---
title: 'Why Do Tomatoes from the Grocery Store Taste Different?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mu2j7ib9_yA'
video_id: 'Mu2j7ib9_yA'
date: 2026-07-25
duration_sec: 1806
---

# Why Do Tomatoes from the Grocery Store Taste Different?

> Source: [Why Do Tomatoes from the Grocery Store Taste Different?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mu2j7ib9_yA)

## Summary

This video explores why grocery store tomatoes taste different from farmers market or homegrown ones, covering their history, cultivation methods, flavor science, and storage tips. Through blind taste tests and expert insights, it reveals how commercial practices like early picking and refrigeration impact taste.

### Key Points

- **Tomato origins and history** [00:16] — Tomatoes originated in South America, were domesticated in Mexico, and took centuries to become common in Italian cuisine.
- **Tomato classification** [01:35] — Botanically a fruit, legally a vegetable in the US (Supreme Court 1893), and part of the nightshade family.
- **Early suspicion of tomatoes** [03:12] — Early tomatoes resembled deadly nightshade and contained bitter alkaloids; domestication removed toxins.
- **Determinant vs indeterminate varieties** [05:04] — Determinant tomatoes grow to a predetermined size and ripen all at once; indeterminate grow like vines and produce continuously until cold.
- **Global tomato production** [07:08] — World produces 186 million metric tons annually; top producers India (20M tons) and China (68M tons, mostly for paste).
- **Commercial vs homegrown flavor** [08:06] — Commercial tomatoes are picked early, treated with ethylene gas for color, and lack flavor; homegrown tomatoes ripen fully on the vine.
- **Refrigeration causes flavor loss** [11:41] — Chilling below 12°C reduces flavor volatiles; however, if a tomato is perfectly ripe, refrigerate and bring to room temperature before eating.
- **Three tomato categories** [16:01] — Slicers (large for sandwiches), sauce tomatoes (plum, less moisture), and snacking tomatoes (cherry, sweet).
- **Tomato chemical composition** [20:57] — Skin has color pigments (lycopene), fruit wall contains sugars and acids (glucose, fructose, malic, citric, glutamic), jelly is mostly water, seeds are bitter.
- **Organic vs standard taste test** [24:29] — Blind test showed slight difference in ripeness and flavor, but not drastically; organic label doesn't guarantee better taste.

### Conclusion

The best tomatoes are those allowed to fully ripen on the vine, whether from farmers markets or your garden. For off-season, choose snacking tomatoes or canned varieties for sauces, and remember to store ripe tomatoes at room temperature or refrigerate briefly if needed.

