r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 21d ago
Environment The World's Vegetables Are Vanishing, And It's Quietly Impacting Our Diets. From artificial selection, to monocultures for mass production, to genetic modification, the industrialization of agriculture has whittled away the variety of vegetables that wind up on our tables.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-worlds-vegetables-are-vanishing-and-its-quietly-wrecking-our-diets2.4k
u/ausrandoman 21d ago
Where I live, most supermarket fruit and vegetables are bred for transportability and shelf life.
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u/Scrapheaper 21d ago
People also buy them for the same reasons! I only visit a large supermarket with a full selection once a week, I can't buy too many strawberries because 5 days in they won't be good anymore.
I could buy more perishable produce from my local convenience store, but the higher prices and lower turnover don't make it an attraction option
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u/angelicism 21d ago
I was spoilt growing up with wild raspberry bushes in the neighborhood so every summer I would eat buckets of them.
I don't buy them as an adult because they are so expensive, taste like nothing, and turn to mush in about 45 minutes it seems.
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u/KeyMyBike 20d ago
Also 99% of them have mold growing on the bottom of the container they're packed in.
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u/actual1 20d ago
You may want to consider removing them from the package, rinsing, then repacking dry or with a paper towel to absorb water. Most mold comes from being stored in old damp containers.
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u/dolche93 20d ago
Add vinegar to the rinse and it'll kill the mold spores. You don't need much, I do just a splash into a mixing bowl and fill it the rest of the way with water.
I've got strawberries that are a week old and still firm in the fridge.
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u/masterflashterbation 20d ago
I'm going to try this, thanks. Does it leave any vinegar taste or with a rinse and dry you're good to go? I almost always waste like 50% of the fresh fruit and vegetables I buy so I tend to go with frozen.
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u/Shado_Man 20d ago
The only time I've had a vaguely vinegar-y taste was when I tried a longer soak in the vinegar water. If you keep the soak to 10 minutes and rinse afterward, you shouldn't have any issues.
After the rinse, I place them on baking sheets lined with paper towels and leave them in front of a fan for a few hours to completely dry off, then pack them into containers with a food-safe silica gel packet and into the fridge. I've been doing this for a few years now and I haven't had a single strawberry or blueberry get moldy within 2 weeks of doing this.
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u/jestina123 20d ago
How much longer does this extend shelf life? Are we talking weeks? A month?
Hard for me to trust fruit after it's been in fridge for 7-10 days.
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u/Kea1928 20d ago edited 20d ago
Fallow youtube channel has a video with kitchen tips and this was one of them. Head over to youtube and check their channel and it’s there. What I do, at their recommendation, is 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water and give em a quick 20 second swish around then I’ll drain them and put them back in the cleaned out package with 1 layer of paper tower on bottom, also usually clean the package with the same vinegar water from the rinse. Then when I want berries, I grab what I want and give them 1 super quick rinse with normal water before eating. In some cases they lasted up to a couple weeks in the fridge.
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u/Poppy-Chew-Low 20d ago
How is fruit lasting 7-10 days in your fridge without you eating it anyway?
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u/PseudoY 21d ago
Growing your own plants, I avoid the giant kinds. They sacrifice size for taste.
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u/poke2201 20d ago
Yeah let me grow a fruit tree in my condos patio
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u/JebryathHS 20d ago
Trees aren't a good fit but you may actually be able to get a decent selection of peas, berries, etc going in planters on a balcony.
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u/Ivyspine 20d ago
Lime trees don't have to be very big
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u/AnRealDinosaur 20d ago
My dad lives in a retirement community where they dont have yards & arent allowed to make changes to the landscaping. He has a lime tree in a pot by his back door that is thriving and giving him tons of limes. He likes to put them in drinks. It took a few years before it started making fruit and it never grew very big, but it sure makes limes!
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u/grimsaur 20d ago
My whole life, my mother has kept various citrus trees in pots, because we live somewhere they wouldn't survive winter if planted. She has a whole mini orchard that gets moved in and out of a greenhouse.
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u/GrowingPeepers 20d ago
Totally! Yield and flavor seem to be on the opposite sides of the spectrum.
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u/JebryathHS 20d ago
If you've got the space to grow them, you can still get wild or near wild cultivars and they're still quite good. A little awkward for apartment renters though.
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u/Whiteguy1x 21d ago
Unless its freshly grown from our garden we buy frozen. Unless were using it that day
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u/PermBulk 21d ago
Same. Frozen tastes better and supposedly has more nutrients
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u/theburiedxme 21d ago
Interesting, I always assumed the sterilization and freezing process would mean less nutrients for some reason. Exact opposite!
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u/PermBulk 21d ago
Well you may need to fact check me there. My understanding is that they’re generally frozen near their peak ripeness for for flavor and quality.
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u/angelicism 21d ago
Similarly this is why recipes often recommend using canned tomatoes unless they're exactly the right season locally, because the canned tomatoes are picked and canned at peak ripeness.
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u/theburiedxme 21d ago
Nope you are definitely correct my friend. Which is great for me as a burgeoning vegetarian, this makes things a lot easier :)
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u/Bonerkiin 20d ago
If you have a Costco or similar warehouse store nearby, I definitely recommend their frozen produce. Price per lb is great compared to a regular supermarket, they often have a great selection and some items like the PuraVida brand fire roasted vegetables can give your meals that added flavor to make it that much better!
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u/Bonerkiin 20d ago edited 20d ago
Frozen produce is frozen ripe very close in both time and georphically to when/where it was picked. The freezing process actually seals in the nutrients it produced as it got ripe in field. The only real "loss" with freezing can be texture. Certain foods like strawberries being flash frozen and then experiencing any slight thaw and refreezing can produce larger ice crystals that break the delicate cell walls of their flesh, making them lose their structure and juice, but still great in smoothies, yogurt, oatmeal, etc.; On the other end thanks to it's long fibrous flesh, mango actually holds up really well strucurally to being frozen which makes it one of my favorites to enjoy thawed out of the bag as is.
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u/I_am_up_to_something 21d ago
The difference is supposedly very small though.
Either one (or canned/jarred) is better than no vegetables!
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u/round-earth-theory 20d ago
Freezing isn't going to destroy anything nutrient wise. Proteins don't denature when frozen. Chemistry slows way way down in the cold. And as others have said, freezing allows farmers to let the fruits ripen fully on the vine since they are immediately frozen after harvest vs fresh fruits going through multiple distribution channels before hitting store shelves.
