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Also culturally many folks never learned what good food tastes like to begin with. Many times poor people palates have been trained from a young age to like over salted or over sweet foods. You give them something good and they can hardly recognize it.
We had one of my son's friends over and he had been raised on microwave popcorn. I eat that too at times but I prefer the real stuff, organic popped in a pan with oil and real butter and salt on it. Not too much-just a good amount. This kid tried one bite and did not eat anymore. Said it tasted weird and he was not used to that taste. He was obese too so that is saying something.
Seriously, that's what I was wondering. Why is the OP shopping for fresh produce at Walmart? lol. It sounds like the OP doesn't know where to shop for good produce. Or maybe he lives in a town with limited options.
The OP lives on LonGisland, NY. I'm in New England at the end of the supply chain for fresh produce. At this time of year, I have to pick my produce carefully or it's lousy.
Last night, the salad was a bag of spring greens with baby spinach and Monsanto's best GMO orange-colored grape tomatoes. I used a slice of lemon. Pretty much any salad greens can survive a 2 or 3 day truck ride at this time of year. Grape tomatoes aren't anything like native tomatoes picked that day off the vine but they have flavor.
Cucumber and peppers all make the truck ride just fine. Ditto celery. You have to be careful about carrots. Monsanto has also fixed corn. It used to be inedible until the local stuff was available.
At breakfast, we always have bananas, blueberries (from Chile), and Mandarin/Clementine oranges (from Israel). Those are reliable in any grocery store. For mangoes, you have to shop carefully and it's often at Whole Paycheck. Strawberries are awful. I only buy local ones in June. The California ones are tasteless by the time they get to New England.
For me, produce from mid-June through late-October is a different world. Fiddlehead ferns. Asparagus picked that day. Real tomatoes. Just picked greens. It's all a flavor explosion. I can limp along the cold 7 months with barely adequate produce but it's nothing like the summer and early fall.
And you can buy a lot of that winter produce at Walmart in New England if you happen to be there for some other reason.
When I was a kid, the winter produce in New England was pathetic. Iceberg lettuce. Tomatoes picked green and turned red in a nitrogen bath. Nothing had any flavor. It's much better 50 years later as the transport time from farm to table was shortened and Monsanto worked their magic. I also have access to specialty produce stores that mostly do restaurant supply.
Eat local, eat in season, eat organic as best you can, when you can afford it. There is a difference.
The factory farms are a big issue. Picking very early before they are tree, or vine ripened is a common practice, and lowers flavor, and nutrients. Waxing the outside, gassing, using radioactivity, and other insane things on our food. Poor farming practices that don't care for the soil. Plants mine over 70 minerals from the soil, but usually only 3 are returned. Constant farming the land, and not letting the land rest. Pesticides that kill everything including the beneficial insects. Roundup ready crops can be saturated with roundup yet not kill the plant. Genetically manipulated foods that bear no resemblance to real food. The list goes on, and on, sigh.
For those of you that like to grow your own food please consider Heirloom plants of old. Baker Creek is very good, and has seeds from around the world.
I HAVE noticed a huge difference in taste of things that came from my garden. Which I stopped trying raise, as it was more trouble than it was worth. If I do it again, I will get seeds designed to do well here from the University.
The tomatoes that do best are pooped out by birds, and I get random tomato plants in the yard. Right now I have pumpkins growing that I did not plant!!
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The OP lives on LonGisland, NY. I'm in New England at the end of the supply chain for fresh produce. At this time of year, I have to pick my produce carefully or it's lousy.
Last night, the salad was a bag of spring greens with baby spinach and Monsanto's best GMO orange-colored grape tomatoes. I used a slice of lemon. Pretty much any salad greens can survive a 2 or 3 day truck ride at this time of year. Grape tomatoes aren't anything like native tomatoes picked that day off the vine but they have flavor.
Cucumber and peppers all make the truck ride just fine. Ditto celery. You have to be careful about carrots. Monsanto has also fixed corn. It used to be inedible until the local stuff was available.
At breakfast, we always have bananas, blueberries (from Chile), and Mandarin/Clementine oranges (from Israel). Those are reliable in any grocery store. For mangoes, you have to shop carefully and it's often at Whole Paycheck. Strawberries are awful. I only buy local ones in June. The California ones are tasteless by the time they get to New England.
For me, produce from mid-June through late-October is a different world. Fiddlehead ferns. Asparagus picked that day. Real tomatoes. Just picked greens. It's all a flavor explosion. I can limp along the cold 7 months with barely adequate produce but it's nothing like the summer and early fall.
And you can buy a lot of that winter produce at Walmart in New England if you happen to be there for some other reason.
When I was a kid, the winter produce in New England was pathetic. Iceberg lettuce. Tomatoes picked green and turned red in a nitrogen bath. Nothing had any flavor. It's much better 50 years later as the transport time from farm to table was shortened and Monsanto worked their magic. I also have access to specialty produce stores that mostly do restaurant supply.
Monsanto? Are we singing the praises of Monsanto, now?
The only reason they even sell these vegetables is that people demand having out-of-season vegetables all year long. The best vegetables for flavor are not the best vegetables for shipping, so the tradeoff is getting what you want but in poor quality.
It's far better to buy frozen vegetables when they're not in season. They are usually picked and frozen locally the same day, and they are going to taste better and be more nutritious than something picked three weeks ago and shipped here from Chile just so somebody can wave it around and say it's "fresh". (Maybe that's why you see those stupid quotes around "fresh" in markets sometimes. They might be telling the truth instead of just misusing punctuation.)
Now some vegetables keep well in cold weather. Potatoes, carrots, other root vegetables, even cabbage, can keep for a long time. This is common sense when you stop to look at what people in northern countries traditionally ate in winter.
The first year I ever grew my own lettuce, I was shocked at how GOOD leaves could taste.
There's no reason to complain that supermarket vegetables don't taste that good. You know what the deal is when you walk into the produce department.
For those of you that like to grow your own food please consider Heirloom plants of old. Baker Creek is very good, and has seeds from around the world.
The heirloom vegetables have been studied in the lab, and found to have several times the vitamin/mineral content of their contemporary counterparts. It turns out, that to some extent, the nutrients were bred out of veggies, over time, in favor of milder flavor, among other considerations. Some of the heirloom varieties have a slightly bitter taste, that used to be considered undesirable.
The heirloom vegetables have been studied in the lab, and found to have several times the vitamin/mineral content of their contemporary counterparts. It turns out, that to some extent, the nutrients were bred out of veggies, over time, in favor of milder flavor, among other considerations. Some of the heirloom varieties have a slightly bitter taste, that used to be considered undesirable.
On my last gardening kick I bought all heirloom seeds because of the higher nutritional value, but they caught every disease, bug, mold etc that is here.
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Are we singing the praises of Monsanto, now?
