Why don't tomatoes taste like..... tomatoes anymore, unless they come straight off the vine?!

I agree. I bought some vine tomatoes yesterday in the hope of being good as they looked, nice and red. They are crunchy and taste of absolutely nothing. Long life is the god these days, not taste. Grow your own.

The people who claim that tomatoes are ar genetically modified are talking from where the sun does not shine!
The reason as some people have mentioned before is to send tomatoes to the shops and get there both in one piece and have good shelf life they are picked before they are fully ripe.
If they were left on the vine and fully attached to the plant the fruit sugars get to form in the tomatoes flesh and therefore the flavour develops.

A tomato grown in spain the canary isles or jersey taste just the same as the tomatoes grown in the UK if the tomato has to travel from one end of the country to the other is also just the same.

That's one of the reasons now why supermarkets are making such a fuss about locally brought in produce as it has longer to spend growing before picking and becomes more tasty!

The only difference can be how the plants are fed but as this is done for Commercial reasons you can bet its nearly the same type of liquid fertiliser's used!

Oh and by the way i attended a blind wine tasting a few years back where a friend of mine who owns a good nationally known wine importer changed the way this was done and hid the bottles from view so all the tasters could see were glasses and no bottle at all.
No even bottles covered in cloths.
Well surprise surprise the experts had problems telling the so called good wines from the allegedly bad or cheap wines !
I wonder why? funny that!
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Tomatoes were genetically modified years ago to ensure they could make it to the store without being damaged. The only hope are gardeners who use heirloom seeds and giant corporations like Monsanto are trying to make heirloom seeds illegal. Even when you go to a farmer's market at the end of summer, you are going to find that most tomatoes available, even if the farmer won't admit it, have been genetically modified. What's the big deal? Genetic modification affects cells and more than that the most important cells: those that carry flavor.

Tomato fiend

We could ask the same question about wine i.e. why does some wines taste so inferior to others.

The reason is all about quality. It depends on soil type etc etc.

The inferior tasting, cheaper tomatoes are grown to inferior standards whilst most vine tomatoes are grown in better conditions.

The reason is ; they are picked GREEN so they can be sorted-packed-and shipped hopefylly they will look like tomatoes when they reach the store shelves, although I have seen "vine ripe tomatoes " that were still green and hard. --- really not fit to eat

I agree with you. I have not had a decent tomato for years. Dutch are the worst in my opinion and the Italian are the best. The so called vine ones are not so good either.

Tomatoes sold in stores are bred for long shelf life, not flavour. Also they are picked before they are ripe so they get all the flavour cold storage can give them.

They are GMO Hydroponic tomatoes. Genetically modified grown in water not soil. That is why they taste of nothing.

if you eat a tomato no matter what it tastes like it is a tomato which means it always tastes like tomato lol =D

Genetically modified food that's the answer

same as strawberries dont taste like strawberries from other countries.its the soil,grow styles ect.