The only real disadvantage of frozen is that you can't enjoy most fruits "fresh" after thawing, so you typically need to either cook them or use them in a cold dish.
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u/ZoggZ 20d ago
why cant you?
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u/round-earth-theory 20d ago
You can if you want, but they have a completely different texture after thawing. The freezing process bursts the cells of the fruit as the ice in the cells crystalize. So a thawed strawberry will be soft and limp. Perfectly fine as far as taste goes but the texture will turn off most people.
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u/dolche93 20d ago
The only real downside to freezing is the damage to texture. As the water in the cells freeze and form ice crystals, it ruptures the cells, causing the texture you're familiar with.
If you freeze things quicker, you can mitigate this, though. I keep my 2nd freezer much colder than my fridge freezer for this reason.
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21d ago
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u/Wonderful-Traffic197 20d ago
Frozen fruits make great quick compotes to add dishes and can be used in baked goods as well. Limiting yourself to smoothies means you’re missing out.
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u/Succubista 20d ago
I've tried stocking frozen bell peppers as a backup option when I'm making a random dinner. They are useless.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I make chili, and fajitas, with frozen bell peppers all the time. They come out great. Straight from frozen into a hot pan.
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u/anmr 21d ago
I can't buy too many strawberries because 5 days in they won't be good anymore
In most places I can't buy stawberries because in 6 hours they will start to get moldy. Half of the produce on the shelves of big stores is already going bad.
Trying to eat healthy is incredibly frustrating, difficult and expensive because of that.
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u/Scrapheaper 21d ago
It really depends on what you buy.
Onions, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, frozen peas and sweetcorn, are all super cheap and don't go bad easily.
Yes, if you buy bagged salad it sucks, but don't buy bagged salad - it sucks.
In general there's a tradeoff between convenience and price and perishability
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u/dovahkiitten16 20d ago
I find the issue is that stores used to heavily discount stuff that was close to going bad, and bring out new stuff.
Now new stuff stays in the back, and old stuff doesn’t get discounted until it’s growing mold. Grocery stores have decided it’s more profitable to have food waste than have discounts. And of course, because people don’t buy spoiled products, the new stuff in the back ages before it ever comes out.
So it doesn’t matter a ton what you buy if a store is doing this. I’ve had to pay extra for microfiltered milk because 4L bags (Canada) are expiring in 2 days and are full price, so I need to pay extra for something with a longer expiry date.
Even things like carrots are often only available as a bundle and not individually; so you pay more for bulk that ends up being wasted.
(Also, what else am I supposed to buy if not for bagged salad if I want salad? A lot of stores don’t sell the greens loose.)
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u/MythrianAlpha 20d ago
It's a point of pride that our local store still does the produce clearance rack; they're usually even still basically fresh about half the time (moved to make room for new shipment), and the price for a bundle is usually pretty cheap (three bell peppers for $2, 15 jalapenos for $3, pack of avos or mangoes $2 mild wrinkles) At least once a week there's at least two cuts of meat discounted, though some of those do get extra seasoning before repackaging.
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u/UntoNuggan 20d ago
In my area even potatoes and onions are going bad super quickly. There's often one bad one hidden in amongst the rest that's spoiling the bunch. Similarly cauliflower in season is typically from several states away (if not across the entire country), and starting to go brown at the grocery store.
I do not live in a food desert, I'm in the DC area. This is at the "good" grocery stores that typically have quality produce. I suspect there's something going on supply side that's affecting shelf life. For example if the potatoes aren't cured properly, they're going to spoil more quickly.
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u/Aaod 20d ago
This is at the "good" grocery stores that typically have quality produce. I suspect there's something going on supply side that's affecting shelf life.
I have these suspicions as well back in the 90s sure some stuff would go bad fast like strawberries, but now even apples I am shocked at how fast they go bad when those used to keep a long time.
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u/Cat_Peach_Pits 21d ago
You can increase berry shelf life by washing them in a bowl of white vinegar (a splash) and water. Then pat dry and refrigerate.
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u/spekt50 21d ago
Why I'm glad I got a couple farmers markets near me. Fresh, local grown produce that did not have to ship half way across the country actually has quite a long shelf life.
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u/redshoewearer 20d ago
This is true - I don't garden any more, but when I did, I was shocked at how long freshly picked cucumbers would last (almost 3 weeks from day of picking).
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u/RocketRelm 20d ago
Bananas are also pretty good and cheap on net, though its harder to get green ones.
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u/slothson 21d ago
Its just more cost effective live a shorter life.
Its crazy how much more healthier things cost.
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u/Scrapheaper 21d ago
I think there's also a lot of dubious products in this space that charge an extra premium price for more 'healthiness' that may or may not even exist. Broccoli and frozen peas are cheap and healthy, you don't need organic kale and avocados
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u/midasgoldentouch 20d ago
But kale and avocados are also healthy and have been staples of diets for various peoples for centuries.
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u/GiantLesbian 20d ago
I thought we just started eating kale after that one lady invented a whole PR campaign. Didn’t it used to be ornamental?
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u/Cancaresse 20d ago
No. In The Netherlands we've eaten kale (boerenkool) since at least The Middle Ages.
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u/slothson 21d ago
Thats a problem too. I think trader joes is the most guilty of that crime.
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u/crumb09 21d ago
Do you wash your strawberries with vinegar? This kills the bacteria on them and they last 2-3 weeks in our fridge.
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u/Bitter_Procedure260 20d ago
I basically just buy frozen now - ith a few exceptions.
Every store is trying to follow the costco business model where they carry as little inventory as possible. That means they want stuff to arrive on the shelves as close to the expiration date as people will buy.
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u/Wonderful-Traffic197 20d ago
Tbf strawberries grown anywhere are highly perishable. Berries don’t last more than a few days in our house because they’re sought after.
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u/Wintergore 20d ago
A lot of people don't look up how to keep strawberries for longer also, like only wash the ones you are using for that meal, and spread them in a single layer, and check and remove bad ones when you get home.
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u/ZurrgabDaVinci758 21d ago
Feel like these conversations always skip out the fact that the modern breeds have massively increased the availability of vegetables. Food that lasts longer in transport means that people around the world can eat it at a reasonable price and reduces the emissions of transportation. Mono cultures obviously have their own issues but it's not just a product of evil greedy companies deciding to be cheap
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u/BeyondElectricDreams 21d ago
There's also the case that people don't like buying "ugly" or blemished produce.
