Bringing back flavorful food

May 28, 2026 by
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Wan, bland tomatoes. Large, hard strawberries that are almost flavorless. Carrots that have crunch but little else. All of these and more line the shelves in supermarket produce sections, bred for many traits (durability, size, mechanized harvest, disease-resistance) save for one: flavor. It’s no wonder that people don’t want to eat their vegetables. If your only exposure to tomatoes are the tough, mealy, and tasteless versions sitting in a plastic bin at the grocery store, why would you think eating vegetables could be pleasurable? While industrialization has led to this outcome, today there’s a new generation of farmers, plant breeders, and chefs working to bring flavor back to the produce aisle.

People have been breeding and experimenting with fruit and vegetable varieties for centuries. There are more than 7,500 types of apples, for instance, although you would be hard pressed to see more than a half dozen varieties available in stores. That’s because farmers only grow crops that they can rely on, mainly those that have high yields. Plants that are bred to withstand herbicides and pesticides are particularly appealing. More than 80% of corn grown in the US falls into this category. These traits make the crops reliable, which is vital to farmers, who face challenges like high fuel, seed, and fertilizer prices and the effects of climate change. When scientific advancements push yields up, the price per bushel goes in the opposite direction, creating a feedback loop that growers can’t escape.

All of this stymies breeders like Bill Tracy, who has worked in making more delicious sweet corn for over 40 years. “Everybody working on vegetables will say: ‘I’ve got the tastiest things in the world in the back of the field,’” he says. “But they just eat them with their families because they’re not marketable in our current world.” Chef Dan Barber has also dedicated his time and attention to producing more flavorful food. He says that you will only get flavorful produce if plants and the soil are both healthy and thriving. Barber believes that fundamental changes need to be made to our entire agricultural sector, arguing that we should use the billions set aside for subsidizing grain crops used for animal feed into creating better tasting, more nutritious fruits, vegetables, and grains. “If we took all that money and land and transformed it from feeding cows to funding a diverse diet that actually tasted good, you’d have something very extraordinary,” he says.

The decline in flavor has mostly gone unnoticed by the public. Each generation becomes accustomed to the flavors it eats most, which for the vast majority of US residents is mass-market food sold at large supermarkets. As subsequent varieties yield slightly diminished flavors, it becomes difficult for people to realize how much flavor has been lost over decades in the race for higher crop yields. Let’s hope the people working to solve this problem can find a way to make it feasible for farmers to grow delicious, flavorful foods.

Category: Antipasto

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8 Comments

  • vickster  on  May 29, 2026

    This is the reason I garden, especially for tomatoes

  • Puguppy  on  May 29, 2026

    I shop at farmers market when possible. I often find new varieties of vegetables that don’t appear in grocery stores and they are also fresh

  • eliza  on  May 29, 2026

    I am fortunate to have an allotment garden and the time and experience to garden it. The flavour of home grown carrots, lettuce, peas, and radishes for example is just so amazing! I really try to give back by 1. Helping new gardeners at the allotments in a non-judgemental way, and 2. Donating my extra produce that I just can’t process fast enough to our community fridge. Also go to our local farmers’ market for fruits I can’t grow.

  • Indio32  on  May 30, 2026

    This is what happens when people choose to use Supermarkets. Just come back from Paris and the quality and choice is amazing because people demand it.

  • Wlow  on  May 30, 2026

    CSAs (community supported agriculture) are also a great way to get really flavorful fresh produce. But I agree the whole system needs to shift.

  • riley  on  May 31, 2026

    It’s not only vegetables. Large scale raising of livestock have bred the flavor out of chicken, beef and pork.

  • FJT  on  May 31, 2026

    When we returned to Europe after 5 years in North America we found vegetables tasted so much better … and better still once I joined an organic veg box scheme.

  • mbbenham  on  June 6, 2026

    When we bought our home in Wisconsin 35 years ago, I started vegetable gardening for 2 reasons: to provide healthy, organic food for our family, and because you couldn’t find cilantro or fennel or eggplant (I could go on) to save your life, I loved to cook, and we were in a veggie food desert.

    We built lots of raised beds and filled them up. This morphed into a stall at the local farmers market, and sales to local and not so local restaurants. My youngest son (now 35) and his wife run the market farm now. We started out organic and have now also moved into a no-till, regenerative farm model, which as Dan Barber says, involves nurturing the soil as well as the plants. We even use some seed varieties intoduced by Row 7 farm, which is the experimental farm associated with Barber. Our vegetables taste great, are nutrient dense, and are nourishing a whole new generation of our family and in our town.

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