On Food and Cooking

fruits and vegetables were soon officially
canonized as one of the four food groups that
should be eaten at every meal. Still, the
consumption of fresh produce continued to
decline through much of the 20th century, at
least in part because its quality and variety
were also declining. In the modern system of
food production, with crops being handled in
massive quantities and shipped thousands of
miles, the most important crop characteristics
became productivity, uniformity, and
durability. Rather than being bred for flavor
and harvested at flavor’s peak, fruits and
vegetables were bred to withstand the rigors
of mechanical harvesting, transport, and
storage, and were harvested while still hard,
often weeks or months before they would be
sold and eaten. A few mediocre varieties came
to dominate the market, while thousands of
others, the legacy of centuries of breeding,
disappeared or survived only in backyard
gardens.