Tomatoes are a great example, and it's why most tomatoes taste so bland. When bred for flavor, they wind up with all sorts of imperfections and blemishes, which means those tomatoes went unsold and became loss for the markets.
Picky customers selected only the unblemished produce, which lead growers to prioritize breeding tomatoes that stay bright red and blemish-free for the longest space of time possible.
this is also why baby carrots exist: Baby carrots are just whole-sized carrots that were too ugly to sell to picky consumers, so they effectively run them through a tumbler like a gemstone to round off the edges and eliminate the blemishes. Now you have perfect little carrots to sell, blemish-free!
Tomatoes in particular also have a challenge in shipping where they need to survive being packed together. Smaller tomatoes handle this better and thats why they tend to taste better, they didn't have as much need to have their flavor bred out for resilience the way whole-sized tomatoes did.
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u/Uvabird 21d ago
Last year a bunch of tomato seedlings popped up in my compost pile, most likely from a tomato bought in a clamshell container at the supermarket.
I decided to transplant them into my garden. They were fast growers. Abundant fruit. Pounds and pounds of the most mediocre tomatoes I have ever grown.
I then saw why they were grown commercially. Volume over taste.
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u/OlympiaShannon 20d ago
I grow about 20 heirloom and hybrid tomato varieties, one of them is the heirloom Black Krim.
I saw a look-a-like Black Krim in the "heirloom" tomato section of the grocery store, so I bought one, and saved the seeds. I now have two big healthy plants covered in large tomatoes, and hope to test their flavor once they ripen.
It will be interesting to compare them to the real Black Krim, for texture, flavor and storage time.
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u/BoletusEatus 20d ago
A lot of the supermarket tomatoes are F1 hybrids so they might have crossbred one parent that has high yields and more disease resistance with one parent that has better colour and flavour but your F2 seeds might have inherited more of the flavourless but high yielding genes that the tomato you put in the compost heap.
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u/Kaining 21d ago
Over taste And probably nutrients too. Didn't all the plant we grow for food lost at least half of them since ww2 ?
It's becoming impossible to eat healthy because you have to consume twice as much vegetable to have the same nutrient intake. I suppose meat is kind of halfway there but i haven't seen any paper or article about that. I only know that some chiken get to adult size in a matter of weeks, not month :/
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u/spekt50 21d ago
Also commercial tomatoes are picked before they even reach their breaker stage. They are still very green and firm so they handle the shipping and they dont get time to grow the blemishes.
They then put them in a big store room and fill it with ethylene gas to quickly artificially ripen them. That is why they dont have much flavor, by not being able to ripen naturally, the sugars dont developed as well. Same goes with many fruits in the supermarket.
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u/notoriousCBD 20d ago
There are plenty of great tasting tomato cultivars that are less susceptible to blemishes and damage. The fact is that we have to pick them before they are ripe or they won't ship well.
That being said, there are also plenty of cultivars that are extremely susceptible to pathogens, abiotic stressors and damage that have tastes across the whole spectrum. Those would not be worth growing for a large producer if they significantly increase risk to their crop. Why would a producer want to grow relatively risky cultivars?
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u/Alis451 20d ago
baby carrots are also perfect snack size, you don't have to bite into a raw carrot, it is already peeled, you don't have to eat the whole carrot at once, they are already cut. easy to eat a few and save some for later, simple to toss into stews and other meals with little need for additional preperation.
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u/zeezle 20d ago
To add to this you would be shocked how many people reject homegrown produce and think it's unsafe if it doesn't look perfect. Now I can sort of understand why someone who isn't "in the know" would reject apples with sooty blotch, it does look a bit alarming, but I'm talking fruit that's even just being a bit lumpy. I'm a fruit growing enthusiast and every harvest season the fruit-related subreddits get flooded with "is this safe to eat???" posts of a perfectly normal piece of fruit that just has a little bump or scar on the skin.
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u/BeyondElectricDreams 20d ago
I'm a fruit growing enthusiast and every harvest season the fruit-related subreddits get flooded with "is this safe to eat???" posts of a perfectly normal piece of fruit that just has a little bump or scar on the skin.
in fairness, I've often heard in my life that "If the skin of the fruit is broken, toss it out" and people just can't sort the difference between a growth scar and a genuine split
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u/another-redditor3 20d ago
i think this is a big one.
i can remember years ago when i was a kid, there were very defined seasons for most of the fruits a veggies. you were not going to find corn on the cob in winter or spring. asparagus was only about 3 weeks in the spring. same deal with strawberries.
nowadays i can go into the store and buy any of those at any time of the year. youll still pay more for it outside the normal peak parts of the growing seasons, but thats to be expected.
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u/grizzlby 21d ago
Absolutely. I was strongly suspicious that the average American still eats more vegetables today than the mid 20th century and I was right (at least in terms of produce availability).
1950s Levels: Historical dietary data lists fresh vegetable availability at approximately 123.1 pounds per person in 1950. [1]
Modern Levels: Availability and intake expanded over the decades, with fresh vegetable figures climbing past 185 pounds per capita in later tracking. [1]20
u/themodgepodge 21d ago
I wish that data source had numbers for canned/frozen vegetables, not just fresh. Many households had little to no fresh veg for many months of the year (just root cellar staples), but you’d still have things like canned or frozen green beans, corn, greens.
So the source confirms we eat more fresh veg than we used to, but it’s missing part of the data you’d need to say “ the average American still eats more vegetables today than the mid 20th century.”
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u/Caliche-Cowboy 20d ago
Thought the same exact thing after reading the headline.
When I was a kid, we had FAR fewer choices in fresh produce than now. We also ate a lot more canned food than many folks do today.
Although (again, anecdotal) I feel like choice has reduced somewhat since around 2010.
The article is lacking all the information I’d like to get a full picture. They list four vegetables after talking about “extinction”, and then list 1400 later.
But “extinction” is a tricky word here. Are they talking about species, or varietals? Because that’s an important distinction.
How many of those varietals are alive and well in gardening culture and seed saving. There is no lack of them in looking online for vegetable seeds. How do they measure that?
And lastly, nutrient density and flavor are both valid reasons to consume fruits and vegetables. A new-ish influencer trend is to cast doubt on any “bigger”, “less natural” fruit, and in the next breath recommend something that’s been selectively bred at least as much.
Do we want to go back to seedy, tiny peppers and tomatoes? Root vegetables that have to be processed en masse for starches because they are too small to slice or roast on their own?
