Germans are not willing to pay money for food. They expect food to be cheap, they don't care too much about the quality of it (in general, of course). Germans sometimes joke about themselves that some of them will spend +1000€ for a barbecue without a problem, yet they'll put the cheapest 0.50€ sausages on it.

I could not disagree more. I actually never met a german who joked about being cheap with food. Quite the opposite is true.

Also the per capita household expenditure on food[1] is above the average of European countries. Higher for example than in the UK or Austria, which have comparable incomes.

[1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/per-capita-hou...

I live in Berlin and used to live in Vienna - I hear such jokes all the time, that Berliners will eat just about anything as long as it's cheap and won't immediately kill you.

You don't have to go far to see the difference either: Austrians and south Germans are already much more "food-oriented" than north Germans, so this may be a regional thing rather than encompassing the whole country.

I live in Berlin, too. But I never heard someone joking about deliberately eating cheap and/or bad food. Who would do this anyway?

I guess you're talking about various prejudices of others. But that's a whole other topic.

The joke isn't by Germans saying they eat cheap food but by other immigrants saying it about Berliners/Germans (i lived for a much longer in Austria and never heard this said about Austrians).

I think the locals wouldn't joke about themselves that way cause to them the way they are is just "normal".

And surely you've heard Berliners say that Berlin's local food tradition is the Döner (i.e. there is no "local food")? I guarantee you no Bavarian or Austrian would say that about their own food tradition.

(And BTW I have no ill will towards Berlin or Berliners, I think it's one of the best places in the world to live in)

I disagree. I have grown up in Poland, in 70-ties and 80-ties. We were agricultural but poor country with communist economy. The meat - ham and sausage were rationed, so were sugar. Some of largest strikes in 1976 broke out when government attempted to raise the regulated price of sugar. My mom's salary equalled to 8 USD per month at black market exchange rates.

But the quality of basic food stuff was amazing. The real black bread with honey (razowiec) at every shop, good white bread, fresh milk delivered to your door by 6am every morning, cheese, cottage cheese, butter, potatoes, tomatoes, apples. Most people were first generation city dwellers and they knew how to select good potatoes and tomatoes. And it was all dirt cheap.

Now tomatoes - imported or grown in Poland are tasteless and potatoes are just a commodity - you cannot find any tasty variations. Sausages are mostly disgusting and unhealthy - few years ago it had been discovered that multiple companies are using chemical salt (for de-icing roads in winter) in sausages. Ham is mostly water.

The comparable black bread, good cheese, real sausages etc. one can buy in fancy, hipster, organic shops but at prohibitive prices. Prices that lower class cannot afford.

The income levels in dollar term over last 30 years had grown expotenially in Poland, farms are heavily subsidies also through EU CAP.

So how can one explain that the economy cannot deliver relatively cheap and tasty basic food products (at much higher profit margins as the consumers are now more wealthy and more health conscious) - a task that ineffective, communist economy fulfilled with relative ease.

> So how can one explain that the economy cannot deliver relatively cheap and tasty basic food products (at much higher profit margins as the consumers are now more wealthy and more health conscious) - a task that ineffective, communist economy fulfilled with relative ease.

That's pretty simple: Poland is now importing a lot of stuff that it used to grow at home. And since Poland is not the wealthiest country it doesn't get the high priced quality stuff.

A lot of stuff that worked under communism does not work equally well under capitalism until a long period of leveling has passed. And on that front Poland has done exceptionally well compared to some of the alternatives, even so there is still a long way to go.

Incidentally, I lived in Poland before the wall fell, and of course what you should add to your story is that if tomatoes were available they tasted better, but they really weren't available all that often.

Well market supposed to be self-regulating automata aiming at discovery of optimal price at maximum benefit to the consumers. And it is clearly not working like that - both price and quality benefits are nowhere to be fund.

Isn't over 30 years of market leveling enough in case of tomatoes? If the choice is between growing tasteless tomatoes or importing similarly tasteless tomatoes then I am under impression that market isn't working well in that case. At least not for a consumer.

