don't, the double blind testing showed age cohort related preference clustering, but no proof for 'everything was better in the old days'. This study was for strawberries but I don't see why it would be different…
Alternatively, younger people don't know what they are missing. As the article points out it's not a sudden drop it's a low change over time where A is almost as good as B and B is almost as good as C ... until it's cardboard. I have done this experiment with Apples and Oranges kids really prefer the full flavor options and they are not just preferring their childhood tastes as they are still kids.