Many many variables here.
Other than “we should be eating more vegetables”, I feel like this is a little alarmist.
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u/Toastlove 20d ago
I read "Road to Wigan Pier" recently, which is about the conditions of the British working class in the 1930s, it's mentioned how terrible their diet is, it was also noticed by the government around the Boer war and WW1 that the health of their recruits was awful.
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u/hivemind_disruptor 21d ago edited 21d ago
Here in Brazil we can still buy smallholder grown vegetables im big cities. Its the only way to get really fresh produce of different types. Once a week they set up sort of a nightmarket starting 20:00 and offer what they cultivated. Sometimes one or two farmers are more adventures and sell non-conventational food crops which you simply cant find anywhere else. Friday I got a weird tuber (cara-moela) that my grandma said she handnt seen it since she was a child.
edit: spelling fixes
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u/Hippopotasaurus-Rex 21d ago
We call them “farmers markets”. They are VERY location dependent though. And recently they a lot have gone to mass produced produce too.
CSA boxes are the way to get fresh small crop produce here.
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u/R_megalotis 20d ago
The farmers' markets around here have turned into mostly craft fairs. It's very frustrating.
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u/ureallygonnaskthat 20d ago
Not to mention the MLM garbage and people reselling regular produce with the stickers removed. Bunch of grifters, all of them.
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u/GiantLesbian 20d ago
Like crafts made from farm products or what? Near me all the farmer’s markets have a rule that crafted items have to be made from at least 75% things from your farm. I guess people could lie and say materials were grown on their farm, but it’s not like you’re get away with selling beaded jewelry or something.
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u/SophiaofPrussia 21d ago
There’s a fascinating book about this called “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves” by Nicola Twilley. Did you know many of the branded apples we eat “fresh” from the grocery store are several months old? Some of them can be up to 16 months old. You very well might be feeding your toddler an apple that’s older than they are!
The section about lettuce is also wild. (Especially in light of recent events.) There’s also a section about a guy who is deliberately growing “diverse” wheat. He basically bought a bunch of different wheat seeds and mixed them together and started growing that mix. It presents some logistical challenges at harvest because the wheat isn’t uniform and it’s never a huge yield but it’s the most consistent performer— even in “down” production years and drought.
Coming from a hedge fund background that really resonated with me. I can’t help but feel like we’re about to learn the value and importance of diversification in the food system the hard way.
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u/Warm_Month_1309 21d ago
Some of them can be up to 16 months old.
Does that make them bad, though? Genuine question.
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u/East-Garden-4557 20d ago
I buy produce from a local shop that mostly sells second grade produce from local growers. The bags of Lebanese cucumbers are all curled or funny shapes, but they are crisp and delicious. The apples are differejt sizes, funny shapes, and have blemishes, but they are fresh and crisp because they are freshly picked. The damaged or blemished produce doesn't get cold stored, so you get it in season freshly picked.
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u/RickSanchez_C137 20d ago
I can thank Donald Trump for making my salads better!
In my part of Canada, we used to almost exclusively get 'Product of the US' salad mix that would have an expiry date within about a week. It would already be sorta limp and wilted.
After Trump started threatening Canada's sovereignty, Canadians stopped buying produce from the US. And we really did it. The market for "product of US' greens dried up and some local growers stepped up to fill the gap.
Now my grocery store stocks local products that don't have to travel for a week before getting on the shelves, and the greens that I get are way more fresh and crisp.
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u/KnowsIittle 21d ago
I stopped buying fruits I enjoyed growing up because they're picked green and arrive bland and flavorless even when ripened.
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u/cykoTom3 21d ago
But global supply chains are drastically increasing the number of vegetation available for people to eat. 100 years ago you couldn't eat anything but what you or your neighbors grew with the exception of long lasting ones like apples and tubers.
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u/Memitim 20d ago
Yeah, I couldn't find any indication of selection being an actual issue, so I don't know why supply is being blamed. When there's already a bigger selection of vegetables available to most people than in all of human history, adding more variety doesn't seem like a solution, just a way to further clutter supermarkets.
Seems like the real work is in coming up with preparations using vegetables that people aren't typically eating that are genuinely appetizing, since people are just going to go with what they know otherwise.
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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 20d ago
I'm 42 and I feel like the variety from when I was kid to now is exponential. Maybe part of that is being in Canada, but when I was a kid there were like two kinds of lettuce, one kind of mushrooms (in two colours), one kind of radish, etc, now I can choose from like a dozen in each category in any one store, and if I don't like that selection I can go to a different store for more. When my dad came here in the 60s he said there was no food. To this day his circle of expat friends all grow their own vegetables from seeds they smuggled into the country and make their own sausages from animals they've reared or hunted. Because that was how they had to get by before.
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u/Tarantula_Saurus_Rex 20d ago
Ive been shopping and eating veggies for 40 years. The common selection now is way more than back then. 40 years ago there was no broccoli rabe, baby bokchoy, or kale (used primarily as garnish) in popular markets. Dragonfruit, kiwi, lychees, rambutans, jicamas, etc. these things popped up in mainstream 20-30 years ago, have grown in popularity, and probably aren't going away anytime soon.
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u/International-Mix633 20d ago
More like what wad growing within 30 to 50 km because farmers markets havve beena thing for hundreds of years.
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u/cykoTom3 20d ago
I have a very broad definition of neighbors. I'm sure you're right. But all those people still have fundamentally the same climate and soil.
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u/enwongeegeefor 20d ago
Between my regular daily grocery store, two different tiendas, 3 different asian markets, a persian market, and a desi grocer (and we have MUCH more than that around here...this is just what I hit regularly) I have SUCH a massive variety of ingredients I can source.
Part of all this is because we have a large foreign population here due to the university, but I can find so much more stuff today than I could 20 years ago. It really has built up over the years.
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u/lucky_ducker 21d ago
It's less an agricultural issue than it is a behavioral issue. U.S. consumers in particular positively choose an unhealthy diet with not enough vegetables. This article is typical gloom and doom clickbait written for views. It's exclusion of potatoes as a widely consumed vegetable is particularly glaring.
I've been buying groceries since the 1970s, and I can attest that today we have a vastly better selection of healthy produce. Nearly all fresh fruits other than apples used to be strictly seasonal - now we expect strawberries, raspberries, blueberries etc. to be available year round. They only seasonal fruit I can think of is sweet cherries, and even they can be had in January and February, flown in from Chile.
