Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

From Albania here, (2nd world European country, aka still developing).

Due to its mediterranean weather (1), everything raised locally tastes better. Local food is full of flavor, and things made artisan-ally and locally are still good. Even something simple like a 'Tiramisu' tastes better there, most likely because things are still made to be consumed within a day, and not last for ages. Other countries are similar (Greece, Southern Italy, Croatia, Macedonia).

eg. The difference in taste between a home made jam, and one bought in a supermarket is huge. (mainly for the supermarket one having to have a much longer shelf life, and having additives added).

Unfortunately modernization has reached the country and things are getting more 'standardized' and getting that western level of blandness as well.

Ironically: Fresh locally produced and prepared food is a real luxury in western countries, and a normal commodity in poorer ones.

1) Warm weather is important. eg. Hothouse/greenhouse tomatoes or cucumber are never as flavorful as field raised and ripped ones. The more north you go, the blander/crappier the food gets, mostly due to the weather.

> The more north you go, the blander/crappier the food gets, mostly due to the weather.

It's more complicated than that. Cultural reasons are a huge factor in why Western food is so bland:

> Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe's wealthiest families — even the middle classes could afford to spice up their grub. "So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors."

> The rest of Europe soon adopted this new style. "It's a redefinition of what elegant is," Freedman says. "It's sort of like — in fashion — for a while having more frills, more jewelry was fashionable. But then someone said that a basic black dress with some pearls is much better."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/ho...

I do believe the parent did mean specifically the base taste is less bland, independent of cultural factors. For someone who hasn’t experienced the taste difference one might think ‘really, how much better can a tomato taste?’- but no the difference really is substantial, esp when comparing, say, a North American tomato and one from southern Europe.

Some western countries (or portions thereof) have locally-grown food as the norm, too. California, for example, certainly imports quite a bit of food, but also is a major food exporter (and for some produce is the only significant exporter worldwide, let alone in the rest of the US). Being able to grow practically any kind of fruit or vegetable or grain was something I took for granted growing up in the Central Valley, as I did the ability to grow one's own food (my family didn't grow any staples ourselves, but we did have an orchard that gave us more fruit than we could hope to eat, at least when it was in season).

I agree that locally-grown tastes better. Yeah, there are skeptics that claim it's just our imagination or whatever, but if you're shipping food thousands of miles over land and sea, by the time it reaches your plate it's inevitably going to have gone through wild climate swings and mechanical stress that are bound to affect the flavor, even if subtly. And that's assuming the food started out identically; locally grown cultivars/varieties of crops are often different from the ones grown further away (and in fact, a lot of fruits and vegetables grown for worldwide distribution are specifically bred to better survive transit; locally-grown-and-consumed crops don't need to account for that and can focus on size or flavor or texture or whatever other quality might be desirable for a local market).

Not-so-southern Italy here, only to add a data point I just got (for free) two crates of fruit (small apples) from a farmer nearby because they were too small (below "standard") to be sold to the usual wholesaler.

These apples (besides their small size) are simply delicious, but they wouldn't be sold in a supermarket as they are not "pretty" and do not represent the "ideal" apple that people expect.

> Warm weather is important. eg. Hothouse/greenhouse tomatoes or cucumber are never as flavorful as field raised and ripped ones. The more north you go, the blander/crappier the food gets, mostly due to the weather.

It's not quite that clear-cut. For example, strawberries are sweeter and less bland when grown in cooler climates [1]:

> Increased in growth temperatures resulted in decreased fruit quality including soluble solids (SSC), titratable acids (TA), SSC/TA ratio, and ascorbic acid (AA) content in the fruit.

Swedish tomatoes are, on the other hand, of course crap when compared to southern European tomatoes. But from what I've read that's suspected to have more to do with light than temperature.

1: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ace/a1295f3898659fb0afdfab...

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