Seems like quality of food is going downhill - anyone else noticed?
I seem to have a 50/50 chance of a ‘Perfectly ripe Avocado’ of actually being ripe. Shouldn’t all produce be ripe anyway? Why do we have to have things labelled as ‘perfectly ripe’? Is it a get out clause for everything else? The non-Perfectly ripe avocados are usually hard as rocks.
Lettuce appears to be lacking in water content too; feels drier and not moist/juicy like lettuce should be.
It’s particularly annoying because it’s also happening at Waitrose - where people are willing to pay a premium for quality
The answer is to grow your own vegetables, if you have not the garden space, try a local greengrocer who is probably buying fruit and veg from local gardeners. -When you have sampled home grown peppers you will never again be satisfied with the foreign stuff in the supermarkets.
ive noticed you rarely get a nice tasted Tomato, Spring onions,new Potatoes like in years past , is it because they are massed produced ?.
I saw on tv that now fruit is grown all year round in Poly tunnels ,and they are grown off the ground , i remember picking strawberries in the fields on the floor bedded in straw , with the sun shinning on them to ripen them .,
I haven’t noticed a difference but then I am ‘picky’ and like to shop at 8am before the armies of the great unwashed have touched anything :shock: and all the produce are still fresh.
I also go to the WI market on Fridays if I can and fight with my elbows to buy freshly picked garden produce from there
Some foods need to be sold ripe some unripe. You might want some avocados but don’t plan to use them that same day. So I have no issue with them selling both so long as they are properly labelled.
Same goes for bananas. I’m not wanting to eat a whole bunch the same day I buy them so they need to be unripe or half way between ripe and unripe.
Generally speaking though I agree that supermarket veg is fairly tasteless and poor quality. If only I lived in the Mediterranean ! As other posters have highlighted, just grow your own veg. It’s really easy.
We grew veg in pots on the patio and it was amazing. Charlotte Potatoes grown in potato bags were the best, absolutely yummy. Courgettes, leeks, radishes, onions all easy peasey to grow. Beans and peas tended to get raided by pigeons
Remember a lot of stuff is treated with a preservative or kept refridgerated for a long time if coming from abroad to stop them ripening before point of sale.
This must have some bearing on how they taste
Not having been allowed wine or beer for the past half year or so due to a dodgy highly inflammed Gall bladder (now removed) , I had a pint the other day and it seemed so much stronger than I have ever had before.
So if you don’t have a product for some time memories can exaggerate/deminish taste to a degree.
Ive noticed how much of the fruit and veg in supermarkets is just bland tasting and awful…I do try to buy from a small greengrocers in town which sell a wide variety of stuff…eggs I buy fresh from my neighbour free range laid the same day.
I used to enjoy the taste of tomatoes too but never buy these from the supermarket now theyre just dead tasting of nothing.
A lot is sold for you to ripen at home - whatever that means ! but tomatoes? yuk, they have no taste at all and are full of pale orange water, eugh!
A new potato is nothing like I remember them tasting, newly dug is not a new potato!
It seems that the powers that be are tinkering with a lot of our foodstuffs,I bet you any money you like that weve all eaten some GM crap by now unwittingly…I think if its been tampered with then I want to know about it and want to know exactly from the label whats been done with my food!
Im sure the nutrients are being slowly bled from our food .Nothing unless its organically grown or home grown seems to have any goodness in it anymore
I thought it was just me and that my taste buds had stopped working.
Dont think any of the fruit and veg you buy now a days has any taste.
I do try to buy from farm shops so much nicer.
The early picking, transport and rapid ripening results in the inferior, mealy tomatoes that we have in our grocery stores today.
In Spain for example they like to pick them earlier so that they can start another crop to maximise profits and other crops too.
Ethylene is a naturally-occurring ripening gas in many fruits and I understand that some Spanish growers pump this into their poly-tunnels as soon as they can.
With Lettuce, if you add more water and add fertilisers weekly you can force them to grow quicker but the natural flavours are produced by the plant over time so that can be lost.
One they’re picked though they obviously cannot take on any water so during transport they can dry out too quickly so really the best thing to do with shop-bought Lettuce is to soak it in water for a couple of hours, allow it to dry in a collander in the 'fridge then use it.
I’m not a great fruit eater so soft fruits are beyond my experience but I’ve noticed Blackberries along the canal banks and my wife says they are far tastier than the shop ones! stevmk2
The one thing I do miss about having to downsize is space to grow tomatoes-Eva Purple Ball,Black from Tula,Brandywine to name just 3. I sold so many varieties but if anyone wanted Moneymaker I told them to go to a garden centre
Even if you only have a window box, I would recommend growing some herbs. It’s nice to be able to pick them fresh.
I appreciate that not everyone wants a large garden, but I’m disgusted at the pathetic size of gardens given to modern houses. People should be able to grow some veges if they want to. It seems to be the only way to get anything with taste these days.