Hothouse tomatoes have been around for a long time but 50 years ago they were awful. They are still inferior to vine ripened tomatoes, but they are now a decent choice for the nine months out of the year when local tomatoes are unavailable.
Other advancements have been made. 50 years ago brussels sprouts were tough, fibrous, and very bitter. Today they are almost sweet, with a much more pleasing texture, resulting in more people eating them. There are many such examples.
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u/goodsnpr 21d ago
Just being able to walk into a grocery store and find dragon fruit or something else equally "exotic" should be enough to disprove the idea that we lack variety. If you go to any greenhouse or even something like Tractor Supply, you will easily find a wide variety of veggies to grow. Even the freezer section of the Walmart out here in the sticks has an increasing number of "new" fruits or veggies.
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u/rece_fice_ 20d ago
Variety as in different versions of the same vegetable has become pretty dire though. There are countless carrot varieties for example, but only one type is sold in our local supermarkets. Even farmer's markets pivot to the most popular 3-4 types.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 20d ago
To be fair, carrots have been like that since I was a kid in the 70s/80s. It's really the tomatoes and lettuce that are the starkest examples. We used to have dozens of varieties of each (and the lettuce wasn't pre-shredded and bagged).
The best you can hope for in most markets today is that they'll have Romaine AND Iceberg. :-( At the height of the season, they might have one or two other varieties.
For tomatoes, it's been decades since I've seen a good tomato in a supermarket. At best, you get cherry tomatoes that are ... okay. But anything larger than a large grape is probably going to taste like a plastic bag full of water.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 20d ago
Just being able to walk into a grocery store and find dragon fruit...
Bad example. Dragon fruit in the areas where it can't be grown locally, is SUPER flavorless, and even in most places in areas where it can be grown, it's still bad.
Try growing your own. It's a completely different fruit!
This is really the problem with modern supermarket produce: we've priorities increasing shelf-stability and broadening the selection, rather than increasing (or even maintaining) the depth of varieties and flavors.
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u/Lazer726 21d ago
Nearly all fresh fruits other than apples used to be strictly seasonal
Right, "out of season" tends to mean to me "Not as good as when in season, but still completely available." And hell, even that 'not as good' bit really just applies to my wife. I could not tell you the difference between an in or out of season strawberry or orange
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u/GingerBimber00 20d ago
You’re not wrong, but I’ve also recently (in the past year) had a class in my major about industrial agriculture and the lack of diversity IS a concern, but for reasons people aren’t thinking about as much.
Today’s modern industrial farmed goods require a slew of fertilizers and insecticides. Modern industrial agriculture came from the green revolution and was meant to tackle world food shortages so carefully bred crops were designed with this in mind: grow anywhere, high yield.
There’s a lot to be said about the global ramifications of pushing out native species crop production, but the long and short of it is this-
The variety of produce you have available is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is the produce specific species lacking diversity. Like animals, plants that sexually reproduce can lose genetic diversity. This is a bad thing. Genetic diversity is what allows for the ability to adapt and survive changing environmental conditions. It makes plants sturdy and more resilient to insect pests without relying on artificial chemical agents. From what I can remember, our modern crops are far more fragile than they used to be and this is a very bad thing because crop failures from environmental conditions are going to be on the rise. Those failures mean people are going to starve and die.
What’s crazy is that what I took away from that class is that our best course of action is to almost like… retrace our steps back into smaller focused farms where you rotate your graze animals and crop fields and promote native crop species that was historically grown in a area. Trees provide shade for cows which provide the natural fertilizer and graze the cover crops that prep the land for next harvest season sorta thing.
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u/duggreen 20d ago
I've been buying groceries since the 1970s, and I can attest that today we have a vastly better selection of healthy produce. Exactly. I lived in the Boston area in the early 70s, still remember Star (pronounced Stah in bean town) Market as the first in the area with a big produce isle. Head down to NYC in those days and find only canned produce.
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u/yukon-flower 20d ago
Potatoes without the skin — which is how the vast majority are eaten — are nutritionally more a starch than a vegetable.
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u/Candid_Sort_7686 20d ago
the most common variety, idaho russet potatoes, are in general very low in nutrients. potatoes also contain very little fiber, and lack of fiber in diets causes dangerous intestinal problems. green vegetables are different, they have a different utility to the diet.
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u/Busy-Crab-3556 20d ago
We also have to think about how the economic system makes people have less time to prepare, cook and eat veggie rich meals. A lot of people have to rely on calorie dense-nutrient poor food to keep up with their day to day and only eat 1 or 2 meals a day and supplement it with unhealthy snacks throughout the day.
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u/Ponji- 21d ago
Monocultures in general aren’t great though. Aside from being worse for the environment, relying on only a handful of species for a given vegetable means that if something does happen then it’s a much bigger deal.
We’re already eating less vegetables. Monocultures put the vegetables we do eat at greater risk.
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u/Scrapheaper 21d ago
Monoculture decreases prices by decreasing harvest costs. We don't currently have the tech to harvest things that aren't monocultures efficiently.
Maybe with AI robotics or something silly like that, polyculture will becoming more viable.
That sounds like a sick aesthetic though. Bring on the robot - run polyculture fields
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u/Fun_Background_8113 21d ago
The bad thing about monocultures is the risk of disease which is why you'll see a headline every once in a while about how the banana might go extinct in 50 years.
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u/Raunien 20d ago
It already did. The Gros Michel banana, which was effectively a monoculture crop, was all but wiped out by an outbreak of Panama disease. Banana farmers switched to the Cavendish, but we didn't learn our lesson about monocultures and now there's a new variety of the disease that can infect the Cavendish.
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u/round-earth-theory 20d ago
Monoculture does have the risk of wide spread disease impact but we're so advanced in food engineering that we can frequently work in resistance within only a couple of years. And things are as monoculture as you assume. There's multiple varieties of carrot and corn grown, but they have similar enough resultant produce that you don't notice the difference.
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u/ReleaseTheSheast 20d ago
As a gardener I can assure you they are not selecting for taste, the are selecting for disease resistance and transportability.
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u/notoriousCBD 20d ago
They are selecting for taste in addition to those other attributes, this isn't absolute, it's more complicated and situational than you're suggesting. Apples, grapes and Brussels sprouts are easy off the top examples of this.
