7 ms·

A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

136 points by ust 10y ago

corybrown 10y ago
> In the tasting panels, there were noticeable differences in preferences: between men and women, between foodies and nonfoodies, and, perhaps most interesting, between older people and younger people. He recalled one of the students working in his laboratory picking out the supermarket tomato as her favorite in one of the taste tests. People like what they know. But I'm guessing repeated exposure could end up shifting the tastes.
- BugsJustFindMe 10y ago
  I'm curious to hear how the men/women split fits into the "people like what they know" paradigm. Is the grocery store secretly swapping out my tomatoes but not my partner's?
- dkonofalski 10y ago
  Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very objective way to test this kind of thing. We know, based on all kinds of testing done in the past, that our tastebuds react more sensitively to tastes that we don't know to protect us from potentially eating foods that are poisonous or rotten. It's the reason why you have to develop a taste for things like bleu cheese and cilantro and why they taste bitter or strong at first. We're "programmed" to like foods that we've tasted before and are used to and that we know are safe to eat. When you introduce a flavor for something that we "know" what it's supposed to taste like, we naturally are averse to that taste. It's the same reason that people develop taste aversions to foods that they've gotten sick from or why people can't drink a liquor that they've had a terrible experience with. Your tastebuds "recognize" that this taste or flavor got you sick last time and prepare your body for it.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    Do you have any citations? This all sounds so obvious and logical but so do most other theories in evolutionary psychology and biology. I don't think we have enough evidence to make such strong claims. I developed a taste for spicy food after years of avoiding it like the plague for digestive reasons but only found out after I had a strong craving for Indian food and accidentally got something really spicy. I also can't bring myself to order tortas because I ate one too soon after getting really sick from tacos. Reading the word "tortas" makes me feel nauseous but "tacos" does not and I can eat both without any negative response (once the food is in front of me). These examples are orthogonal to yours but I think they're illustrative of just how complex the interactions are. I don't doubt the adaptations you mentioned are there, just how prelevant they are in a modern agricultural society.
    - dkonofalski 10y ago
      Wikipedia actually has a fairly good overview of the idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion You can find more info on Google Scholar for specific studies and papers.
- prawn 10y ago
  I think people are often too harsh on supermarket produce. Obviously they factor in time spent during transport, but the growers have ridiculous amounts of experience in what they do. I grow 6-7 different types of tomatoes in my backyard (including heirloom types). Some are good, some varieties are bland. Have had a few supermarket cherry tomatoes recently that have been great, and similar experiences with others. Often I end up picking my own tomatoes before they're perfectly ripe anyway to lessen the chance of birds/bugs/rats beating me to it. Little different to growers picking early for transport. I also grow two different types of strawberries. They're good, but so are those we get in shops.
djsumdog 10y ago
From their website: > The University of Florida has released our first two hybrids. We are in discussions with seed companies about licensing. I hope they allow people to save seeds. They should patent all their source seeds immediately and mark them as open/allowing people to use any without worry of patents. Farmers will need to be careful as always. Any seeds that happen to get cross pollinated with seeds from the big producers (Monsanto, DuPont, etc.) run the risk of paying licensing fees in our current fucked up patenting system (thanks GE).
- searine 10y ago
  >Any seeds that happen to get cross pollinated You can actually sue your neighbors and/or these companies for geneflow into your heirloom crops. There has never been a recorded lawsuit where a farmer has been sued for unintentional gene flow. Only intentional patent infringement. >(thanks GE). People have been patenting crops for over 100 years. Nobody cared until GMO's came along...
  - dkonofalski 10y ago
    This is exactly why I despise the "urban legend" about Monsanto suing the poor, tiny farmer because their Round-Up resistant seeds blew into his crop. The actual story (much like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit) makes a lot more sense when you learn that the farmer not only knew that their seeds were Monsanto's but then used Round-Up on all his other crops so that they would die and only the resistant crops were left over. He then took the seeds from those crops and planted something like 95% of his field with them (which was probably 100% but some of the old plants survived). There was no unintentional wind-blown spreading.
    - throwawaydbfif 10y ago
      I still see a problem with this. If GM crops are capable of being wind blown how does his activity differ at all from someone trying to naturally select for crops with herbicide resistance? Any farmer trying to select for a plant with resistance could accidentally end up reproducing a "patented" plant. I think there's a fundamental problem with patenting things that are self replicating. Given enough time a superior GMO plant could take over a field all by itself with no intervention... Is the land owner/farmer really to blame if this happens? A related problem is that it's difficult/impossible to tell if you're growing a patented seed without expensive tests. As long as the plants are virtually indistinguishable patent enforcement should not be allowed.
quickben 10y ago
There is something wrong with the food industry. When I was growing up, they taught us that we eat veggies because when they are fully mature, all the nutrients are there and good for us. Somehow, they found out how to make them look ready but still not ripe. And now they found out how to screw the taste to taste better. So they will look and taste good, but the nutritive value will be questionable. Waste of research effort. Edit: to the people modding this down: you realize that research will hit the poorest hardest? They can't buy organic tomatoes, they think what they paid for is good nutritive food, except it isn't.
- searine 10y ago
  Easy to say on a full stomach.
  - quickben 10y ago
    That is not the point. The stomach will stay empty, but money will be spent. This is not gmo research, this is screwing the people that can't buy organic food.
    - searine 10y ago
