48 animal, vegetable, miracle
saved down the generations for a reason, or for many, and in the case of
vegetables one reason is always flavor. Heirlooms are the tangiest or
sweetest tomatoes, the most fragrant melons, the eggplants without a
trace of bitterness.
Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for
uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packing (e.g.
square tomatoes), and a tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be
mistaken, in practice, for actual flavor. Homegrown tomatoes are fa-
mously superior to their supermarket counterparts, but the disparity is
just as great (in my experience) for melons, potatoes, asparagus, sweet
corn, broccoli, carrots, certain onions, and the Japanese edible soybeans
called edamame. I have looked for something to cull from my must- grow
list on the basis of its being reasonably similar to the supermarket version.
I have yet to find that vegetable.
How did supermarket vegetables lose their palatability, with so many
people right there watching? The Case of the Murdered Flavor was a con-
tract killing, as it turns out, and long- distance travel lies at the heart of the
plot. The odd notion of transporting fragile produce dates back to the
early twentieth century when a few entrepreneurs tried shipping lettuce
and artichokes, iced down in boxcars, from California eastward over the
mountains as a midwinter novelty. Some wealthy folks were charmed by
the idea of serving out- of-season (and absurdly expensive) produce items
to their dinner guests. It remained little more than an expensive party
trick until mid- century, when most fruits and vegetables consumed in
North America were still being produced on nearby farms.
Then fashion and marketing got involved. The interstate highway sys-
tem became a heavily subsidized national priority, long- haul trucks were
equipped with refrigeration, and the cost of gasoline was nominal. The
state of California aggressively marketed itself as an off- season food pro-
ducer, and the American middle class opened its maw. In just a few de-
cades the out- of-season vegetable moved from novelty status to such an
ordinary item, most North Americans now don’t know what out- of-season
means.
While marketers worked out the logistics of moving every known veg-
etable from every corner of the planet to somewhere else, agribusiness