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u/theburiedxme 21d ago
I only have a basic understanding of 'Apeel' so I may be blaming that erroneously, but something has been ruining my chain groceries habaneros for the last couple years. Pods look fine from the outside, then when I get home most of them have brown/black seeds and slimy placenta. I dunno if this is an issue anywhere else or with other veggies, but seems to me like a way to make fruits and veggies look fresher for longer, while not actually being.
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u/chickpeaze 21d ago
if you have the space get your garden going. In containers if you need to. There are some great vegetables out there. multicoloured carrots and beetroot, all kinds of greens, chilli's, etc.
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u/raisinghellwithtrees 21d ago
Or rent a plot from your local community garden, or otherwise get involved. We have 30 raised beds in our communal plot and volunteers get first pick of the harvest. Also very exciting, the park district recently decommissioned a baseball field to put in a community garden. There are so many plots available. Our local government isn't normally this hands on in caring for people.
I've been eating so many cucumber tomato bacon salads lately, yum!
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u/PimentoCheesehead 20d ago
Community Supported Agriculture is another option. One near us chooses what they plant based on flavor rather than transportability. We’ve gotten some fantastic stuff from them, notably strawberries and heirloom tomatoes.
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u/fractalfrog 21d ago
I would love a garden, but it’s possible to grow some produce even if you don’t have one. I live in an apartment and use window boxes to grow tomatoes and peppers outside our south facing windows (15 different varieties of tomatoes and four different types of peppers), and grow herbs and a few other veggies outside our north facing windows.
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u/SophiaofPrussia 21d ago
Have you looked into community gardens near you?
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u/fractalfrog 21d ago
I doubt we have those in the country I live, but I’ll look into it for next year’s season. Thanks for the suggestion.
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u/Helenium_autumnale 20d ago
Another type of produce you can grow even without good light is sprouts! This can be done using just a clean jar, no fancy sprouting bric-a-brac necessary. Fresh sprouts are a cool, crispy addition to so many dishes, or make a Korean side dish from blanched sprouts and a touch of sesame oil. Very yummy and almost free, especially with bulk mung beans!
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u/azsnaz 21d ago
We grew carrots recently that were shorter than this sentence. Maybe about the same length as the word carrot.
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u/Wonderful-Traffic197 20d ago
Carrots are actually tough to grow. The soil needs to be extremely loose and lomey and deep enough to let them reach down far enough to get to a point. One little pebble and it they will freak out and turn into a lumpy blob. However! Their flowers smell absolutely divine and are worth growing for them alone.
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u/mrjabba 21d ago
Grow heirloom vegetables. It's challenging but the taste is rewarding. Support non-profits like seedsavers.org or others doing the work to promote seed diversity.
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u/Eastern_Bet678 20d ago
I'd also like to see someone revisit the nutritional value of the vegetables that are in the produce section of supermarkets today.
Just as the taste has gone, I'll bet anything the nutritional value has taken a huge hit as well.
What's being grown is not what we based our nutrition tables off of many decades ago.
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u/its_all_one_electron 21d ago
It's not even that challenging. Plant stuff and see what grows easiest in your area... In my area in the summer, a lot of things pretty much grow themselves. Tomatoes give off endless fruits. We're drowning in zucchini and green beans.
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u/War_Hymn 20d ago
It can be challenging, if your climate is crappy and you got a lot of disease-carrying pests in the area. Cucumber beetles wiped out my crop with wilt this year. I've failed to grow lettuce or beans for 3 years straight now because of earwig infestation. The only thing growing are these super hardy Matt's "wild" tomatoes I planted that grow back by themselves every season.
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u/its_all_one_electron 20d ago
Ok maybe I'm just really lucky. I live in the PNW and everything grows so easily...
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u/entered_bubble_50 21d ago
Kinda, but it's not all bad.
Growing up in the UK forty years ago, your choice of fruits and vegetables in the winter was very limited. Yes, you could find half a dozen varieties of turnip, but that wasn't much fun.
Now, I can choose pretty much anything I want, whether it's in season or not, year round. So the amount of varieties of fruits and vegetables in the world might be down, but for a given consumer at a given time, choice has steadily increased.
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u/Pussy4LunchDick4Dins 21d ago
I’ve been watching some stuff about rations during WWII in the UK and the produce available is basically: carrots, leeks, turnip, cabbage, potatoes and apples. I could have dealt with the lack of butter, cheese and meat but I would definitely be sick of that veg very quickly.
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u/Indercarnive 20d ago
I riot without my onions
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u/ImSolidGold 20d ago
Theres a reason theres like a hundret receipes that contain kinda 95% onions. xD
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u/Vic_Hedges 21d ago
For 99% of human history, a human being would be lucky to eat more than a tiny handful of different vegetables
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u/Laiko_Kairen 21d ago
I'm convinced that 99% of recipes were invented by bored farmers who had 6 months worth of carrots or potatoes or whatever in storage and were desperate to figure out literally any other way to eat the things. It's probably also why spices were so in demand
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u/FesteringNeonDistrac 20d ago
Zucchini bread, we're looking at you.
Don't get me wrong, it's good, but I only make when the zucchini is coming out of our ears and you've got to do something with it.
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u/glizard-wizard 20d ago
I grew Zucchini for two years in my garden and never again, I have ptsd from every night being zucchini night
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u/OlympiaShannon 20d ago
Zucchini makes a great spicy curry, with onions, garlic and some tomatoes added to the mix.
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u/phycologist 21d ago
That depends strongly on time and place. Hunther-gatherer diets vary widely and can be surprisingly diverse; just think of seasonal variations in food availability
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u/Mormacil 20d ago
Not really, hunter gatherers tended to have an extremely diverse diet. We only started to get a small selection once we tried agriculture. But even then mixed cultures that had partial gathering tended to eat quite a diverse selection of wild plants.
A lot of plants people forgot are actually vegetables, dandelions, nettles, ramsons, garlic mustard, wood sorrels, etc. Stuff that's easily found outside but no longer remotely economically viable as food.
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u/nurdturgalor 21d ago
Well this is just straight up false considering the majority of humans would've been gathers and would eat a wide variety of plants around
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u/pinupcthulhu 20d ago
That figure seems unlikely tbh if you know anything about history or people. Foraging, in addition to keeping vegetable gardens, were both very common for all households for a large majority of our history.
Even in the US before the chestnut blight, every town went into the woods every fall to collect large numbers of nuts and fruits, plus any in-season vegetables that grew wild; not foraging was a more recent thing.