      The problem with food policy is that you simply can't get rid of cheap food. If you get rid of cheap food, even unhealthy cheap food, people starve. So the solution isn't to demonize cheap food. It is to make cheap food better. Adding back the vitamins and nutrients which also impart flavor while keeping the caloric content high is one great way of doing that. Furthermore, in a modern economy with diverse choice, nutrient deficiency is not a concern. Cheap food alone can more than provide the essential vitamins and nutrients. What is more important is delivery raw caloric content, which cheap food excels at. Organic is fresh, luxury food built on a foundation of cheap staples. If you erode the pillars that hold up your palace, it will all come crashing down.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Why do you think this variety will be less nutritious than "organic" tomatoes?
zZsFBVZ9bjdJd 10y ago
Temple Grandin had some interesting thoughts on how single trait breeding can lead to adverse affects in her discussion on "Rapist Roosters", and how this relates to software[0]. It seems like this is also happening here. Typically when single trait breeding leads to an adverse, undesirable affect (lack of taste), while the selected trait was obtained (in this case, possibly bigger size) breeders don't start from scratch by trying to isolate the desired trait without obtaining the undesirable trait. Instead, as in software, the breeders iterate by trying to remove the negative trait, complicating the hybrids and possibly more unknown adverse traits. It seems like it might be wise to start from scratch in some cases and keep it simple, rather then make hybrid species whose lineage can be difficult to trace. [0]: https://books.google.com/books?id=aMVmhqpILOAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=aMVmhqpILOAC&printsec=fron... page 70
- gmarx 10y ago
  That explains why most every dog breed that competes on looks and becomes popular gets messed up. Also American breeders have this odd habit of taking large dogs that should be about 80 lbs and breeding them into behemoths, usually to the detriment of the dogs
  - feld 10y ago
    Russians did this with the German Giant Schnauzer and created the Black Russian Terrier. Their Giants are also significantly larger than the ones with German heritage, but both are recognized as the same breed.
    - gmarx 10y ago
      wasn't aware of this but will look it up.
  - appleiigs 10y ago
    You are being too nice calling it a habit. Breeding behemoths is what sells. People will pay a premium for the pick of the litter (which is code words for "the biggest"). I don't have any problems with dog breeding per se, but the market forces are seriously broken. EDIT: In addition to pushing for bigger dogs, it's also profitable to drive down food and vet costs. Kennel clubs like the American Kennel Club are scams. The kennel clubs just receive fees for processing paper. They don't inspect breeders. They don't care if you're a puppy mill. As long as you pay your fees, you will get your papers.
Eric_WVGG 10y ago
There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn, which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat flavorless, unseasonal ones. pro tip: Use canned tomatoes instead of fresh whenever out of season; canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping, and seal at the peak of freshness.
- wyager 10y ago
  > canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping This explains why I love canned/boxed tomatoes, but hate the slimy, bland sliced ones they put on sandwiches.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    If a sliced tomato is slimy on your sandwich, that's not a variety problem, it's a preparation problem (in that application, tomatoes, regardless of variety, should be seeded.) Bland may be a variety problem, though it can also be a poor handling problem.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      If there is no flavor, you are left only with texture.
  - weaksauce 10y ago
    A home grown heirloom tomato is amazing. The stuff that they try to pass off in the stores as a tomato is awful.
- debacle 10y ago
  You can make popcorn in a saucepan, it's easy and fun. Gourmet popcorn (different kernels) also tastes far better even than the bulk kernels you can find in the store.
tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
amazing tasting tomatoes still exist around the world, if you are on vacation in Italy in the summer buy some "cuor di bue" tomatoes at the supermarket and they will be amazing. Of course if you happen to know somebody that grows them and you can pick them off the plant they will be even more incredible, but even the "normal" supermarket ones are going to be orders of magnitude tastier than anything you can find in North America in my experience. The issue is of course that said tomatoes are available only for a short period of time, so if you are having a craving for them in December, you are out of luck, but that's the way it's always been, the summer ones are just as tasty now as they've always been so there's no need to put taste "back" into them.
- oppositelock 10y ago
  Amazing tasting tomatoes are also very easy to grow yourself. Tomatoes are a hardy vine, and hard to mess up, you just need plenty of sunshine. There are seeds available for many heirloom varieties, and when you grow them yourself, you pick them at the peak of freshness. I particularly like the Early Girl variety. It's a bummer that you can't re-plant the seeds from most tomatoes, which are F1 hybrids, so the next generation is really terrible. I've been growing them for years, even when I was living in apartments with no garden space at all. For really tight space, something like an EarthBox works great - you get very high plant density. I had one of those on a balcony barely bigger than the box itself, and I still had a few fresh tomatoes every week! Here in the SF bay area, you can sprout the seeds in late Feb, early March, and you've got edible tomatoes by mid may, all the way through October. I'm pretty sure I can build a cheap glass house and have them year round, now that I have back yard.
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    This- very much this. I used to put a tomato cage in a large pot and grow them on my front porch - though I had a shorter growing season. I could put them out in Mid-to-late May. If it was the right variety, they'd keep producing until the plant was killed by frost and cold. Soil, however, will affect your taste. I really miss good summer tomatoes from Indiana - I knew folks that moved down south and complained about the difference in taste, even when they grew them.
pbosko 10y ago
You should try importing tomatoes from Eastern Europe. They are still very tasty over here. :)
- 4ad 10y ago
  I was born in Romania, visited there less than two weeks ago, and now I am in the United States. This is simply not true at all. Tomatoes in Romania taste exactly the same as tomatoes in the United States (e.g. bland). Even tomatoes bought from farmer's market are not much better because they don't use the tastiest varieties of tomatoes.
  - mclion 10y ago
    In the winter tomatoes have no taste. Real tomatoes are a summer plant. Ask your parents. ;)
    - 4ad 10y ago
