Comment by devchix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devchix | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps there's a net good application to this, more yield so a plant can produce more, feed more hungry people, survive storage and shipping -- but I see 4lbs packs of Driscoll strawberries at my store, year round. The fruits are gigantic, way bigger than what a strawberry should be, firm, uniformly red, and absolutely tasteless. Same with tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, anything you could buy at a typical grocery store. Especially tomatoes, you can taste what an astounding difference between a commercially produced tomato (even with monikers like vine-ripened, kumato, heirloom, etc.) and an ugly homegrown one. I don't want this future, but my want is at odds with that of the producers: what's wrong with fresh tomatoes and basil year round? and that of the poor: what's wrong with affordable berries, asparagus, good-tasting not-mealy apples?

I remember when honeycrisps first came on the market, they were smaller, now they are gigantic, I don't know if they taste more diluted. I also remember green plumcots, they used to be smaller, more tart and sweet. Now they are huge!

When I first moved from India to US, this is the first noticeable difference I found. Huge ass veggies, devoid of taste. I just couldn't believe tomatoes. They looked so pretty yet had literally no tart. So yeah I'm cool with all of these RNA fiddling etc but for the love of God, do not turn vegetables into tasteless elements that just look pretty in super market shelves.

My real shocker was onion. I mean, man I could just eat the red onion without a drop of tear in my eyes. Try doing this in India.

So those in US, if at all you ever feel like eating real vegetables hop on a 15 hour flight to Delhi or Bangalore :)

This is one of my points for people who gripe so much about California.

There is absolutely nowhere else in the U.S. where you can go just about anywhere and get fresh, cheap, properly flavorful produce. Even several capitol cities of MidWest states don't have a real competitor to what's widely available and affordable in Cali.

In Europe I'd say Italy takes that prize. I suspect it's the fact that there are a lot of different climates within the country (much like California). Spain grows a lot of produce for Europe, but things like cucumbers don't taste as good as they do from cooler climates.

> So those in US, if at all you ever feel like eating real vegetables hop on a 15 hour flight to Delhi or Bangalore :)

Or check out your local farmers marker or CSA

> I mean, man I could just eat the red onion without a drop of tear in my eyes. Try doing this in India.

That’s actually to a large degree a soil thing. In US, there are some places where the soil is naturally very low in sulfur, and these places see a lot of onion cultivation, as the resulting produce is much less burning than onion grown elsewhere.

You're right, but it is multiple things. These giant foods do lose flavor concentration. Additionally, a lot of these things are not allowed to ripen naturally. They are picked early and put in storage with nitrogen gas to suspend ripening. This is also why produce seems to spoil after 3 days in the fridge. You'll see quite a difference if you can get fresh grown vegetables from your own garden.

I think in the future, a lot of this produce will be grown at home in hydroponics devices. However, the bigger question there is figuring out the color of LED light to still produce a pleasing tomato.

Tomatoes are the most noticeable example to me. A grocery store tomato can't hold a candle to a garden one. Large berries are also a great point, basically just large solid water that they charge $4 a pound for.

I don't have that issue with apples or bananas however. Both in the north east and south east, I've always had solid apples and bananas, with quality varying by store (I love Aldi, but their produce is lacking in my experience). Generally speaking, if the fruit or vegetable is too big, it's probably bad in my experience.

On honeycrisps - I hate how large they are. They're good apples most of the time, but way too big for me to want to eat all of in one sitting. I much prefer a small firm apple.

The last few years I've been noticing the weird plastic tomatoes a lot. I don't know what they've done to them but they last for ages in the fridge and they taste like cardboard. I tend to go for the truss tomatoes because they're a bit more like actual tomatoes.

That's all about variety, not size. They selected strawberry genes for size, color and transportability. And sacrificed flavor. (probably because flavor is related to ripening etc which is critical to the other three variables)

If you grow your own tasty 'heirloom' strawberries, now you can grow 50% more. That's a good thing.

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