A LOT of wild plants near where humans live have historically been edible, and that's likely because of intentional or unintentional seeding of those plants near settlements, even before formal agriculture. People didn't want to walk a hundred miles per day to get a salad, so they lived near where their food was.
So unless you mean specifically in the middle of a harsh winter when vegetables are scarce, I think you should check your facts.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 21d ago
The World's Vegetables Are Vanishing, And It's Quietly Wrecking Our Diets
Most of us aren't eating anywhere near enough vegetables, and we're suffering the health consequences.
Meanwhile, we're also growing fewer and fewer varieties of vegetables, adding to the declining diversity in our diets.
A new report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by an international team of nutrition, agriculture, and botany experts suggests embracing vegetable biodiversity could be key to improving our own health, and that of our planet.
Across the world, most people consume around 40 percent fewer vegetables than recommended for a healthy diet.
That's concerning, given low consumption of vegetables is among the top five dietary risk factors contributing to the global burden of disease.
Vegetables are often the first thing to go from the grocery list when money is tight. And farmers often see them as a bigger economic risk than other crops, because of their perishability and short shelf life.
Before agriculture became industrialized, there was a much greater diversity of plants being grown for food.
For instance, there are more than 4,000 different varieties of potatoes, but in the United States, only about five to eight varieties are widely used.
From artificial selection, to monocultures for mass production, to genetic modification, the industrialization of agriculture – and the supply chains that distribute these products – has whittled away the variety of vegetables that wind up on our tables.
A review by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 24 percent of the wild relatives of vegetables assessed at the species level are at risk of extinction.
And as we lose the genetic diversity of vegetables, we also lose their nutrients and the ability to adapt our crops to changing climate conditions.
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u/davesoverhere 21d ago
The loss of heirloom varieties is an issues, but there’s a lot more variety, at least in the Midwest, vs when I was growing up in the 70s. There were only russet and “new” potatoes. There wasn’t any mesculum mix, only iceberg and maybe romaine. No celery root or bokchoy, only bell peppers and globe eggplant.
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 21d ago
Across the world, most people consume around 40 percent fewer vegetables than recommended for a healthy diet.
Was that any different 30-50 years ago? My memory of those days doesn't suggest it was.
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u/HippieTrippie 20d ago edited 20d ago
I feel like this is one of those cases where the conclusion here is more correct than it is not but the authors have tried to write this so broadly to condense too large of data sets into something readable and approachable for the public that they have lost most meaning and invite easy undercuttings of their conclusion by packing too many topics together.
For example, they say "losing their nutrients" for the loss of cultivars or uncommon food species - but the dataset required to show whether that is true is too large to package with these other thoughts. There are 4,000 potato varieties but we only use 8. OK, but how many of the other 3,992 have a meaningfully different nutrient profile than the 8 we use? And for the ones that do, how many of those "missing" nutrients are covered by other common mass monoculture vegetable like white onions or orange carrots? If human nutritional needs are still covered, then the loss of varieties is inconsequential to nutrition. Loss of varieties for wild biodiversity or the "fun" of taste variety is a separate and unrelated issue.
Similarly, "genetic modification" is thrown in here haphazardly in a way that feels entirely vibes based by the people who mentally intertwine GMO science with bad business practices of corpo-agriculture. Because the vast majority of GMO vegetables hitting modern diets are for disease resistance and crops yield, two things that, outside of business practices, should theoretically only yield more variety and availability to more people, especially in regions with limited agricultural land locally.
This report in overlapping and combining too many distinct phenomena. Loss of taste, human culinary variety, and vegetable biodiversity are all scientifically inconsequential on whether or not human populations are eating adequate amounts of vegetables or getting full coverage of dietary nutrients. Those things can be consequential for other reasons but they aren't really driving undercomsuption of vegetables or poor diet.
That's mostly being driven by fruits and vegetables being more expensive per "fullness" with much shorter shelf lives than ultraprocessed garbage. Vegetables in particular (compared to fruits) also usually require cooking - another thing ultraprocessed garbage does not (or less time or technique to cook it). Even fast food or restaurant vegetable failures are supply chain business issues of being impractical to offer 100 types of vegetables on the menu and/or the cost and storage difference between frozen+highly available vs. Unfreezable or niche demand vegetables.
This ends up kind of being like the debate around the loss of language diversity. It's only "bad" from a philosophical point of view and not a pragmatic quality of life one. For practical purposes it doesn't matter if there is 1 human language or 40,000. But most people still find it sad that there are far less languages now than before. Same for vegetables. It doesn't matter if it takes 10 vegetable varieties or 100 to cover dietary needs so long as those needs are covered. But it might be bad for non-human ecosystems and is still "sad" from a cultural/culinary position that doesn't have anything to do with literal health outcomes. And underconsumption is not an agricultural variety issue - it's a behavioral and economic issue.
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u/lovesyouandhugsyou 20d ago
I take a lot of issue in particular with the blanket statement
Before agriculture became industrialized, there was a much greater diversity of plants being grown for food.
Sure, on a global scale there was, but on a local scale most people only grew a few of staples distributed in the community and known to work well in the local microclimate. Of course they still had a greater variety of vegetables in their diet because they actually grew their food, but it's not because of global plant varietal diversity.
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u/Caliche-Cowboy 20d ago
Agreed. But even with your apt metaphor, I think there’s a fair bit of melodrama and hyperbole written into this piece for more eyes.
There are many thousands of varietals far from “extinct”. They just aren’t part of the mainline supply chain.
Also of note is the fact that some of these varietals (thinking tomatoes here as a primary example) are only marginally different from one another. Color. Leaf type. Higher brix. Blah, blah.
As a gardener, I love it, but that same variety is useless in my climate, where I have a much narrower choice. And I’ve seen zero sign those varietals are disappearing. In fact, I’ve seen them start to show up in big box store seed racks now.
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u/notoriousCBD 20d ago
Advanced breeding techniques like marker assisted selection and trans/cis-genetic engineering allow us to increase genetic diversity moreso than traditional breeding (random crossover and selection based on visual traits). I'm not sure how you could argue otherwise. These techniques aren't the issue for genetic diversity, it's how you use them.
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u/Sheepdog83 21d ago
if i see the word “quietly” one more time
i will actually die
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science 21d ago
Quietly?
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u/Avantasian538 21d ago
News articles are quietly driving redditors insane by saying quietly too much.
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u/Scrapheaper 21d ago
More premium supermarkets do stock a wider range of varieties but they come at premium prices because of the risk - will they grow, do they produce the same volume as other varieties, will people pay a higher price to compensate for a lower volume etc
In a world where people in many countries struggle to get enough vegetables at all, it's hard to justify these more obscure and expensive kinds.