      I don't have to ask anybody, I have lived in Romania for 21 years. Summer tomatoes that are not specially sourced are just as crappy in Romania, Austria, and United States. Slightly better at the farmer's market though. I have also lived in rural Romania for many months at a time, in the summer, for over a decade, and have grown tomatoes myself. The only time I ever got good tomatoes was at some tomato faire, or some special organic farmer's market (in the summer, of course). And every time it was outside Romania. The idea that food in Romania is somehow unaffected by global economic development is a myth that has to die.
- appleiigs 10y ago
  I was in Serbia recently. The tomatoes and cucumbers blew my mind. In the city or in the country, all were great. Seemed like every dinner started with fresh bread and a bowl of tomatoes and cucumbers. I didn't need the main dish, until they put slow cooked lamb or pork in front of me.
- kbart 10y ago
  That's only because more people have summer houses there (it's a tradition in most/all Eastern Europe) and grow vegetables themselves, so it's easier to come by naturally grown ones. Buy generic tomatoes from a supermarket, and the they'll taste bland as everywhere.
baursak 10y ago
There's a book called "Tomatoland" that discusses the tomato industry and how tomatoes were selected not for taste, but to last through the journey to the supermarket and shelf life once there. Interview with author and excerpt are here: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-destroyed-the-tasty-tomato http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farmi...
anotheryou 10y ago
I like the story of the artificial banana flavour to be like the old tasteful bananas there where. I guess it's not true, but the story of the banana is simmilar to the fate of the tomato, if not worse, because banas have no seeds, are all clones and the old kind of banana got mostly wiped by some fungi.
- skykooler 10y ago
  And there is a new breed of the same fungus that is attacking the modern banana - the Cavendish - and as of yet, there is no replacement banana that we can substitute if the Cavendish gets wiped out.
  - Nursie 10y ago
    There are loads of awesome bananas out there, they just either aren't so soft and sweet or don't ship well. Within the last year I have had lady-finger, apple and Fe'i bananas and various plantains. All delicious! I want to try red and blue/ice-cream but am having trouble finding them in the UK or on my travels...
    - skykooler 10y ago
      But, as you say, none of these are a good substitute Cavendish, though they may be fine bananas in their own right.
      - Nursie 10y ago
        Apple and lady-finger I have had in the UK, seemed to ship OK and tasted good. They were much smaller. Red Daccas (the red banana) are commercially available in some countries like Australia, but probably because they grow them. I think commercial development of a "Cavendish Replacement" ought to be a real plan to diversify the banana business. Monocultures are inherently troublesome. If we could lose this meme in the Europe and North America that there is such a thing as "a banana" and start eating different varieties, I think that would be great.
dkersten 10y ago
Over the decades, taste has drained out of supermarket tomatoes. And people say that organic doesn't affect flavour! (Ok ok I know, it doesn't have to be organic) I grew my own tomatoes a few years ago and they had a very strong tomato flavour. Delicious!
cylinder 10y ago
Couldn't they just go overseas? I think it's only in America where produce tastes like cardboard.
- gwern 10y ago
  The overseas tomatoes don't ship or grow any better, and consumers are demonstrably unwilling to pay for them. The point of this research is that by doing the expensive rare difficult phenotyping & genotyping of flavor of all the varieties they used (domestic commercial, heirloom, even wild), you can get a polygenic score which predicts flavor without having to grow & feed to a taste panel; and with this polygenic score, you can then do molecular breeding piggybacking on top of normal breeding, to neutralize the damage. For the most part, there's no inherent biological reason that a robust fast-growing tomato has to taste bad because the taste chemicals represent such a physically minute part of the tomatoes; it's just that with zero selection for taste, the taste gradually suffers over generations.
- open-source-ux 10y ago
  > Couldn't they just go overseas? I think it's only in America where produce tastes like cardboard. No, tomatoes taste pretty bland in many European countries too. The Netherlands and Spain are the two top tomato-exporting countries in Europe. As you can probably guess, the sunny climes of the Netherlands aren't exactly conducive to ripe, flavourful tomatoes. But large-scale industrial tomato farming is conducive to achieving cheap prices that consumers expect at the supermarket.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  Oh, this is definitely false. I'm in Norway, and I'm loathe to buy fresh tomatoes because they are usually mushy. It is no wonder my Norwegian spouse rarely likes fresh tomatoes. I do have better luck buying small cherry or grape tomatoes, but when possible I use the tinned tomatoes.
Ericson2314 10y ago
This is good stuff, but I wish so much effort wasn't spent into making a single breed. If you have the greenhouse space (granted I see this is exponential), and some variation is a coin flip whether its better or not, please peruse both! I would love 5 varieties of hardy tomato each testing better in its own way!
shmerl 10y ago
> I don’t want people to not eat a great-tasting tomato because they’re scared of it And we also don't want anyone to claim exclusive rights on producing such tomatoes, because some moron came up with the idea to patent genes.
- rch 10y ago
  Exactly, and there are plenty of existing varieties that taste as they should. The random colors and shapes are part of the fun. I'd much rather have one heirloom than 4 identical red tomatoes still on a vine sold in a plastic box.
  - foxhop 10y ago
    A heirloom has nothing to do with it, that just means its seeds create fruit true to the parent fruit. I have taken some really tasty hybrids and grew them back down into a heirloom of sorts. I've started to grow tomatoes 5 years ago. http://unturf2.tumblr.com http://unturf2.tumblr.com That said, yeah we don't need to engineer the flavor back into tomatoes, we need people to vote with their wallets.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
  Uh, plant patents are one of only a handful of patent varieties (in the US), and they exist specifically to cover new breeds. This is very much a patent-able breed, and much more easily enforced because it's a well characterized bit of law, whereas the 'gene patents' only got by on a technicality of requiring cDNA intermediates.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Patents on living beings in general are as ridiculous as patents on genes.
david-given 10y ago
If you refrigerate tomatoes, they go bland --- the cold temperatures kills some of the flavour. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-refrigerator.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-...
