There's one easy proove, anything grown the way you describe taste like nothing compared to an healthy plant. Quality farming is not about volume or look but the actual quality of the produce.

I wouldn't call what you say science at all. As soon as you state that you know everything and that someone who disagrees is anti-science is just plain arrogance, not science. If you're really interested in science though, please read the huge amount of research on soil and plant that has been done since the 1950's so that you catch up at least....

Edit: Forgot to mention something, soil is not only for plants, there's a whole ecosystem that depends on it and need to be taken into account

Don't know about nutrients though, since I have no real means to check for that.

So it seems, at least for some plants it is possible to selectively breed them over long times to make them adapt to greenhouse/hydroponics/etc without losing their taste.

And I remember the real taste of berries, because I picked them in the wild in forests in my youth, and sometimes, though much less often even now.

That's absolutely not true, it's been tested by thousands of people and you can try it yourself. Taste is affected by variety and ripeness, waay before it has anything to do with the soil.

Do your study in the south of italia in the summer for a fair fight.

I'm not talking about eating for pleasure, but you can definitely taste that something is wrong with industrially grown veggies and fruits (and the same apply for animal farming).

Soil biology is no "magic" though.

> Now of course, there is a whole organic and craft market segment for people who disagree

It's almost as if you were suggesting that organic regenerative ag is based on some sort of non-scientific cult but that's not really the case.

From an agricultural stand point not necessarily from a consumers who are passionate about it perspective, there's a huge amount of culty anti science.

https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/SAG-16

I would say that’s more than just chemistry, unless you mean chemistry in a sense that’s so general the statement becomes a tautology.

However, it results in a tomato that - while it looks like a normal tomato - the sugars and other flavours don't develop in the same way, rendering it bland.

If you want to buy tomatoes that taste good, you can get them from a farmers market and they will taste a lot better - even if grown in the same soil with the same techniques as the supermarket tomatoes. Alternatively canned/frozen/preserved tomatoes tend to be made with naturally ripened tomatoes. Obviously you can't really used those tomatoes the same way you'd use a raw tomato, though.

This isn't specific to tomatoes, many commercial fruits and veggies are picked before they're ripe.

And honestly I met so many farmers that have no idea what tomatoes should taste like it's not even funny. Dining at their table, I hear them rejoice the produce in their plate is so good while I cringe because they feels like clown noses compared to the real thing.

Just like people can't fathom that we used to have bird migrations that cover the entire sky, people don't realize what we have lost with food. And they think they do, they think you are some kind of bragging posh to tell them that that's not supposed to be like this.

But I ate strawberries from my mother in law garden yesterday. It felt like eating sweets.

I haven't eaten some like that for 20 years, and I'm a very picky buyer.

Her soil is full of life.

Fruits and vegetable have been selected for being awesome for centuries. If you treat them well, you will not want to eat a kit kat instead.

But I don't blame the kids that do: currently, the kit kat tastes way better that whatever they have for lunch.

And the message you are replying to is correct, supermarket tomatoes are different variety, farmers get paid for mass, not for taste.

Supermarkets have giant charts that determine shape, roundness, and colour of tomato. They will buy perfectly round, red tomato that tastes like water. They will not buy an ugly but tasty tomato from a farmer.

The variety matters, but that's not the end of the story.