Hacker News Reader

Comment by petargyurov | Hacker News Reader

I am certain that a vast majority of people have never tasted a "real" tomato.

Here in the UK (though I'm sure this applies globally), tomatoes sold in supermarkets taste like plastic. Reason being is that they are picked when they are green and they "ripen" by the time they get to the store shelf.

This is done because tomatoes are almost impossible to transfer safely in large quantities, because when they are ripe they are softer, bruise easily and they tend to go bad quickly.

So, grow your own tomatoes - it's surpisingly easy - and the taste is amazing.

View on HN

I'm in the UK and I grow my own veg. The small on-the vine tomatos from Tesco are very acceptable - fragrant and sweet. The small cherry vine tomatoes from Waitrose are luscious.

... Not as good as a warm tomato straigh off the plant on a sunny day, but not far off.

I sometimes think tomatoes are all born with a fixed amount of flavour in them, and the larger they grow the more dilute that flavour becomes. Because I agree - the little ones are fine.

Smaller tomatoes taste better because they are easier to ship without damaging (they're lighter and have a much lower mass to surface area ratio). As such, producers and supply chains don't have to go to the same extremes (breeding them to be tough rather than flavorful/picking them completely green) to get them to the supermarket shelf intact.

Similarly, canned tomatoes taste great[1] because they are picked ripe and packaged.

[1] Canned tomatoes have a slight cooked taste so they're never going to taste fresh, but are great in anything you're going to cook.

Well, even growing your own tomatoes might not help that much. Modern hybrid varietals are breeded for color uniformity which removed the taste. Let me tell you it is quite hard to source real heirloom varietals: there are tons of new "heirloom" varietals, but those are basically just modern varietals with some mutations that makes them not look like industrial ones.

Why is it so hard to source seeds for these heirlooms?

Unfortunately lots of them were lost back in 50s and 60s with advent of seed companies. Also in Europe selling seeds of non approved varietals is not possible. Legislation is changing slowly, but a lot of diversity is lost forever.

What you can see a lot on current market are "heirloom" varietals made by entrepreneurs that take industrial variatel, cross them to create new completely new varietals. But just because something doesn't look like modern tomato it doesn't mean it taste good.

You can still find old varietals in seed banks and around seed savers, but hip breeders are much more noisy in the market. I am not saying those new breeds are worthless, but they are kinda hit and miss and I would not consider them heirloom.

Our local supermarket does sell locally grown heirloom tomatoes, but because they are not perfectly round and not even in colour the entire section for four different heirloom tomatoes is about one tenth the size for the standard tomatoes (greenhouse and field).

Can confirm. Does this also apply to canned Tomatos or are those allowed to ripe on soil, because damage didn’t matter? I think they taste better and I’ve Heard- than many top chefs prefer them over “fresh” tomatoes for cooking.

If tomatoes need to be red when they are canned, then I am going to make an educated guess that what you get in a can is truly ripe, red tomatoes canned near the farm operation. Never thought about that until now, makes sense though. I knew fruits and veggies are harvested pre-ripe for shipping and handling purposes, but canned don't need anything like that.

I tried a few canned tomatoes I don't think they are good. Maybe it will be good if it is produced in the farm. I believe most of them are produced in a factory, then you still need to transport tomatoes from the farm to a factory safely.

Good canned tomatoes are canned very quickly after being picked. They'll beat most supermarket tomatoes. They'll lose to fresh tomatoes picked at an appropriate time and eaten fresh.

Canned tomatoes are really interesting. They are a different variety of tomatoes (Roma tomatoes) that can be picked via machine. That's also why they taste differently. The automated picking is why they are cheaper (plus the variety is better for quantity). One wouldn't be able to sell the automatically picked tomatoes uncanned since their skin gets damaged.

I buy fresh Roma Tomatoes at Costco all the time. They come in some horrible plastic packaging that keeps them safe and with the vines still on. Not as good as home grown, but not terrible.

I think they're picked right when they start to ripen then finish in the box/transit.

> Reason being is that they are picked when they are green

Is that really true any more? The supply chains are incredibly fast now and I can't imagine there's enough time for this process to take place - even tomatoes from southern Spain are probably on shelves in a few days. It's not like shipping bananas from the Caribbean. I think it's more that the watery tomatoes are the varieties that grow the fastest and offer the best margins at the lower pricepoints.

An increasing number of tomato imports are coming from the mega greenhouses where they are harvested red and can be packed on site. This one is Dutch [1], but I remember hearing that they're building some in the UK. Clearly they're never going to be the same as growing them in a garden in Sicily and leaving them to ripen for a few days in the sun, but not bad for mass production, available year round and much, much better than the tomatoes in the supermarkets a couple of decades ago.

> So, grow your own tomatoes - it's surpisingly easy - and the taste is amazing.

I've been trying for a few years. It's been fun and the varieties are way more interesting, but I'm not in danger of flooding the market.

[1] https://duijvestijntomaten.nl/en/packaging/

I've heard that bananas can be caused to ripen rapidly by exposing them to ethylene gas. This means you can transport them green so they don't bruise and then quickly turn them yellow when they arrive at the destination for sale (like in the last warehouse).

I'd imagine you can do the same with tomatoes?

Yes, but fruits and vegetables that are quickly ripened with ethylene remain much less tasty than those that ripened on the plant.

(As an aside, some fruits including apples also produce ethylene a they ripen. This is why putting an apple and an avocado in a plastic bag will cause the avocado to ripen faster. It is also the origin of the saying "one bad apple spoils the whole basket", because bad apples produce a lot of ethylene and causes the rest of the basket to quickly overripe. More info can be found at https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00016 for example).

