In order to get not only the best tasting food but take advantage of all the nutrients it has to offer, you need to look at the quality of farming procedures in terms of pesticide and fertilizer which we saw in the precedent blog, , but also at the distance where the food is coming from and how long it took to get to your home.
This example is from a fresh produce but could be applied to any food or herbs.
If you’ve ever tried a truly fresh tomato, then you know it is bursting with flavour and succulent with juices, by comparison, the tomatoes you get in the supermarket just don't taste and feel the same.
There are many factors to blame for the bland taste of supermarket tomatoes, such as the genetic mutations that farmers encourage to grow more perfect-looking tomatoes, but sacrificed taste.
A big part of the reason that supermarket tomatoes are so flavourless is because of the long and intensive process required to get them from the farm to the supermarket.
Here we will look at exactly what steps are involved in getting a tomato from the field to your supermarket, including how they are grown, processed, and stored.
How tomatoes are grown
As many people are already aware, supermarket produce is grown far away. One study called “Food, Fuel, and Freeways” looked at produce at Chicago’s Terminal Market, which is the site where brokers and wholesalers buy produce for supermarkets and restaurants.
They found that tomatoes travelled 1,369 miles to get to these retailers. By comparison, farmer’s market tomatoes only travelled approximately 117 miles.
This has an obvious impact on the produce’s freshness and also on the environment because of all the energy which goes into transportation.
It isn’t just the distance travelled which affects tomatoes. Supermarket tomatoes are grown in the regions where they can experience the most growth, yet this doesn’t always mean the region has the best-growing environment.
In the winter, as many as 90% of tomatoes are from Florida. The reason Florida is chosen for growing tomatoes is that it has a warm winter. However, that is about the only thing Florida has to offer as far as growing conditions. There are many problems with growing tomatoes in Florida. Some of these issues include:
- There is no nitrogen in the soil so tomatoes wouldn’t be able to grow there at all if it weren’t for the massive amounts of fertilizers which are added to fields.
- The soil is very sandy and won’t retain water, so farmers have to continuously water the tomatoes to keep crops alive.
- The climate is terrible for tomatoes. As Floridians know, the weather can go from a hot 80 degrees to a frost very quickly. This drastic temperature change affects the tomatoes’ development and taste.
- Insects, fungi, and disease regularly attack Florida’s tomatoes.
The only way tomatoes can survive in Florida is by drenching the crops with fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals. The USDA Pesticide Program found traces of more than 35 pesticides on supermarket tomatoes. The official Florida handbook for tomato growers lists 110 different pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides which can be used on tomatoes.
The Processing Time for Tomatoes
When fruit becomes ripe, it goes through changes which cause it to become sweeter, less bitter, and softer.
For mass growers though, ripening is a bad thing. The ripe fruit is hard to transport and will rot quickly. To prevent losses, tomato farmers will pick the fruit while it is still green.
Yet even green tomatoes will start to ripen and deteriorate, so farmers have found ways of delaying the ripening. One method is to keep the tomatoes refrigerated and in atmosphere-control environments until they are ready to be distributed to supermarkets.
A more worrisome method is genetic modifications. The genes of the tomato are modified so that ethylene (which is a natural chemical that triggers ripening) isn’t produced.
One type of GMO tomato produced in India was able to stay fresh-looking 45 days in room temperature storage, while the non-GMO tomatoes had rotted by that time!
There are numerous adverse health effects associated with eating GMOs, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of all the potential risks yet.
If tomatoes are picked while they are green and unripe, how come they look red and ripe in the supermarket?
Once the tomatoes reach the warehouse, they are sprayed with ethylene to trigger the ripening process. However, artificial ripening doesn’t compare to the natural ripening process which would occur on the vine. The tomatoes never have a chance to develop their full flavour.
This is just one more reason that supermarket tomatoes are so tasteless. Even growers admit that the tomatoes don’t taste as good. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) has this to say about processing methods:
“Normally, farmers pick their products while they are still green. The ripening process is then induced by spraying the fruits or vegetables with ethylene gas when they reach their destination. For long hauls, fruits and vegetables are refrigerated to prevent damage and delay their ripening.
However, there are drawbacks to these post-harvest practices. Fruits that have been harvested prematurely may result in poor taste and quality despite appearing as fully ripened ones. Fruits transported for long periods under refrigeration also tend to lose their quality.”
Unfortunately for consumers, growers don’t seem to mind that their tomatoes taste like cardboard.
As one tomato farmer honestly admitted, “I don’t get paid a single cent for flavour!”
How Tomatoes are Stored
Once harvested, the green, unripe tomatoes are put on trucks and taken to large distribution centres. There, the tomatoes will get sprayed with ethylene to trigger ripening before they get picked up by retailers. According to recommendations published by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), tomatoes can be stored for 2–3 weeks before going to the supermarket!
To prevent the tomatoes from going bad before they are picked up, various methods are used to preserve them including:
- Refrigeration
- Applying fungicides
- Applying sanitizers
Refrigeration isn’t a dangerous method, but it does cause chemical changes in the tomatoes which will affect the taste and texture.
As one French study proved, not only will refrigeration prevent the development of flavour, but it can break down existing flavour (which the green tomatoes probably didn’t have much of, to begin with).
The fungicides and sanitizers are applied to kill organisms on the tomatoes which could cause deterioration, and we know that ingesting these can be harmful to humans — we just don’t know how harmful because the effects haven’t been thoroughly studied.
The long storage time also affects the nutritional value of tomatoes. Since the tomatoes weren’t able to ripen naturally, some nutrients never get the chance to develop.
The nutrients which do develop aren’t always stable. For example, antioxidants (which are plentiful in a truly-fresh tomato) break down quickly. One study found that vitamin C in tomatoes dropped from 3.30mg/ml-1 at day 1 of storage to ZERO after 2 weeks of storage!
What can you do?
Buying tomatoes from your local farmer’s market might seem like a hassle and, yes, they will probably cost more than at the supermarket. However, it is worth the extra effort and cost to get a tomato which has nutritional value and flavour and isn’t loaded with so many chemicals.
Note:
The Journey: How a Tomato Gets from the Farm to the Supermarket, Bjorn Dawson