- balfirevic 10y ago
  Did they actually test for taste in that research? This guy has and he disagrees: http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-store-tomatoes.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-store-tomatoes.htm... http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/tomato-taste-test-refrigerate-tomatoes-furtther-testing-results.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/tomato-taste-test-refrige... http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-refrigerate-tomatoes.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-refrigerat...
  - kbart 10y ago
    In supermarkets tomatoes are usually sold not ripened fully (for a longer shelve life). Keeping them in a warm, bright place will ripe them more and taste improves slightly.
vermontdevil 10y ago
I used to eat tomato sandwiches made from tomoatoes grown in my parents' backyard. These beefsteak tomatoes were huge and sweet. The store variety are noticeably bland. Going back to the backyard and starting again. I think the hard part is finding the right seed.
samirillian 10y ago
Tomatoes are practically weeds. They grow like crazy, and you can eat heirlooms as sweet or as savory as you like. Sometimes I think I didn't know wealth until I had a cherokee purple straight off the vine. You can practically make sashimi with it. Now I'm just gonna come out and say it: fucking with genes worries me. It only takes one unforeseen toxic externality for the whole thing to turn out very poorly. (dangers of monocropping; turning plants into intellectual property, whatever the hell happened to pugs, etc.) Just know how surprisingly easy it is to grow your own--and do! That's all I'm saying.
- tstactplsignore 10y ago
  >dangers of monocropping Nothing to do with biotechnology or genome editing. In fact both technologies can and will be used to make crops more diverse. >turning plants into intellectual property There are specific plant breeds that are already closely guarded IP. Not to mention, this is like being against software because software patents exist. >whatever the hell happened to pugs Selective breeding? That's what is responsible for every vegetable you have ever eaten, ever, without exception. >Now I'm just gonna come out and say it: fucking with genes worries me. It only takes one unforeseen toxic externality for the whole thing to turn out very poorly "Fucking with genes" is what enabled the agricultural revolution, the green revolution, and is responsible for all of the food we eat today. Now we have the biotechnology and understanding to edit genes in ways that are inherently safer, more targeted, and less random. Are you not concerned that your conclusion (biotechnology is too scary to ever use) is not held by the overwhelminh majority of plant scientists and geneticists? Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-biotechnology?
  - samirillian 10y ago
    > Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-biotechnology. Sure. I'm not strongly anti-biotechnology. On reflection, the two points that really bother me. a) genetic modifications are usually for stuff like "keeping potatoes from bruising because people don't like the look of bruised potatoes." Or "keeping tomatoes flavorful so people can keep mindlessly buying them out of season." They're always fixes that allow the consumer to remain as passive as possible. b) I've never hear a single scientist make a good argument against GMOs. What, like you can't come up with a single possible downside? I think what finally convinced me to vote for Hillary was seeing the best arguments against her, by people who really hated her guts (like, really, the worst you have are dark insinuations?) I want to hear someone creative/knowledgeable come up with their best argument against GMOs. Like, they got hired to find the worst case scenarios. I just feel like I've never heard that argument articulated well. Anyway, there are two possibilities: a) this issue is so amazingly stupid that no informed person would ever be bothered by these practices. b) there are real--if unlikely--toxic externalities to genetic modification, but no informed person wants to share them because they don't want to feed the fire of ignorance. And, yeah, the dismissive tone of scientists I've talked to, coupled with their apparent ignorance, has not reassured me that this conversation is being had in good faith.
ada1981 10y ago
This is perhaps the most hilarious thing I've seen. There are plenty of varieties of delicious tomatoes you can grow or buy.. the idea we need to "reengineer a genetic fix" seems like something the Onion should be running. At our cooperative store we have amazing flavorful tomatoes.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
  You don't understand the purpose. The idea is to re-introduce these traits in lines that are amenable to modern agriculture. Namely, drought/pest/salinity tolerance, firmness and ability to ship, yield, use in marginal soils, etc. etc. I'm all for agricultural alternatives, but modern agriculture obviously plays a huge role in our food production, and will continue to do so for some time.
martinpw 10y ago
Kumatos are pretty flavorful. In the US you can get them at Trader Joe's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumato
- bobcostas55 10y ago
  I tried these once, seemed just as tasteless as any other tomato out of season.
foxhop 10y ago
I learned that its easier and way faster to quarter tomatoes and freeze them, then to can.
- tnmrnis 10y ago
  It might be easier and faster but they will lose a lot of flavour during the freezing. There's a reason you don't refridgerate tomatoes.
  - foxhop 10y ago
    They don't appear to loose their flavor. I use them as ingredients in beans, chili, and sauce. I'm going to freeze way more next year, it turned out amazing. Sure beats loosing 40 of them to spoilage from a glut harvest! : )
diimdeep 10y ago
Cited paper http://science.sciencemag.org.sci-hub.ac/content/355/6323/391 http://science.sciencemag.org.sci-hub.ac/content/355/6323/39...
ericdykstra 10y ago
Tomatoes and chickens and pretty much all American agriculture is bred to maximize profit at every step. This means eschewing things like healthfulness and tastiness in favor of volume of product, heartiness, and low production cost. I highly recommend the book The Dorito Effect to anyone more interested in how the flavors of food have changed over time. Despite the fluffy name, it's a very well-researched and well-written book.
register 10y ago
I eat tomatoes grown by my father who is retired and does this as an hobby. His tomatoes are extremely tasty and satisfying. I really don't miss the need for any genetic fix. Supermarkets tomatoes are commercialized unripe and then ripen by artificial means.
- jamesrcole 10y ago
  Do you think the flavour problems with supermarket tomatoes would be fixed by letting them ripen naturally?
freddealmeida 10y ago
I've been spoiled living in Japan. The tomatoes taste amazing here. Is this more about methods? Do we really need genetic fixes? Couldn't a better process to make better tomatoes be a longer service strategy?

