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Although this can mostly be attributed to ripeness. Ripe tomatoes degrade extremely quickly so store bought ones are almost exclusive picked unripe and then artificially ripened at locations closer to where they are intended to be sold.

This is also why canned tomatoes are generally considered superior for making tomato soups and sauces. Tomatoes harvested with the intention to be conserved are picked much riper since they can be processed and packaged almost immediately after.

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This is why, countrary to common belief, vegetables that are sold frozen are higher quality than fresh ones. My brother works in the industry and says if you can buy whole (with certain exceptions) and frozen, you have the best.

Does it need to be whole?

Does not need to, but the whole variety is usually highest quality because the producer cannot hide the defects. Think about tea or tomatoes: the more you grind it down, the more you can mix in lower quality tiers. One exception I know of is porcini mushrooms: the most expensive are whole halfs, because you can actually see there's no worms in it.

Also for mushrooms dried is really good, but obviously the texture is a little bit different when you eat it.

yes this. i used to be able to buy canned tomatoes that came out whole, nowadays it's ALL diced. I know their tricks but they won't even sell it hahah

I grew up swearing off frozen vegetables as a bad thing - saw ads on TV and assumed it was something poor (?!) and time-poor people would buy. We'd grow fresh or buy whole, but almost never had frozen vegetables. Then my brother went through an intensive athletic program that had a nutritionist - that guy put him onto frozen and he passed it on to me. Fresh, there is a risk you'll let it go to crap before using it, you're paying for bits you'll trim off, etc. Frozen, it's there for months as you need it, ready to go, and was snap frozen fresh. So, odds are, there's less waste and less effort. We still grow and buy as before, but I try to have some frozen staples around, especially for quick stir-fries, fried rice for the kids, etc.

I would actually argue no. Stuff you grow at home is never looking as good as from the store because worms, rain and so on. Strawberries or cherries that have been picked by birds, wasps or slugs are usually fully ripe. Although I agree, whole fruit make it harder to hide bad ones in there

Since I just finished making jam from it let me tell you a secret: bird netting exists. No wasps or slugs in them and mostly no worms.

In this case, sour cherries. Sour cherries are great because almost no worms (only in the variety I have that has the highest sugar content and not many either). The bird netting really helps. Last year no crop, today about 7 pints of jam and I can probably get the same again in a few weeks when the rest ripe s. This is from 3 trees that are about 4 years old now. They're the University of Saskatchewan types (Romeo, Juliet, Crimson passion etc.).

I would say at least 90% of the crop looks saleable. Of course they're sour cherries and they're much smaller than the sweet cherries everyone knows and buys at the store. Other than the bird netting these are completely hands off. No chemicals, completely organic. All they get is compost from all the leaves (the city trucks will not get mine ever!) and guinea pig poop (basically nicely processed grass/hay).

Generally the finer specimens go to the whole products.

They are entirely different strains when it comes to tomato cultivation at industrial scale. A tomato that ends up in a sauce or frozen never had the option to make it to the store while whole.

I was talking about e.g. whole tomatoes vs. crushed tomatoes vs. diced tomatoes vs. tomato sauce.

That's a good point. I was thinking about similarity between tomatoes and eggs, where a free range egg, especially where the farmer let's the chickens have the run of the farm, have much brighter and deeper colored yolks. I had understood this to relate to the chickens diet and the nutrition of the egg. So I imagined deeper brighter red tomatoes to be similarly more nutritious. It could be different mechanisms though, or maybe neither is more nutritious, they just look nicer.

It is common to add sources of yellow and orange to chicken feed, for both free range and caged chickens.

Two quotes from an internet page:

"The yolks in my certified organic birds vary in colour. Because the public expect deep yellow/orange yolks in free range eggs I supplement mine with organic vege scraps. You don't need very much to make a difference. Just toss them the odd pumpkin."

"The intensity of yolk colour may be measured against standards such as the DSM Yolk Colour Fan. Most egg marketing authorities require deep-yellow to orange-yellow yolk colours in the range 9 to 12 on the DSM Yolk Colour Fan. Yolks of more intense colour may be required for specific markets. The most important sources of carotenoids in poultry feed are maize (corn), maize gluten, alfalfa (lucerne) and grass meals; these sources contain the pigmenting carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, which, together with other oxygen-containing carotenoids, are known by the collective name of xanthophylls."

And an article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3457452/amp/How-sec...

I actually don't make that much difference in taste between free range eggs, even home grown, and the industrial kind. The yolk is usually brighter, but not always. The real difference is usually the shell, which is much thicker and harder for free range eggs.

Home grown tomatoes on the other hand are way better tasting.

I don't know about nutrition value.

No. I harvest tomatoes for 4 years now, about 30-50 plants per year. The taste of a half-green-left-on-shelf-because-i-dont-wanna-throw-it-out fruit is better than anything you can get in a shop. You can tell just by the smell, no need to taste it. Sun and soil brings more to the table than led lamps and chemical fertilizers.

I agree but think its also the variety. I once bought semigreen tomatoes in a supermarket in December in Italy and those turned out great after some ripening at home. But they were not the standard red tomatoes you would get everywhere else but real italian flesh tomatoes. Last year my grandma had only standard red ping-pong ball tomatoes and those were almost like store bought, although grown like you described. The other grandma had old varieties and the leftovers in February were still awesome. There are also rumors that grafting while increasing yield decreases flavour, though I haven't tested that

Can that happen, or is color change the same as ripening? I thought ripening requires the fruit to be attached to the plant and exchanging nutrients/waste with the roots?

Not at all. Given my climate and growing season here for some reason I can almost never get tomatoes to properly ripe on the vine. However, if I just harvest them when they are the right size but still green or half green and let them ripen on the kitchen counter in complete darkness they will soften up, redden up and taste amazing (just add salt and pepper).

Canned tomatoes are also a different variety than what you would buy in a store fresh. Canned tomatoes are bred for a much higher amount of solids and flavor, while fresh has to worry more about color and presentation (I.e. bruising is bad).

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