Taste of fruits & vegetables

[tivol at tethys.ph.albany.edu]

Several comments have been posted regarding the flavors of transgenic foods.
Flavor used to be one of the main criteria by which commercial varieties were
chosen; however, nowadays the selection criteria have more to do with appear-
ance and with shipping and ripening properties than anything else.  The var-
iety which all ripens at once, which is tough enough to survive a mechanical
picker and be shipped across the country, and which looks good at the end is
the ideal.  Flavor is about the seventh criterion and nutrition is not even
on the list!  This is why tomatoes cannot be safely canned without further
acidification.  If this is true of varieties selected by low-tech means, it
*might* be even truer for varieties altered by high-tech.  Thus, it's not the
genetic engineering, it's the motivations underlying the selection--especial-
ly selections made by large, highly mechanized farms.

					Yours,

					Bill Tivol