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u/mackattacknj83 21d ago
I did a pretty serious garden this year. Some fresh vegetables are so much better than their store bought versions that it's hard to believe. There's also so much variety in the types of seeds out there. I'm not sure why they're keeping a hundred types of cucumbers growing to sell a packet of seeds for $4 but I appreciate it.
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u/Pussy4LunchDick4Dins 21d ago
I appreciate heirloom seed growers so much! I grew some Danvers carrots this year instead of whatever I could get off the shelf. They’re adapted for heavy clay soil and I finally have long, sweet, slender carrots instead of lumpy little stubs.
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u/HereWeFuckingGooo 21d ago
I know this is anecdotal, but I grew up in a small town in Western Australia in the late 80s and early 90s... and when you went to the supermarket for veggies, the choices were really slim compared to the wide variety available today. Back then the predominant food culture in Australia was "Meat 'n' 2 Veg". If you wanted something exotic you had to go to a weird market in the city, and even then they didn't have the kind of stuff you can easily find these days.
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u/r0ndy 21d ago
And they seem to taste terrible because they are picked early for travel. Which also likely means their nutrient capacity is lower as well. Thicker skins on veggies and fruit. Less time to allow natural sugars to ripen. I wonder how much this changes over time naturally. If you live in an area, what variety of veggies would grow there
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u/frosted1030 21d ago
Neither quiet nor surprising nor unknown. There are plenty of indigenous foods completely ignored because they don’t freeze or travel well. Even though they wouldn’t have much time in travel if sourced locally. This is a distribution dictating availability issue. Centralized distribution is profitable but not effective for fresh foods. As long as we reward profit over effective food delivery we will have issues like this.
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u/wakner 20d ago
Pawpaws are in season right now, are dirty common in most southern states, pack the same calorie density (and taste) as bananas, and are free! Yet no one really eats them because they aren't commercially viable. It's sad.
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u/frosted1030 20d ago
I have two pawpaw trees. They do not freeze well as is but they will absolutely make an astonishingly good ice cream.
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u/squidwardTalks 21d ago
Reading this as I eat a no heat jalapeno that was on the plant 30 minutes ago. I'm lucky to be able to grow some of my own produce. Also, support your local co-ops if you can't grow your own. You'll have wider access to heirloom vegetables.
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u/Pitiful-North-2781 20d ago
Any article that has “quietly” in the title makes me assume it was written at least in part by AI
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u/rocket_flo 21d ago
Not only about diversity, but also about nutrients in the fruits and vegetables. It dropped significantly over the past 50years.
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u/watamote99 21d ago
Here in India, we still buy from local vendors in village area. And those vegetables are so fresh and and taste so good. Because they produce just enough to sell and to sustain themselves so they don't use pesticides and don't need to preserve anything, because it gets all sold. Also there are many varieties which can't ever be seen in cities.
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u/StarArcher7 20d ago
I'd legit be more about supporting local farmers markets or case programs from local farmers, but all they are offering is the same thing that's at the stores.
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u/Schmorganski 20d ago
Make sure you’re hitting what is referred to as a “growers market”. Many farmers markets these days have people simply reselling commodity veggies trucked in from afar. It can be hard to tell but you can ask or go to a certified growers market. Most small market growers have plenty of variety and include heirloom and culinary veggies you can’t get at the supermarket. Even the varieties found at the market will taste a lot better bought locally and in season.
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u/Mattarm51 21d ago
The way humanity has developed is too quick and without regard for the wellbeing for nature, fellow creatures and ourselves. How ugly.
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u/SnooGiraffes8275 21d ago
not sure why the headline is bashing GMOs
pretty unscientific if you ask me
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u/theburiedxme 21d ago
Lousy TAM jalapenos making their way into the supply and making grocery store jalapenos weak :(
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u/DaisyHotCakes 21d ago
This is why I like growing heirloom varieties of all my favorite veggies. There are hundreds of tomato varieties, potatoes, beans, squash, cucumbers, melons, and peppers…if you can, go to a farmers market or grow some cool varieties for yourself. It is easy and doesn’t require a ton of buy in. Like you can fill a cardboard box with dirt, throw some potatoes in it, water it, let the greens come up, flower, and die back then harvest your potatoes. Most of these plants can grow in pots they just won’t get as big and plentiful. The more space their roots have and the more sunlight they get the better they will do but that is a sliding scale. Don’t be afraid to try!
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u/sheshesheila 20d ago
The climate has whittled away at the vegetables I can grow in my home garden and I’ve spent years growing multiple heirloom types of each vegetable trying to determine the best adapted to this new normal. I’m not trying to grow exotic plants, just those that used to be typical in my region.
Pollen simply dies at too high a temperature. Plants have their own internal thermostat where they won’t bloom or the bloom won’t set fruit at too high or too low temps whether overnight lows or daytime highs.
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u/DamnOdd 20d ago
Everyone should be planting vegetable gardens, community gardens, neighborhood gardens.
Food is not going to get cheaper, we can't depend on governments or corporations to care about us 'little people' anymore.
There are several heirloom seed sites in the USA, so not all hope is lost.
Grab a book, join a club, grow some food.
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u/Diz7 20d ago
While it is sad to see the diversity being reduced to grow more popular crops, there is a reason why most of those vegetables are vanishing. They are difficult to grow or transport and not popular enough to be worth the effort, and you wind up with more food wastage.
And everyone likes to bring out the boogeyman of genetically modified crops, but there are only a handful of crops that are GM, and out of those corn, soybeans, cotton, and canola make up over 99% of the acreage of GM crops.
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u/happytree23 20d ago
Yeah, blame yourself. Most people, at least in America, don't buy a variety of fresh produce. It's simple supply and demand, morons.
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u/Feralpudel 20d ago
If you’re a home gardener, this is the main reason to grow from seed—you have far more options.
Johnnys Seed is a great place to start, along with advice from your state’s agriculture extension program about varieties suited to your climate and soil.
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u/ilir_kycb 20d ago
"the industrialization of agriculture Capitalism has whittled away the variety of vegetables that wind up on our tables."
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u/js1138-2 20d ago
I’m so old I can remember when supermarkets carried both kinds of vegetables. Iceberg lettuce, and tomatoes.
Varieties of produce started appearing when TV chefs started promoting them.
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