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Comment by durnygbur | Hacker News Reader

The large retail chains in Europe sell what I call porn-fruits and porn-vegetables. Especially places like EDEKA, REWE, Kaufland in Germany.

Strawberries, berries, raspberries, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, salads, apples, pears, eggplants, etc. - shiny (do they wax them?), large, unified size, saturated color. Barely any taste, all watery. Grown in perfectly artificial industrial greenhouses.

Not a trace of soil on them, not a trace of imperfections. This is not how fruits and vegetables bought directly from a farmer on a market look and taste like.

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That's likely not due to how they are grown but the genetics of the plant. If you took the seeds for one of them and grew it in your garden with sunshine and birdsong it would still look and taste the same. That's because good looking produce sells better than good tasting one, so that's how commercial plants are bred: for transportation and looks instead of taste.

Unlikely: most hybrid vegetables do not breed true. If you take seed from one of these vegetables and plant it it is most likely to be sterile (like that classic hybrid, the mule) or else revert to form of one of its ancestors, producing small or even inedible fruits.

It's worse! In fact they get these perfect ones by throwing away the imperfects. You can but a lot of fruit and veg for animal feed; marked grade B or C at a fraction of the grade A price - because they are blemished or ugly.

What's your favorite place to buy in Germany?

Not the main commentator, I think farmers market or the weekly markets that happen in few places in cities are good and depending on when they have been imported asian/turkish stores can have fresh veggies(debatable), or if you are in a small town you could actually have a small local market nearby.

"Deutsche Piccolo" tomatoes from Kaufland taste quite good. They are also the most expensive ones from there. But honestly the cheaper ones aren't worth their money, might as well buy colored water.

> shiny (do they wax them?)

sometimes, yes.

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