If you don't buy free-range tomatoes, you might as well support tomato lynching!!

Some farmers have been hanging from vines!!

chimp_ninja: In other news, veggies from our local farmer's market taste better than veggies from even the fancy grocery stores. It shouldn't surprise people that food suffers a bit when you ship it 5,000 miles.

Especially tomatoes. Huge difference in the bullet proof grocery store tomatoes and the local heirloom.

Overpay is subjective. I'm not saying that subby is cheap, just that he has bad taste.

I'd pick local over organic every time. That being said, I live in the coldest capital city in the world, and I'm fond of things like mangos and avocados. I don't want to eat like a Russian peasant in the winter, but neither do we need to be importing apples from New Zealand.

I was in the supermarket last week looking for garlic. The local Ontario stuff was $2 a bulb. Or I could buy garlic from Mexico, or from China, for $0.69. Something is really wrong with our food supply chain.

Nadie_AZ: chimp_ninja: In other news, veggies from our local farmer's market taste better than veggies from even the fancy grocery stores. It shouldn't surprise people that food suffers a bit when you ship it 5,000 miles.

From what I have read, organic foods can travel just as far. We've organic foods from all over, here.

Very true. If you're eating organic because of some sort of environmental consciousness, you have to take into consideration how far your food has travelled and how much energy that took. You're not helping if your strawberries are shipped in fom 3,000 miles away. Moreover, more often than not the "organic" label just means that the farmer did all the USDA paperwork; it doesn't mean the product is any better or that your local uncertified farmer isn't doing the exact same thing.

Eating local, however, means that (1) the foods are fresher, (2) the foods are suited to your area of the country and probably took less energy to produce and (3) the money is going back into he local economy.

So, if you have a choice eat local and organic, then local, then organic.

Article wasn't about organic produce.

Subby fail.

If you have the time, inclination, and space, grow them yourself.

Kazan: it's just all "natural" products they use

like arsenic and dog shiat

I wonder when Farms will start labeling their produce "Harvested Without Illegal Labor" and charge an extra 5 cents10 dollars?

Heirloom tomatoes taste awesome. The "organic" part isn't the reason.

were they picked by indigenous lesbian farmers tho?

Almost every "Whole Foods", "organic" food fetishist I know is also a potsmoker. I have no problem with marijuana. What drives me up a wall is that these people will go on and on about how stupid I am to eat a "corporate tomato" from Kroger because of all the pesticides and chemicals in it, and they will turn right around and do four lungbusting bong hits of marijuana that have absolutely NO IDEA about the contents of - with god knows what sprayed all over it by a Mexican hobo in the CA hills.

dumbasses.

Captain_Ballbeard: Almost every "Whole Foods", "organic" food fetishist I know is also a potsmoker. I have no problem with marijuana. What drives me up a wall is that these people will go on and on about how stupid I am to eat a "corporate tomato" from Kroger because of all the pesticides and chemicals in it, and they will turn right around and do four lungbusting bong hits of marijuana that have absolutely NO IDEA about the contents of - with god knows what sprayed all over it by a Mexican hobo in the CA hills.

dumbasses.

What a weird rant to go on

Captain_Ballbeard: Almost every "Whole Foods", "organic" food fetishist I know is also a potsmoker. I have no problem with marijuana. What drives me up a wall is that these people will go on and on about how stupid I am to eat a "corporate tomato" from Kroger because of all the pesticides and chemicals in it, and they will turn right around and do four lungbusting bong hits of marijuana that have absolutely NO IDEA about the contents of - with god knows what sprayed all over it by a Mexican hobo in the CA hills.

dumbasses.

If you have the money for Whole Foods you probably have a decent grower. I know where mine comes from.

I'm clueless on where the blow comes from though. Probably the back of some Colombian peasant.

As more and more people claim they are local. "Local" sales rise.

Eating local means that most of the year you have very little to chose from and the rest of the time you pay way too much for junk. The produce in the supermarket up the road is so much better than the "local" trash and much. much cheaper. I'll never buy another basket of under-ripe, over-ripe and green berries again. I'll stick with a commercial operation that will be there next week, next year, and ten years from now, and still be delivering quality.

"Organic" is just a marketing buzzword. Local, on the other hand, is alright.

I try my best to buy local, Thankfully the two big supermarket chains around here are making a good effort to source from local farmers. If the local apples/garlic/tomatoes/etc. are close to the imported stuff, I'll usually buy the local.

But there are only so many dollars one has to spend these days. I only make about $25,000/year (substitute teacher looking for a real job). Sorry Farmer Joe who lives down the road, but you often can't grow stuff as competitively as the guys in the Okanagan Valley or California.

Bad_ad85: As more and more people claim they are local. "Local" sales rise.

Cry FocusGroup and let slip the Dogs of Marketing!

uber humper: Overpay is subjective. I'm not saying that subby is cheap, just that he has bad taste.

