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Comment by muraiki | Hacker News Reader

We might also want to think about _why_ some foods taste bland. I feel that I'd never really tasted what a tomato tastes like until I had some at a monastery in Greece.

I was surprised to see tomatoes sitting out at dinner, seemingly to be eaten as-is along with the meal. I bit into one and it had a flavor unlike any tomato I've ever had in the USA. I could finally understand that a tomato is a fruit! It was nicely sweet with no bitterness and no discernible acidity.

In the USA when we ship stuff across the country, gassing it to stop it from ripening, and then gassing it again to cause it to ripen again -- all the while eating things mostly out of season -- it's no wonder that our foods taste bland!

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The other part of it is that if your body is used to a high calorie diet with lots of sugar and fat, vegetables are going to taste bad no matter how good they are. And if you're eating healthfully, then even supermarket vegetables will taste reasonably good.

That's true. I remember when I stayed in Japan for a while, initially I found the food underwhelming. It turns out that good 'ol Japanese homecooking isn't designed for the American palate, which is accustomed to lots of sugar, fat, and calories. After a month, though, I loved the food and tasted all sorts of subtle flavors in the vegetables.

Once I came back to America, I found that food here was overwhelming my tastebuds. In particular, I remember trying to drink some Pepsi. It tasted like I was drinking pure sugar (well, I guess that's what it really is). I couldn't even finish it or any other kind of soda. Now I'm able to drink stuff like that again, but that's probably not an improvement. :)

My parents grew tomatoes in their garden every summer here in the US. I've been eating tomatoes like that since I was a child. Sliced, as a side, in the summer, with a little salt and pepper. I only do this when they are homegrown though.

I started eating vegetables without salt many years ago, and once I got used to it, they don't taste bland to me at all. Even the regular grocery store ones. Of course, if you get homegrown organic ones, they are way better - but even the grocery store ones still have a lot of taste, unless your taste is ruined by years of training it that vegetables should taste like salt. I actually hate when more than a trace of salt is added to the vegetable salad - then only thing I can taste is the salt, it overwhelms everything else.

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