136 points by ust 10y ago

> In the tasting panels, there were noticeable differences in preferences: between men and women, between foodies and nonfoodies, and, perhaps most interesting, between older people and younger people. He recalled one of the students working in his laboratory picking out the supermarket tomato as her favorite in one of the taste tests. People like what they know. But I'm guessing repeated exposure could end up shifting the tastes.

BugsJustFindMe 10y ago
I'm curious to hear how the men/women split fits into the "people like what they know" paradigm. Is the grocery store secretly swapping out my tomatoes but not my partner's?
dkonofalski 10y ago
Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very objective way to test this kind of thing. We know, based on all kinds of testing done in the past, that our tastebuds react more sensitively to tastes that we don't know to protect us from potentially eating foods that are poisonous or rotten. It's the reason why you have to develop a taste for things like bleu cheese and cilantro and why they taste bitter or strong at first. We're "programmed" to like foods that we've tasted before and are used to and that we know are safe to eat. When you introduce a flavor for something that we "know" what it's supposed to taste like, we naturally are averse to that taste. It's the same reason that people develop taste aversions to foods that they've gotten sick from or why people can't drink a liquor that they've had a terrible experience with. Your tastebuds "recognize" that this taste or flavor got you sick last time and prepare your body for it.
- akiselev 10y ago
  Do you have any citations? This all sounds so obvious and logical but so do most other theories in evolutionary psychology and biology. I don't think we have enough evidence to make such strong claims. I developed a taste for spicy food after years of avoiding it like the plague for digestive reasons but only found out after I had a strong craving for Indian food and accidentally got something really spicy. I also can't bring myself to order tortas because I ate one too soon after getting really sick from tacos. Reading the word "tortas" makes me feel nauseous but "tacos" does not and I can eat both without any negative response (once the food is in front of me). These examples are orthogonal to yours but I think they're illustrative of just how complex the interactions are. I don't doubt the adaptations you mentioned are there, just how prelevant they are in a modern agricultural society.
  - dkonofalski 10y ago
    Wikipedia actually has a fairly good overview of the idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion You can find more info on Google Scholar for specific studies and papers.
prawn 10y ago
I think people are often too harsh on supermarket produce. Obviously they factor in time spent during transport, but the growers have ridiculous amounts of experience in what they do. I grow 6-7 different types of tomatoes in my backyard (including heirloom types). Some are good, some varieties are bland. Have had a few supermarket cherry tomatoes recently that have been great, and similar experiences with others. Often I end up picking my own tomatoes before they're perfectly ripe anyway to lessen the chance of birds/bugs/rats beating me to it. Little different to growers picking early for transport. I also grow two different types of strawberries. They're good, but so are those we get in shops.

djsumdog 10y ago

From their website: > The University of Florida has released our first two hybrids. We are in discussions with seed companies about licensing. I hope they allow people to save seeds. They should patent all their source seeds immediately and mark them as open/allowing people to use any without worry of patents. Farmers will need to be careful as always. Any seeds that happen to get cross pollinated with seeds from the big producers (Monsanto, DuPont, etc.) run the risk of paying licensing fees in our current fucked up patenting system (thanks GE).

searine 10y ago
>Any seeds that happen to get cross pollinated You can actually sue your neighbors and/or these companies for geneflow into your heirloom crops. There has never been a recorded lawsuit where a farmer has been sued for unintentional gene flow. Only intentional patent infringement. >(thanks GE). People have been patenting crops for over 100 years. Nobody cared until GMO's came along...
- dkonofalski 10y ago
  This is exactly why I despise the "urban legend" about Monsanto suing the poor, tiny farmer because their Round-Up resistant seeds blew into his crop. The actual story (much like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit) makes a lot more sense when you learn that the farmer not only knew that their seeds were Monsanto's but then used Round-Up on all his other crops so that they would die and only the resistant crops were left over. He then took the seeds from those crops and planted something like 95% of his field with them (which was probably 100% but some of the old plants survived). There was no unintentional wind-blown spreading.
  - throwawaydbfif 10y ago
    I still see a problem with this. If GM crops are capable of being wind blown how does his activity differ at all from someone trying to naturally select for crops with herbicide resistance? Any farmer trying to select for a plant with resistance could accidentally end up reproducing a "patented" plant. I think there's a fundamental problem with patenting things that are self replicating. Given enough time a superior GMO plant could take over a field all by itself with no intervention... Is the land owner/farmer really to blame if this happens? A related problem is that it's difficult/impossible to tell if you're growing a patented seed without expensive tests. As long as the plants are virtually indistinguishable patent enforcement should not be allowed.

quickben 10y ago

There is something wrong with the food industry. When I was growing up, they taught us that we eat veggies because when they are fully mature, all the nutrients are there and good for us. Somehow, they found out how to make them look ready but still not ripe. And now they found out how to screw the taste to taste better. So they will look and taste good, but the nutritive value will be questionable. Waste of research effort. Edit: to the people modding this down: you realize that research will hit the poorest hardest? They can't buy organic tomatoes, they think what they paid for is good nutritive food, except it isn't.

searine 10y ago
Easy to say on a full stomach.
- quickben 10y ago
  That is not the point. The stomach will stay empty, but money will be spent. This is not gmo research, this is screwing the people that can't buy organic food.
  - searine 10y ago
    The problem with food policy is that you simply can't get rid of cheap food. If you get rid of cheap food, even unhealthy cheap food, people starve. So the solution isn't to demonize cheap food. It is to make cheap food better. Adding back the vitamins and nutrients which also impart flavor while keeping the caloric content high is one great way of doing that. Furthermore, in a modern economy with diverse choice, nutrient deficiency is not a concern. Cheap food alone can more than provide the essential vitamins and nutrients. What is more important is delivery raw caloric content, which cheap food excels at. Organic is fresh, luxury food built on a foundation of cheap staples. If you erode the pillars that hold up your palace, it will all come crashing down.
burkaman 10y ago
Why do you think this variety will be less nutritious than "organic" tomatoes?