> Is that really true any more? The supply chains are incredibly fast now and I can't imagine there's enough time for this process to take place - even tomatoes from southern Spain are probably on shelves in a few days.

It is, even within relatively close main EU nations we had significant losses (~30% of gross weight) between organic/Biodynaimc suppliers from Italy to Germany where I did my first year of apprenticeship. My first job was to sort through the waste pumpkins and potatoes that arrived on a daily basis for 2 weeks in September in large crates for storage and distribution to the farm's stores/CSA/Farmers Market outlets.

It's funny because that farms soil was so rich that the seeds scattered around from wasted pumpkins in the compost pile were vining well into December. I found a few decent sized pumpkins (albeit green) when we had to turn the compost pile later in the Winter.

But suffice it to say, it's insane how much food gets lost due to transport!

> An increasing number of tomato imports are coming from the mega greenhouses where they are harvested red and can be packed on site.

Perhaps to hyper-local Markets that's the case, but having spent time in Supply Chain for large Auto-manufactures batch shipping is still the norm for such low-margin commodities and delays have only compounded further since COVID. Also, Holland is (or until recently as COVID may have changed that) the largest exporter of it's Green-house produce and biggest importer of Organic and Biodynamic produce in the EU. In short, for many in NL: they're not consuming their own supply.

> I've been trying for a few years. It's been fun and the varieties are way more interesting, but I'm not in danger of flooding the market.

I'm ashamed to say I haven't had a proper tomato this year, and this is coming from a former farmer and chef.

I don't doubt your experiences, but organic farmers markets are not really comparable to the original discussion of "tomatoes sold in [UK] supermarkets".

It might be difficult if you live in block of flats. And pollution in a city could be a problem.

I live in a flat and grow tomatoes and things hydroponically in a corner.

Big initial cost, but those tomatoes taste so sweet. It's also just a fun hobby, I don't intend to save money on it

I think there's also a genetic component. I planted Roma seeds from a store bought tomato, grew the plant, and they still didn't have much flavour compared to any other garden tomato I've tried.

Yup. Store varieties are bread for exactly this: transportation. I read somewhere that unfortunately the taste and transportability are mutually exclusive when you go through traditional selective breeding.

Tomatoes are often hybrids, so growing from seed you'll be missing some of the characteristics of the parent. Not sure if this applies to roma tomatoes.

I think it's not just that produce is picked unripe. As some sibling commenters say, there might be more to it. Either genetic, through selection, or chemical, through whatever they put in the soil for it to grow bigger / quicker.

The issue I have with most store-bought produce is that it has practically no taste whatsoever. It tastes like water. Tomatoes taste like water. Peppers taste like water. I've never had store-bought berries (of any kind) taste anything.

I've noticed that when you pick an unripe tomato, or cherry, or grape, or whatever, they actually have a taste. Not a very good taste, I wouldn't like eating unripe cherries.

However, the same things from a supermarket have practically no taste. I've never had produce picked from my mother or grandparents' garden taste like water. If they're unripe, they'll taste bitter, sour, something. They will absolutely have some kind of actual taste.

When I was a kid (35+ years ago) we used to buy tomatoes from a greenhouse locally. They had some boxes on the back with second sorting greens and a box for money. We grabbed 3-4 bags full of tomatoes, left the money and by the time we were home there was only two bags left. They were so good, I haven't seen anything remotely similar to that in the store. I wish I knew the name of those tomatoes, I would love to grow them myself.

Similar with strawberries, I was asking what sort they had but don't remember any more. He told us he selects them for taste, not optimizing for scale. But the plants are slightly harder to take care of and sometimes the harvest fails. But the taste is worth all the hazzle.

> Here in the UK (though I'm sure this applies globally)

Your problem is on word 4 - tomatoes do not grow well in the UK.

Places were tomatoes grow well locally do have good tomatoes (in season). I can confirm this personally for Switzerland, California, Bulgaria.

Going to a farmer's market tends to be easier

Very few farmers at a farmers market can honestly say the produce they're selling came from their farm.

The vast majority comes from wholesale auctions just like everything else.

There is an organisation called "The Farmers Own Market" (but in swedish). The rule is 250 km max distance from farm to market. The people selling has to be involved in the physical farming to be allowed to sell there. There are also webstores that sell for pickup at the farm or a central place in bigger towns (usually a parking outside a shopping mall).

Well, dunno about where you live, but around here, "farmers' markets" are actually attended by genuine small farmers, who genuinely grow the genuine produce they sell. Multiple vendors at the local markets are also Community-Supported Agriculture farms, and we've personally had shares from one in recent years (though not currently).

Of course, "around here" is in a rural area, surrounded by...farms.

You can get usually decent tomatoes in the UK at local greengrocers / corner shops. Not as good as the ones you can get in France or Italy in season, but a lot better than supermarket ones.

> tomatoes sold in supermarkets taste like plastic

Here in Norway you can get quite tasty tomatoes sold in supermarkets. Here's[1] a "blog" article from one of them. There are other brands and tomato variants.

Of course they cost slightly more than the ones we import from wherever but the taste more than make up for it.

That said, I've never tasted a "real" tomato so not sure how close they come.

[1]: https://coop.no/mega/kjokkenhagen/verdens-soteste-tomater-dy...

I don’t know where else they have them, but in Canadian supermarkets we have vine-ripened tomatoes and they are actually sold on the vine in small clusters.

Turns out these taste very close to fresh natural tomatoes.

Source: I grew up picking tomatoes from my grandmother’s garden and eating them like apples.

> Reason being is that they are picked when they are green and they "ripen" by the time they get to the store shelf.

I think the reason is that those tomatoes never saw anything resembling soil or sunlight; they are grown in some fertilized solution inside a greenhouse and propelled to a rapid growth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com