Their colour is so misleading, because red food should be like really tangy and strong. Either sweet like a strawberry or cranberry, or savoury like ketchup. Tomatoes taste like they should be a pale green or yellow, but they're red. It's fucked up.

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[–] Feinsteins_Ghost@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I dont agree with this. Grocery store tomatoes are the way they are due to needing a tough skin to withstand mechanical picking processes, long storage times, exposure to ethylene gas, long transport times, etc. its not really because of a green ring around the stem of a tomato. Tomaotes dont ripen that way. Green shoulders have a well defined cause, like nutrient deficiency or wilt virus.

[–] dead@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2012/06/researchers-identify-gene-controls-tomato-ripening

This gene also influences how tomato fruit ripen, the reason commercial tomatoes develop into perfectly red, store-ready fruit.

However, this same trait reduces sugars and nutrients in the fruit.

Naturally, tomatoes unevenly ripen, showing darker green patches when unripe and variable redness when ripe -- traits that still show up in garden-variety and heirloom breeds.

However, in the late 1920s, commercial breeders stumbled across a natural mutation that caused tomatoes to ripen uniformly -- from an even shade of light green to an even shade of red.

The uniform redness makes it ideal for groceries, where customers expect evenly colored, red fruit.