Here in the UK, I've got two main sources of tomatoes: supermarkets, or the local once-a-week farmers' market.
At the supermarket, they tend to be packaged. At the farmers' market, they're on display loose or on the vine.
I don't buy by colour: I buy by smell. No kidding -- the tomatoes on the vine bought from the speciality farm stall smell utterly different to the supermarket variety; a pungent, 'green' scent that you can pick up by sniffing the vine. The supermarket variety, even vines of tomatoes, barely smell at all when you get them out of the packaging.
And smell is a major component of the human sense of taste, conveying many of the nuances of flavour.
Is supermarket over-packaging actually an attempt to disguise the lack of aroma of foodstuffs by forcing customers to evaluate by sight rather than by the more obviously applicable sense?
I think - no evidence to justify this - that you're just smelling the vine. The vine and the leaves of tomatoes smell really strong. I bet if you took one of the vine tomatoes off the vine, washed it, left it for a few hours, you wouldn't be able to smell that smell any more.
I have considered whether the leaves of tomatoes are edible, they do have such a pungent smell. I was told they are poisonous. I could google it, but would that not ruin the fun?
Is supermarket over-packaging actually an attempt to disguise the lack of aroma of foodstuffs by forcing customers to evaluate by sight rather than by the more obviously applicable sense?
Yeap. Speaking about tomatoes for example, organic ones never look quite red, they have a yellowish look on them.
It's one of the big problems for fancy organic type supermarkets. People associate organic=good and healthy=perfect and pretty, but in reality of course it's the opposite.
So one of the reasons fancy organic supermarket produce is so expensive is that they hand sort and pick the prettiest pieces.
At the supermarket, they tend to be packaged. At the farmers' market, they're on display loose or on the vine.
I don't buy by colour: I buy by smell. No kidding -- the tomatoes on the vine bought from the speciality farm stall smell utterly different to the supermarket variety; a pungent, 'green' scent that you can pick up by sniffing the vine. The supermarket variety, even vines of tomatoes, barely smell at all when you get them out of the packaging.
And smell is a major component of the human sense of taste, conveying many of the nuances of flavour.
Is supermarket over-packaging actually an attempt to disguise the lack of aroma of foodstuffs by forcing customers to evaluate by sight rather than by the more obviously applicable sense?