You sound fat bourgeois.

If all the world's produce were organic & heirloom & local & sustainable, then what would the bourgeoisie eat?

/hint: they would eat, but others wouldn't

Totally worth it.

Major fail by subby. The article was about locally grown food.

And if you've never eaten a vine ripened tomato, you have no idea what you're missing.

Supermarket tomatoes are picked when they are green and exposed to ethylene gas for several days which turns them red. This is done because the tomatoes are less fragile to the shipping process, and people in the food service industry don't like how a ripe tomato falls apart when sliced open.

Tomatoes grow at room temperature. They are shipped around room temperature. They are sold at room temperature.

First thing my mother does with tomatoes is throw them in the fridge.

I didn't know what a tomato was supposed to taste like until I grew up. I thought I disliked them. It was just her farking unbreakable habit of throwing tomatoes in the farking fridge her entire life.

/Yes, I have issues.

Nothing tastes better than vine ripened fresh picked tomatoes.

BizarreMan: Nothing tastes better than vine ripened fresh picked tomatoes bacon.

FTFY

Gortex: $25,000/year (substitute teacher

Shoot, what school system is that? here subs get 60 bucks for a day, and it just got a half hour longer.

The problem is that no one wants locally grown anything the minute it has to be transported anywhere. I live in Hanover, Va, which is actually known for tomatoes within a 50 mile range. I even grow my own and send the extra to a farm collective which sells them to local grocery stores. You can't grow tomatoes year round in Hanover. You can't even claim the whole summer. There is a limited "season" for tomatoes, and it's been growing by days in the past few years, but you're still stuck with June to September to get fresh tomatoes. After that, you're buying produce from somewhere else.

I bought some free-range bread tonight, so I'm getting a kick...

Overpaying for organic heirloom free-range home-made style handmade artisan tomatoes is a $7 billion business

FTFY, subby

Idjits.

/DNRTFA

I will go WAY out of my way to make sure none of my money ever makes it into the hands of Monsanto. That company is pure evil.

This reminds me of the time I made yellow-and-black chili.


I started with yellow heirloom tomatoes


I turned them into tomato sauce


I added two kinds of sausage


And some beans


And it was yellow-and-black chili

/My blog sucks

I love that all the idiots on here somehow portray eating local and organic as a snobby, yuppie thing to do.

Yeah, so my redneck grandparents who've grown organic vegetables for 50 years are hipsters. Okay, right.

You don't have to be a hipster to recognize that something tastes really farking good and that chemicals are nasty to mess around with.

This is a small representation of what I grew this summer. I ordered my heirloom tomato seeds from Amazon.

Also, to those who are interested in how processed food actually gets to your plate and how the industrial "organic" industry has come to be...I seriously cannot stress enough that you read The Omnivores Dilemma (new window). This book is one of the most fascinating books I have read in a long time. It is not preachy, it is totally fact and story based. It is also not overly technical...if you passed High School science, you can handle this book.

1) Your local farmers market is likely to contain the exact same crap found at the wholesale produce market. A city dweller like me could easily go to the local produce market, fill the back of my truck with cheap, ass-produced tomatoes that have been ethylened to look ripe, go to the farmers market, put on a straw cap, and sell them to you for $3.99 per pound.

2) Grocery store tomatoes suck

3) Grow your own. There's nothing like them.

Fett56: I love that all the idiots on here somehow portray eating local and organic as a snobby, yuppie thing to do.

Yeah, so my redneck grandparents who've grown organic vegetables for 50 years are hipsters. Okay, right.

You don't have to be a hipster to recognize that something tastes really farking good and that chemicals are nasty to mess around with.

It's almost like your grammy's vegetables and the marketing gurus who started slapping "ORGANIC" on things just so they could mark the price up 40% on a product with no discernible benefits aren't the same people and shouldn't be compared to one another.

But congratulations on herping and derping so hard. It's not like it made you look silly or anything.

/ also, there's no taste difference just because it's "organic". You're either full of shiat, or you're too dense to realize that if you grow vegetables in different places with different soils and different techniques they may taste different from one another whether they're "organic" or not

I head to the local farmers market for produce. Almost all of the stuff is local or from a state over. I love local honey and honeycomb! I enjoy buying local. I just finished installing a watering system for the garden and look forward to using it.

My parents have many fruit trees in the yard and nothing beats fresh from the tree fruit. I can never eat store bought apples, peaches, apricots, and cherrys.

Lsherm: you're still stuck with June to September to get fresh tomatoes. After that, you're buying produce from somewhere else.

Or not eating fresh tomatoes for the rest of the year. Of course, this year we had such a weird autumn, the farmer's market had tomatoes up until a couple of weeks ago (in Massachusetts!).

I don't go all locavore-y about much, but there are a few things where I consider that it really does make a significant taste difference. Tomatoes, corn on the cob, asparagus.