[dustymcp]

My anecdote from my garden is that my smaller cucumbers have way more taste, my smaller red bellpebbers are way more pebbery, potatoes have a richer taste, if this is just freshnes i dont know, but there for sure is a huge difference.

[amelius]

It was always the case that smaller vegetables are stronger in taste. I'm guessing that the larger ones took up more water, which diluted the taste, but without a difference of total nutrients.

[giantg2]

I believe this could be true. We see that lead is also diluted by increased size.

https://www.soils.org/news/science-news/lead-contamination-g...

[saiya-jin]

I don't think that's you. When I come home and eat stuff from my parents garden, the differences in some cases are massive. Carrots for example taste 10x more intense, even one that was taken from soil weeks ago.

And I am comparing to bio carrots we buy in Switzerland, so can't go much higher than that when shopping (apart from farmers markets maybe but that depends what kind of farm).

Maybe its about transport and premature harvest, like bananas - if you ever taste some in exotic locations where they harvest them in the morning, its hard to ever enjoy bleak taste of those available in western world.

[orlp]

Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe, shipped in this more durable state, and in the destination country are rapidly artificially ripened in ethylene gas chambers. The same commercial mass-produced fruits and vegetables also have been cultivated for decades for resistance against disease, size, and shelf life. Taste is often only secondary to those.

On one hand it allows year-round affordable fruit and vegetables to lie in our stores. On the other hand it means we are now stuck buying tasteless bags of water.

It is an erosion of the 'middle class' of products that economies of scale across all products seem to cause. There are only two kinds of product left: the small-scale artisanal extremely pricy product (e.g. farmer's market), and the mass-produced MBA-optimized to death commercial product. Any product that becomes 'too successful' and reaches economies of scale falls victim to this and is subsequently repeatedly penny-pinched until nothing of value is left.

[throw0101a]

> Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe […]

I've heard it said that frozen vegetables are often "fresher" than non-frozen: they're picked when they're actually ripe, and flash frozen a short distance from the farm. They can then be moved about and stored with much less fuss as long as they're kept cold.

Some trade-offs:

> Certain nutrients are also lost during the blanching process. In fact, the greatest loss of nutrients occurs at this time.

> Blanching takes place prior to freezing, and involves placing the produce in boiling water for a short time — usually a few minutes.

> This kills any harmful bacteria and prevents the loss of flavor, color and texture. Yet it also results in the loss of water-soluble nutrients, such as B-vitamins and vitamin C.

* https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fresh-vs-frozen-fruit-a...

Seems to be an area of active research.

[jason-phillips]

> There are only two kinds of product left: the small-scale artisanal extremely pricy product (e.g. farmer's market), and the mass-produced MBA-optimized to death commercial product.

I discovered this phenomenon myself over the past decade, seeing the race to the bottom in automation, while at the same watching artisinal cottage industries sprout in East Austin in response.

Whether it was nitrogenated cold-brew coffee in kegs, handmade denim jeans, handmade cheeses and charcuterie, there was definitely a drive to produce high-quality, handmade items locally, seemingly in response to tasteless, soulless products begat by automation. I figured that is what the future held, two classes of product, one rather expensive and high quality, made by hand, and the other symbolized by a soulless $5 Garden Center plastic chair.

The reason why a market exists for those artisinal handmade products, I reckon, is because people at some level still crave the authenticity evidenced by something made by skilled craftspeople.

[boringg]

That or that people can discern quality and have an appreciation for quality.

The problem with quality is it doesn’t scale well which is at odds with VC funding model (ie the backbone to SV business model)

[sizzle]

I have a local CSA organic veggie box dropped at my door picked from local farms. It is delicious and no pesticides, highly recommended anyone who can afford it to try.

You can search for CSA companies in your area here: https://www.localharvest.org

[dr_dshiv]

Random: ethylene is psychoactive. Haven’t tried it. But, some evidence that it was the abiogenic gas at the temple of Apollo at Delphi:

Foster, J., & Lehoux, D. (2007). The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis. Clinical Toxicology, 45(1), 85-89.

[yesenadam]

> The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis

Thanks, interesting read. The paper seems rather against the hypothesis, to say the least - it's a demolition.

"this hypothesis is implausible since it is based on problematic scientific and textual evidence, as well as a fallacious argument. ...the evidence did not support the conclusion. ... if it was not the positivist bent of the argument that made it so widely attractive, then how did such an implausible argument get such wide press?"

I don't want to give long quotes, but it says "developing the explanatory hypothesis required the combined efforts of an archeologist, a geologist, a chemist, and a toxicologist", but they offered a pathetically flimsy argument, which only seemed convincing due to the appearance of its scientific trappings, appeals to the glamour of the "interdisciplinary" and of explaining ancient mysteries with Science. It mostly looks at why it convinced anyone, and became widely known, although extremely low quality work.

paper PDF: https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/15563650601120800

[dr_dshiv]

Quite so. Here’s a rather well written reply: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/155636507014778...

It’s funny that in neither paper was there ever an attempt to just try the stuff and, you know, attempt mantic divination. What has science come to?

[giantg2]

Welcome have some types of produce that is stored for long periods of time and lose nutrients during storage. For example, apples that you buy in the store tend to me more than a year old.

[specialist]

Yes and:

> mass-produced MBA-optimized to death

Plus counterfeits, knockoffs, gray-market, etc. eg Fake Italian olive oil.

I don't know what to call this category, or their purveyors. Inauthentic? Market parasites? The eBay / Amazon (unregulated markets) problem?

[jjoonathan]

"The 80/20 version."

There are times when I'm willing to pay 5x to get something 20% better. Not all the time, though. Moralizing the choice feels like a sales gimmick.

[iggldiggl]

As you mention Switzerland, this newspaper article might be interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tages...

I.e. apart from the general trade-off problem between maximum yield and maximum taste, things are also exacerbated by the big supermarket chains demanding varieties that are delivering a "consistent taste year-round". As even the best tomatoes are only mediocre-tasting during winter, that apparently means standardising on mediocre-tasting tomatoes all year round, instead of mediocre tomatoes during winter and tasty tomatoes in the summer.

[boringg]

Oh yah supermarket tomatoes are crap - literally all of them. They shouldn't be called tomatoes as they are more like soulless, tasteless, poor textured trash.

[ne0flex]

I've noticed this too with tomatoes. My parents grow tomatoes in their backyard during the summer. The amount of "meat" in the backyard grown tomatoes is noticeably a lot more than store-bought tomatoes. Stock-bought tomatoes are a lot more watery. and have less "meat" in them.

Similarly, I've started buying a lot more organic fruits and vegetables. The organic strawberries have way more taste than non-organic strawberries.

[greggsy]

Same goes for zucchini and eggplant. People often bring their excess zucchini’s into the office as a trophy, and potentially prize to some lucky staff member, but they’re tasteless.