zZsFBVZ9bjdJd 10y ago

Temple Grandin had some interesting thoughts on how single trait breeding can lead to adverse affects in her discussion on "Rapist Roosters", and how this relates to software[0]. It seems like this is also happening here. Typically when single trait breeding leads to an adverse, undesirable affect (lack of taste), while the selected trait was obtained (in this case, possibly bigger size) breeders don't start from scratch by trying to isolate the desired trait without obtaining the undesirable trait. Instead, as in software, the breeders iterate by trying to remove the negative trait, complicating the hybrids and possibly more unknown adverse traits. It seems like it might be wise to start from scratch in some cases and keep it simple, rather then make hybrid species whose lineage can be difficult to trace. [0]: https://books.google.com/books?id=aMVmhqpILOAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=aMVmhqpILOAC&printsec=fron... page 70

gmarx 10y ago
That explains why most every dog breed that competes on looks and becomes popular gets messed up. Also American breeders have this odd habit of taking large dogs that should be about 80 lbs and breeding them into behemoths, usually to the detriment of the dogs
- feld 10y ago
  Russians did this with the German Giant Schnauzer and created the Black Russian Terrier. Their Giants are also significantly larger than the ones with German heritage, but both are recognized as the same breed.
  - gmarx 10y ago
    wasn't aware of this but will look it up.
- appleiigs 10y ago
  You are being too nice calling it a habit. Breeding behemoths is what sells. People will pay a premium for the pick of the litter (which is code words for "the biggest"). I don't have any problems with dog breeding per se, but the market forces are seriously broken. EDIT: In addition to pushing for bigger dogs, it's also profitable to drive down food and vet costs. Kennel clubs like the American Kennel Club are scams. The kennel clubs just receive fees for processing paper. They don't inspect breeders. They don't care if you're a puppy mill. As long as you pay your fees, you will get your papers.

Eric_WVGG 10y ago

There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn, which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat flavorless, unseasonal ones. pro tip: Use canned tomatoes instead of fresh whenever out of season; canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping, and seal at the peak of freshness.

wyager 10y ago
> canners use varieties that have not been ruined for shipping This explains why I love canned/boxed tomatoes, but hate the slimy, bland sliced ones they put on sandwiches.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  If a sliced tomato is slimy on your sandwich, that's not a variety problem, it's a preparation problem (in that application, tomatoes, regardless of variety, should be seeded.) Bland may be a variety problem, though it can also be a poor handling problem.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    If there is no flavor, you are left only with texture.
- weaksauce 10y ago
  A home grown heirloom tomato is amazing. The stuff that they try to pass off in the stores as a tomato is awful.
debacle 10y ago
You can make popcorn in a saucepan, it's easy and fun. Gourmet popcorn (different kernels) also tastes far better even than the bulk kernels you can find in the store.

tetraodonpuffer 10y ago

amazing tasting tomatoes still exist around the world, if you are on vacation in Italy in the summer buy some "cuor di bue" tomatoes at the supermarket and they will be amazing. Of course if you happen to know somebody that grows them and you can pick them off the plant they will be even more incredible, but even the "normal" supermarket ones are going to be orders of magnitude tastier than anything you can find in North America in my experience. The issue is of course that said tomatoes are available only for a short period of time, so if you are having a craving for them in December, you are out of luck, but that's the way it's always been, the summer ones are just as tasty now as they've always been so there's no need to put taste "back" into them.

oppositelock 10y ago
Amazing tasting tomatoes are also very easy to grow yourself. Tomatoes are a hardy vine, and hard to mess up, you just need plenty of sunshine. There are seeds available for many heirloom varieties, and when you grow them yourself, you pick them at the peak of freshness. I particularly like the Early Girl variety. It's a bummer that you can't re-plant the seeds from most tomatoes, which are F1 hybrids, so the next generation is really terrible. I've been growing them for years, even when I was living in apartments with no garden space at all. For really tight space, something like an EarthBox works great - you get very high plant density. I had one of those on a balcony barely bigger than the box itself, and I still had a few fresh tomatoes every week! Here in the SF bay area, you can sprout the seeds in late Feb, early March, and you've got edible tomatoes by mid may, all the way through October. I'm pretty sure I can build a cheap glass house and have them year round, now that I have back yard.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  This- very much this. I used to put a tomato cage in a large pot and grow them on my front porch - though I had a shorter growing season. I could put them out in Mid-to-late May. If it was the right variety, they'd keep producing until the plant was killed by frost and cold. Soil, however, will affect your taste. I really miss good summer tomatoes from Indiana - I knew folks that moved down south and complained about the difference in taste, even when they grew them.

pbosko 10y ago

You should try importing tomatoes from Eastern Europe. They are still very tasty over here. :)

4ad 10y ago
I was born in Romania, visited there less than two weeks ago, and now I am in the United States. This is simply not true at all. Tomatoes in Romania taste exactly the same as tomatoes in the United States (e.g. bland). Even tomatoes bought from farmer's market are not much better because they don't use the tastiest varieties of tomatoes.
- mclion 10y ago
  In the winter tomatoes have no taste. Real tomatoes are a summer plant. Ask your parents. ;)
  - 4ad 10y ago
    I don't have to ask anybody, I have lived in Romania for 21 years. Summer tomatoes that are not specially sourced are just as crappy in Romania, Austria, and United States. Slightly better at the farmer's market though. I have also lived in rural Romania for many months at a time, in the summer, for over a decade, and have grown tomatoes myself. The only time I ever got good tomatoes was at some tomato faire, or some special organic farmer's market (in the summer, of course). And every time it was outside Romania. The idea that food in Romania is somehow unaffected by global economic development is a myth that has to die.
appleiigs 10y ago
I was in Serbia recently. The tomatoes and cucumbers blew my mind. In the city or in the country, all were great. Seemed like every dinner started with fresh bread and a bowl of tomatoes and cucumbers. I didn't need the main dish, until they put slow cooked lamb or pork in front of me.
kbart 10y ago
That's only because more people have summer houses there (it's a tradition in most/all Eastern Europe) and grow vegetables themselves, so it's easier to come by naturally grown ones. Buy generic tomatoes from a supermarket, and the they'll taste bland as everywhere.

