eeksll wrote:matagi wrote:Not if you go for heirloom varieties - although that can be challenging and often expensive. When I lived in Tamworth, my local greengrocer sold pears from a 100-year-old tree. They were quite gnarly looking and not overly sweet.
Where I currently live, I am lucky enough to be able to attend a local farmer's market every weekend, so I have access to heirloom varieties of fruit and veg and there is a noticeable difference in flavour (and sometimes texture) between these and the modern varieties.
I have not heard of heirloom before.
Good one matagi, you just started another health fad.
Those of us in the know have been onto heirloom for ages. It's because of the flavour. People make me laugh when they claim that modern fruit has been bred to be sweeter. Uh, no. Have you tasted a strawberry or banana lately? Now, I'm not talking about the good ones, which taste great. But go down to your local supermarket and have a look at the giant bananas and giant strawberries... you know, the ones that are the size of your fist? They taste disgusting. Sweet is the last word I would use to describe them. When scientists made them up in their labs, their priorities are size, transportability, shelf life, colour. Taste and sweetness are not on the agenda. Modern supermarket tomatoes are watery and flavourless. Whereas, homegrown tomatoes (of the right kind) taste amazing!!! To the point where scientists are trying to breed the flavour back into the fruit.
“Usually the old varieties haven't been exposed to intensive genetic selection, but commercially grown varieties have. Breeders have been selecting for characteristics like size, shape, growth rate, disease resistance and the amount of fruit the plant produces.”
“We miss out on flavour because it is controlled not just by one gene but by many,” says Dr Ahmad, who says the biggest change in flavour occurred with the discovery of the "(u/u)" gene – or uniform ripening gene – around 70 years ago, which has now been incorporated into most commercial varieties of tomato.
http://www.goodfood.com.au/good-food/fo ... 30yeo.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A blogger had a look at the claim:
Fruits have been selectively bread to contain massive amounts of sugar compared to how they used to be
and found the data doesn't support the claim. Rather, it found that:
Contrary to popular belief, wild fruit—including the stuff we would’ve had access to during our evolution—is not necessarily any of the above. In fact, it can be bigger, tastier, and sweeter than anything you’ll ever find in the aisles of your grocery store.
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/05/31/wild-a ... ent-fruit/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Food for thought.