If you are telling me that growing tasty tomatoes at large scale is absolutely impossible under capitalism then I will cry "Komuno wróć" :)

The article that started this discussion is about super modern technology used in farming. It reminds me of old joke about modern farming in USSR - they plow with tractors, they sow with airplanes and they watching bread on TV.

Agriculture is not based on capitalism within the EU. The rate of funds for countries distort the market. It is more similar to the soviet model: this country does heavy industry, this one will deliver timber…

As a Belgian, I'd happily pay x4 to x5 the price of the average tomato you can buy in the supermarket here. But I can't. There's an 80% chance tomatoes are tasteless, and a 20% chance they're amazing. I want amazing tomatoes, every single time. :(

You can learn how to tell them apart if you want. Stepdad was a greengrocer so to me this is second nature but when looking for tomatoes take the smaller ones and the darker ones. They're most likely to be the ones that taste better, even when you pick them from a batch. People instinctively seem to go for the brighter and larger fruits but those are almost always the bland ones.

In my experience smell is the best indicator. You want your fruit to smell like fruit. If it has no smell it doesn't have any flavor either.

Smell and taste are so intricately related that loss of the sense of smell usually translates into a significant loss of the sense of taste so you are absolutely right. But smelling the produce before buying is considered pretty bad form where I live.

I find this really interesting, where in the world would it be considered bad form to sniff a tomatoe before purchasing?

Well, here in NL it certainly would if you went through a crate of tomatoes at the local supermarket and smelled all of them one-by-one.

You've got two nostrils, so sniff them two at time and take half as long.

That got me laughing but being the serious kind I am now wondering if we're wired up in such a way that if one tomato is bland and the other is rich in smell that we can tell the two apart reliably enough to know which is which?

I always think of us as having two eyes, two ears for stereo vision and sound but never think of us as having 'two noses' to determine the direction of a small or two different smells at the same time.

I live in Amsterdam but I always try how strawberries smell before buying. And in my experience they smell the same if they come from true same batch so I only need to try once.

> But smelling the produce before buying is considered pretty bad form where I live.

Doing that in supermarkets here is also looked upon as a bit weird. But I don't care, I prefer to look weird and eat the best tomatoes ;)

The tomatoes themselves don't have a strong smell, though the vines do.

Thanks -- going to put this to the test next time I go shopping!

It's a bit more work and other people might get annoyed with you for rejecting 80% of the produce but it is worth it. Good luck!

Buy this type of cherry tomato, they're nice and still relatively affordable: http://rooi.versuit.nl/media/catalog/product/cache/6/image/9...

They won't beat summer sun grown tomatoes in warmer climates, but they're available all year round.

A bit of sugar and a bit of acidity can boost the flavor of sub-par tomatoes, for example for a sauce.

My favourites, I eat tons of them, from Albert Heijn (common Dutch supermarket). But they're better in the summer, if I'm not wrong.

The Albert Heijn Song

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2yno1z

Refrigerating tomatoes kills the flavor and the nutrients, so like all fruits and vegetables they are best consumed 'in season'.

Albert Heijn tomatoes are terrible. Actually most of the fruit in AH is terrible. Ironically it's also the most expensive.

AH Tasty Tom are pretty decent too.

Tasty Tom is very nice, but they are 2.5x more expensive than these.

Two suggestions:

- smell them. Smell is part of flavor and also correlates with the other parts of flavor. Odorless tomatoes are 90% of the time tasteless

- choose tomatoes which are still attached to a part of the plant when possible. They keep their flavor a bit longer.

"quality" is a subjective term. You can optimise a tomato for color, flavour, longevity, size (automated picking), and several other parameters. The Dutch tomato industry is very good at optimising for what the market demands, that's how it got to be so big. The market apparently demands the flavourless 'wasserbomben', I don't see a reason to put blame at the producers. If the market would demand something else I have no doubt the Dutch tomato industry would be able to provide it (Dutch supermarkets typically sell half a dozen varieties).