baursak 10y ago

There's a book called "Tomatoland" that discusses the tomato industry and how tomatoes were selected not for taste, but to last through the journey to the supermarket and shelf life once there. Interview with author and excerpt are here: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-destroyed-the-tasty-tomato http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farmi...

anotheryou 10y ago

I like the story of the artificial banana flavour to be like the old tasteful bananas there where. I guess it's not true, but the story of the banana is simmilar to the fate of the tomato, if not worse, because banas have no seeds, are all clones and the old kind of banana got mostly wiped by some fungi.

skykooler 10y ago
And there is a new breed of the same fungus that is attacking the modern banana - the Cavendish - and as of yet, there is no replacement banana that we can substitute if the Cavendish gets wiped out.
- Nursie 10y ago
  There are loads of awesome bananas out there, they just either aren't so soft and sweet or don't ship well. Within the last year I have had lady-finger, apple and Fe'i bananas and various plantains. All delicious! I want to try red and blue/ice-cream but am having trouble finding them in the UK or on my travels...
  - skykooler 10y ago
    But, as you say, none of these are a good substitute Cavendish, though they may be fine bananas in their own right.
    - Nursie 10y ago
      Apple and lady-finger I have had in the UK, seemed to ship OK and tasted good. They were much smaller. Red Daccas (the red banana) are commercially available in some countries like Australia, but probably because they grow them. I think commercial development of a "Cavendish Replacement" ought to be a real plan to diversify the banana business. Monocultures are inherently troublesome. If we could lose this meme in the Europe and North America that there is such a thing as "a banana" and start eating different varieties, I think that would be great.

dkersten 10y ago

Over the decades, taste has drained out of supermarket tomatoes. And people say that organic doesn't affect flavour! (Ok ok I know, it doesn't have to be organic) I grew my own tomatoes a few years ago and they had a very strong tomato flavour. Delicious!

cylinder 10y ago

Couldn't they just go overseas? I think it's only in America where produce tastes like cardboard.

gwern 10y ago
The overseas tomatoes don't ship or grow any better, and consumers are demonstrably unwilling to pay for them. The point of this research is that by doing the expensive rare difficult phenotyping & genotyping of flavor of all the varieties they used (domestic commercial, heirloom, even wild), you can get a polygenic score which predicts flavor without having to grow & feed to a taste panel; and with this polygenic score, you can then do molecular breeding piggybacking on top of normal breeding, to neutralize the damage. For the most part, there's no inherent biological reason that a robust fast-growing tomato has to taste bad because the taste chemicals represent such a physically minute part of the tomatoes; it's just that with zero selection for taste, the taste gradually suffers over generations.
open-source-ux 10y ago
> Couldn't they just go overseas? I think it's only in America where produce tastes like cardboard. No, tomatoes taste pretty bland in many European countries too. The Netherlands and Spain are the two top tomato-exporting countries in Europe. As you can probably guess, the sunny climes of the Netherlands aren't exactly conducive to ripe, flavourful tomatoes. But large-scale industrial tomato farming is conducive to achieving cheap prices that consumers expect at the supermarket.
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
Oh, this is definitely false. I'm in Norway, and I'm loathe to buy fresh tomatoes because they are usually mushy. It is no wonder my Norwegian spouse rarely likes fresh tomatoes. I do have better luck buying small cherry or grape tomatoes, but when possible I use the tinned tomatoes.

Ericson2314 10y ago

This is good stuff, but I wish so much effort wasn't spent into making a single breed. If you have the greenhouse space (granted I see this is exponential), and some variation is a coin flip whether its better or not, please peruse both! I would love 5 varieties of hardy tomato each testing better in its own way!

shmerl 10y ago

> I don’t want people to not eat a great-tasting tomato because they’re scared of it And we also don't want anyone to claim exclusive rights on producing such tomatoes, because some moron came up with the idea to patent genes.

rch 10y ago
Exactly, and there are plenty of existing varieties that taste as they should. The random colors and shapes are part of the fun. I'd much rather have one heirloom than 4 identical red tomatoes still on a vine sold in a plastic box.
- foxhop 10y ago
  A heirloom has nothing to do with it, that just means its seeds create fruit true to the parent fruit. I have taken some really tasty hybrids and grew them back down into a heirloom of sorts. I've started to grow tomatoes 5 years ago. http://unturf2.tumblr.com http://unturf2.tumblr.com That said, yeah we don't need to engineer the flavor back into tomatoes, we need people to vote with their wallets.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
Uh, plant patents are one of only a handful of patent varieties (in the US), and they exist specifically to cover new breeds. This is very much a patent-able breed, and much more easily enforced because it's a well characterized bit of law, whereas the 'gene patents' only got by on a technicality of requiring cDNA intermediates.
- shmerl 10y ago
  Patents on living beings in general are as ridiculous as patents on genes.

david-given 10y ago

If you refrigerate tomatoes, they go bland --- the cold temperatures kills some of the flavour. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-refrigerator.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-...

