How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

Re:How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods by parineum on Thursday October 16, 2025 @03:01PM (#45609350)

Tomatoes are, imo, the prime example and possibly the only one of popular produce, of bland produce in the US.

I think it's a combination of having them year-round (they are picked before they ripen for shipping) and the emphasis on color/look being very high. A good tomato tastes much better than most store bought to the point I didn't know I liked tomatoes until I had a garden grown one. Now I eat store bought as well but it's not the same.

I don't find most other fruits/veggies to suffer nearly as much from that though.

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Re:How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods by pirates on Thursday October 16, 2025 @04:45PM (#45610466)

Really? I grow blueberries, strawberries, several cultivars of hot/sweet peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, garlic, bush beans, and several different herbs, and without fail ALL of them taste way better than the store bought version. That isn’t to say the store versions are always bad, but you know the home grown ones every single time.

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Re:How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods by parineum on Friday October 17, 2025 @03:05AM (#45614028)

Tomatoes are different though. I barely knew what a tomato tasted like. I didn't like them because they were tasteless (when combined with sny other food) and slimy.

It isn't that homegrown tomatoes just taste better, they actually have taste.

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Re:How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods by tptacek on Thursday October 16, 2025 @06:46PM (#45611604)

I mean, in most of the US, they're an extremely seasonal product. If you go to Pete's (a commodity big-box grocery chain in Chicago) in August, you'll get very good tomatoes. There's basically nowhere you're going to go to get very good fresh tomatoes (maybe cherry tomatoes) in April.

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