Science of Cooking

Appearance is part of it, but shelf-stability is HUGE. Heirloom tomatoes for instance are so delicate; even if they survive harvest and transport (challenging enough when done by hand, even more so if automated) they can easily get damaged during shelving, customer handling, checkout and bagging, transport home, placement on a counter... More often than not by the time the consumer actually goes to eat it the tomato is covered in bruises and splits (and if the injuries are more than a day old, very likely mold as well). That creates a lose-lose scenario where the customer feels ripped off because their (usually very expensive!) produce went bad before they could eat it, leading to the producers likely losing future business from said unhappy customer.

I think the article hits the nail on the head: this new line of jalapenos is great for processors and therefore will almost certainly stick around, so it's important for other consumers to demand labeling of new vs more traditional jalapenos and the stocking of both at suppliers and grocery stores. Going back to the tomato example, I love heirlooms but still buy more recently-bred tomatoes for certain uses (e.g. a recipe I won't be making for a few days). Plus tomatoes wouldn't be available year-round had not varieties that handle transport and storage better been developed.

As always, for the best quality produce the ranking goes: grow it yourself > buy it direct from a farmer > buy it from a retailer that sources locally > buy it from a retailer that does not source locally.

Do people prefer pretty over tasty that much?

You can't taste the produce, so you have to use something else to determine tastiness. As a result, produce producers (heh) try their best to compete against each other based on looks. Everything else falls to the wayside as they compete for more sales until you get to where we are today, terrible taste but impeccable looks.

It's why Red Delicious apples are disgusting, tomatoes are flavorless, and Jalapeño Peppers aren't spicy. Looks are the only thing to compete over at a grocery store.

I was surprised at how delicious home grown tomatoes are as well. But even if a market started offering tasty ones it'd be hard to sell, at least at first. Like "no these aren't a new variety but we grew them for taste instead of commercialism, we promise. And btw all our other tomatoes are bland." It's doable but there'd be an adjustment period I think

I'm convinced that a significant fraction of people don't really taste food.

I hate raspberries, except for the ones I found in the boundary waters growing wild. I think that is the flavor every iteration raspberry is trying to match and failing miserably.

hating strawberries his whole life until he ate one right off the bush

As a country kid, me and my cousins were worse than rabbits were on the strawberries in gardens. We'd legitimately sit down and eat every strawberry then move to the next plant. Eventually they showed us how to distinguish blackberries and they just turned us lose on the woods.

Everything is better right off the plant.

But it's not just looks in the store, they're breeding them for shelf life.

A garden tomato would be inedible by the time it got to your local supermarket in the middle of January.

The biggest part of gardening for food, was canning everything so you had some all year. So you have to factor in that store bought produce is fresh year round. You're not getting that without an indoor year round garden and a lot more work.

A lot of it has to do when the produce is picked. Things that fully ripen on the plant will be better than the store bought stuff that by necessity has to be picked under-ripe, so that it will be ripe by the time it makes it to store shelves.

The real problem is that you can't taste test your food before you buy it, so, your only indicators are visual until after its in your house, generally.

People? No.

Mindless consumers? Yes.

Regarding vegetables: I don't know where you live, but at least in the United States there are tons of online seed stores selling heirloom produce, and a growing number selling open pollinated varieties at that. There are also quite a number of hybrids that aren't bred for industrial agriculture. I'm in a somewhat odd climate in the Pacific Northwest so I try to source seed locally because the varieties they sell often perform better here, but even then I have my choice of numerous seed companies.

Regarding fruit: agreed, fruit seeds can be really hard to source; most fruit is sold by the plant instead and variety options are extremely limited compared to vegetables (plus plant starts are so much more expensive than buying seeds, especially online because of shipping). I really hope that some of the companies doing great work in the vegetable seed field will start offering more fruit seeds, but unlike vegetables fruit tends to be perennial and more commonly utilizes complicating techniques like grafting so I don't know how viable this hope actually is.

I'm surprised the United States "canning authorities" haven't had something to say about reduced acid in tomatoes. They're so uptight when it comes to acidity levels in canning...

Maybe my local brand is the margin of error, but this comes as a surprise to me, because my area's Walmarts have started carrying a new suppliers' serranos, and those suckers are even hotter than the jalapenos, which have seemed to cool down over the years as reported elsewhere.