balfirevic 10y ago
Did they actually test for taste in that research? This guy has and he disagrees: http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-store-tomatoes.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-store-tomatoes.htm... http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/tomato-taste-test-refrigerate-tomatoes-furtther-testing-results.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/tomato-taste-test-refrige... http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-refrigerate-tomatoes.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-refrigerat...
- kbart 10y ago
  In supermarkets tomatoes are usually sold not ripened fully (for a longer shelve life). Keeping them in a warm, bright place will ripe them more and taste improves slightly.

vermontdevil 10y ago

I used to eat tomato sandwiches made from tomoatoes grown in my parents' backyard. These beefsteak tomatoes were huge and sweet. The store variety are noticeably bland. Going back to the backyard and starting again. I think the hard part is finding the right seed.

samirillian 10y ago

Tomatoes are practically weeds. They grow like crazy, and you can eat heirlooms as sweet or as savory as you like. Sometimes I think I didn't know wealth until I had a cherokee purple straight off the vine. You can practically make sashimi with it. Now I'm just gonna come out and say it: fucking with genes worries me. It only takes one unforeseen toxic externality for the whole thing to turn out very poorly. (dangers of monocropping; turning plants into intellectual property, whatever the hell happened to pugs, etc.) Just know how surprisingly easy it is to grow your own--and do! That's all I'm saying.

tstactplsignore 10y ago
>dangers of monocropping Nothing to do with biotechnology or genome editing. In fact both technologies can and will be used to make crops more diverse. >turning plants into intellectual property There are specific plant breeds that are already closely guarded IP. Not to mention, this is like being against software because software patents exist. >whatever the hell happened to pugs Selective breeding? That's what is responsible for every vegetable you have ever eaten, ever, without exception. >Now I'm just gonna come out and say it: fucking with genes worries me. It only takes one unforeseen toxic externality for the whole thing to turn out very poorly "Fucking with genes" is what enabled the agricultural revolution, the green revolution, and is responsible for all of the food we eat today. Now we have the biotechnology and understanding to edit genes in ways that are inherently safer, more targeted, and less random. Are you not concerned that your conclusion (biotechnology is too scary to ever use) is not held by the overwhelminh majority of plant scientists and geneticists? Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-biotechnology?
- samirillian 10y ago
  > Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-biotechnology. Sure. I'm not strongly anti-biotechnology. On reflection, the two points that really bother me. a) genetic modifications are usually for stuff like "keeping potatoes from bruising because people don't like the look of bruised potatoes." Or "keeping tomatoes flavorful so people can keep mindlessly buying them out of season." They're always fixes that allow the consumer to remain as passive as possible. b) I've never hear a single scientist make a good argument against GMOs. What, like you can't come up with a single possible downside? I think what finally convinced me to vote for Hillary was seeing the best arguments against her, by people who really hated her guts (like, really, the worst you have are dark insinuations?) I want to hear someone creative/knowledgeable come up with their best argument against GMOs. Like, they got hired to find the worst case scenarios. I just feel like I've never heard that argument articulated well. Anyway, there are two possibilities: a) this issue is so amazingly stupid that no informed person would ever be bothered by these practices. b) there are real--if unlikely--toxic externalities to genetic modification, but no informed person wants to share them because they don't want to feed the fire of ignorance. And, yeah, the dismissive tone of scientists I've talked to, coupled with their apparent ignorance, has not reassured me that this conversation is being had in good faith.

ada1981 10y ago

This is perhaps the most hilarious thing I've seen. There are plenty of varieties of delicious tomatoes you can grow or buy.. the idea we need to "reengineer a genetic fix" seems like something the Onion should be running. At our cooperative store we have amazing flavorful tomatoes.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
You don't understand the purpose. The idea is to re-introduce these traits in lines that are amenable to modern agriculture. Namely, drought/pest/salinity tolerance, firmness and ability to ship, yield, use in marginal soils, etc. etc. I'm all for agricultural alternatives, but modern agriculture obviously plays a huge role in our food production, and will continue to do so for some time.

martinpw 10y ago

Kumatos are pretty flavorful. In the US you can get them at Trader Joe's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumato

bobcostas55 10y ago
I tried these once, seemed just as tasteless as any other tomato out of season.

foxhop 10y ago

I learned that its easier and way faster to quarter tomatoes and freeze them, then to can.

tnmrnis 10y ago
It might be easier and faster but they will lose a lot of flavour during the freezing. There's a reason you don't refridgerate tomatoes.
- foxhop 10y ago
  They don't appear to loose their flavor. I use them as ingredients in beans, chili, and sauce. I'm going to freeze way more next year, it turned out amazing. Sure beats loosing 40 of them to spoilage from a glut harvest! : )

diimdeep 10y ago

Cited paper http://science.sciencemag.org.sci-hub.ac/content/355/6323/391 http://science.sciencemag.org.sci-hub.ac/content/355/6323/39...

ericdykstra 10y ago

Tomatoes and chickens and pretty much all American agriculture is bred to maximize profit at every step. This means eschewing things like healthfulness and tastiness in favor of volume of product, heartiness, and low production cost. I highly recommend the book The Dorito Effect to anyone more interested in how the flavors of food have changed over time. Despite the fluffy name, it's a very well-researched and well-written book.

I eat tomatoes grown by my father who is retired and does this as an hobby. His tomatoes are extremely tasty and satisfying. I really don't miss the need for any genetic fix. Supermarkets tomatoes are commercialized unripe and then ripen by artificial means.

jamesrcole 10y ago
Do you think the flavour problems with supermarket tomatoes would be fixed by letting them ripen naturally?

freddealmeida 10y ago

I've been spoiled living in Japan. The tomatoes taste amazing here. Is this more about methods? Do we really need genetic fixes? Couldn't a better process to make better tomatoes be a longer service strategy?