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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

On that same subject - it was interesting to me how much better fresh produce was in Italy. In no small part I think this is due to the fact that people have a pretty good ability to distinguish the quality of a lot of traditional foods there.

In the stores, the produce isn't usually as neat and tidy and pretty as in the US - you might even find a few bad bits and pieces, but by and large, it tastes really good.

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it was interesting to me how much better fresh produce was in Italy

It helps that the food doesn't have to travel far from where it's grown. Sadly, the majority of the planet isn't as fortunate.

Same thing applies to a lot of produce in california, still tends to taste worse.

A lot of that will depend on where you are and where you're shopping. For example: even in the Bay Area it can be hard to find garlic grown outside of China despite Watsonville and Fresno growing a ton of garlic. American-grown ginger as well can be extremely difficult to find as well. Same with avocados and limes. The Southern Californian climate is well suited to both avocados and limes, but most I've found out here are sourced from Mexico or South America (except for the 'specialty' avocados).

I'm not surprised. Local fresh produce tends to be the way to get much better food products.

What I would like to see is a curated list of all common objects we use daily that have the properties I mentioned above: high quality, safety and repairability.

Places like r/bifl and manufactum.de are good starting points, but they are far from complete.

It's not necessarily local - these aren't what I'd call high end or "hipster" type markets, just regular supermarkets. They'll bring in stuff from southern Italy, or Spain or wherever is convenient.

But they do pay attention to quality because their customers want that.

I'd still argue that's quite local. In most Spanish supermarkets, stuff tended to be local or from nearby EU countries. Although now things are degrading.

My favorite UK supermarket sells organic pine kernels from China, at a ridiculously high price. That's not local, nor pine kernels are typical produce from China. It's just seeking high margins.

Soil composition, fertilizers, vegetable strains, and weather conditions all impact taste. Tomatoes from my garden made from heirloom seeds taste significantly better than best boy, beefsteak, or even tomatoes on the vine. I've had tomatoes from Italy, in Romania if all places, and can concur that even the produce exported tastes worlds better than what you can buy in the average US supermarket. I'd wager that the type of produce grown in the US is the culprit as it tends to be more important to have shelf stable and attractive produce than tasty produce. Stuff from my garden or the farmer's market is comparable to produce I've had in Europe.

> it tends to be more important to have shelf stable and attractive produce than tasty produce.

Yes, exactly. US customers are selecting for the biggest/dollar with no blemishes, rather than the tastiest.

You can find heirloom veggies and less industrialized produce in American markets — but part of the reason they're not quite as popular is that they don't ship as well or have as long a season. Fuerte avocados, for instance, have a season of about six weeks. They're delicious but towards the end of the season they're not that great.

Of course, living in the Bay Area I'm spoiled by the selection. It really is better than a lot of other areas. In contrast, Portland, in particular, stood out as having consistently mediocre produce available (and New York was surprisingly good even in the middle of winter).

New York and a good chunk of the Northeast get a lot of produce from Canada year round. New York is also a major port city with fresh food coming in daily. I can't find any heirloom anything in my local market, not a big enough draw. The farmer's markets are great though fresh from field to table and usually great prices from great people. In the Bay area you actually have a really nice pipeline to farmers which probably explains the great produce. Portland seems like it might have a rain problem with would limit produce to tolerant it greenhouse crops, especially tomatoes which do poorly in tons of rain. Even lettuce needs to dry out lest it rot.

The avoidance of Monsanto seeds could be a part of it.

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