## Transcript

into tomatoes one of the most popular vegetables used in almost every cuisine around the world but even though it's something we cook with and eat all the time it's a food that most of us know very little about from a fundamental
level for example the Tomato originated in South America then was domesticated in Mexico and actually took a few hundred years before being commonly used in Italian cuisine so how exactly did this tomato become popular all over the
world secondly from a flavor perspective have you ever wondered if you can really tell a difference between all these varieties or what are the best tasty varieties or what are the best tasty tomatoes for a BLT tomato sauce or
salsa M that one would be really good on a BLT wow that's good third from a buying perspective why do farmers market or homegrown Tomatoes always seem to taste so much better than the grocery store ones and lastly many people say
you should never refrigerate your Tomatoes but is that actually true well we're going to answer all of that and much more I purchased a bunch of different varieties of tomatoes and ran through several different taste tests so
we can get to the bottom of this and by the end of this video I promise you will understand everything you need to know to get the most out of your tomatoes and to start I have five tomatoes in front of me that I've never tried before this
is a red snapper tomato a pink heirloom variety a lemon boy a green striped tomato and a granadero which is a type of Roma or Plum tomato so I'm going to blindfold up and chop these and give them a taste test so while I prep that
and some of these different varieties that are out domesticated night shades and other common ones include potatoes eggplants
and peppers most of us associate a nice round red Ripe Tomato but there are hundreds of varieties of tomatoes in many shapes sizes and colors from a taste perspective the flesh is typically a mix of sweet sour un Umami though this
varies wildly from tomato to tomato and also how that tomato is being prepared and eaten specifically the tomato plant is part of the lyro persan esculentum nightshade family and from a Botanical perspective is actually a fruit but we
generally refer to fruits versus vegetables by their culinary uses and in the case of the Tomato it is typically used alongside other Savory ingredients inside Salsas pasta or pizza sauces sandwiches or salads addition Al from a
legal perspective at least in the US tomatoes are considered a vegetable in a decision by the Supreme Court of ncks versus headen in 1893 the court unanimously held that Tomatoes should be classified as vegetables rather than
fruits for purposes of tariffs Imports and Customs now today we can't imagine life without tomatoes whether fresh or processed in some way but their popularity is kind of surprising and more of a recent Trend in human history
unlike other ingredients we've covered on this channel such as eggs chicken staple ingredients for thousands of years and in fact the flavor of tomatoes that we love today was met with a lot of confusion and suspicion when it was
first introduced to Europe according to on food and cooking Tomatoes started out as small bitter berries growing on bushes in the west coast deserts of South America today after their domestication in Mexico
their name actually comes from the Aztec term for plump fruit Tom and a period of European suspicion that lasted into the 19th century they're eaten all over the world in a great variety of sizes shapes and keratinoid
though we think of the Tomato as synonymous with Italian food on a macro scale it wasn't part of the culture until much more recently and one article mentions that the earliest known spaghetti in tomato sauce recipe was
actually just dated from 1844 so this may make you wonder why was the early tomato met with such suspicion well the early tomato plants closely resembled a specific Nightshade plant known as the deadly nightshade and
tomato because they knew night shades were toxic and produced highly bitter fruit today's Tomatoes though are a domesticated version of this that over generations of selective cultivation don't produce the bitter alkaloids and
toxins that the deadly nightshades have and as you can imagine it took a few up to eating those Tomatoes since they look so similar to toxic bir varieties of night shades and in Italy
Mediterranean climate and Rich soils were ideal growing conditions for certain varieties of tomatoes helping spread their popularity so let's take a look at how tomatoes are grown then start tasting some of these different
into a vine-like or bush-like plant that can then yield a prolific Harvest and grown on the ground While others need to be carefully pruned and trellis to maximize the yield and support the weight of the fruits to keep them off
instead of reproduction now tomato plant varieties typically fall into two categories determinant and indeterminate and I'm going to turn it over to Kevin from epic gardening to show you I'm here in
my backyard garden with two different rows of tomatoes this row right here is my determinant row or my bushing style tomato and then over here I have my in determinant row or my Vining style tomatoes so first with the determinates
they're called that because they grow to a predetermined size based on the plant's genetics usually about six or seven feet the final little bud is a ability to grow any further when that happens they tend to Bush out and send
all their energy down to ripen most of the tomatoes within a tight window about a month or so which makes it really good for commercial cultivation and picking tomatoes all at the same time but over here with my Vining or indeterminate
tomatoes called that because the only thing that will get these tomatoes to stop growing is the season itself when it gets too cold they will start to die off but otherwise they will grow indeterminately sometimes up to even 20
ft long the beauty of these is that although you do have to train them trellis them and prune them a little bit more deliberately you get a reliable and consistent tomato production throughout the season which makes it really great
for backyard Gardener like myself now under normal outdoor conditions tomatoes are a warm seasoned crop that generally grows in the spring and summer and because of this short season tomatoes have historically been canned dehydrated
and sundried or turned into a sauce and paste that can last throughout the several winter months modern farming though uses green houses or temperature controlled hot houses to grow tomatoes year round and it's a pretty crazy
Innovation both culturally and culinarily to have fresh tomatoes that are available year round instead of only having them available during the summer and then relying on canned products throughout the fall in Winter and this
is why today on a global level the Tomato industry is a big production was 186 million metric tons of tomatoes now what was surprising to
me is that the top two tomato producing countries are India with just over 20 million tons though this does make sense because India has a large population and many of their dishes do start with tomatoes but then you have China with
over three times that amount at 68 million metric tons so what's going on here well while Chinese cuisine does have dishes with tomatoes in them according to this article from tomat news.com China's tomato production has
drastically increased in the past 10 to 15 years primarily due to processing and exporting tomato paste I'll leave a link to that whole article if you want to get the latest on tomato industry insights but let's get back to growing so usually
tomatoes are individually picked as they reach Peak ripeness on the vine unfortunately this isn't super practical for huge production Farms as ripe Tomatoes end up being quite soft and this causes two big issues first they'll
get smashed and bruised during that picking packing and transportation process or secondly they'll over rpen and spoil by the time they go through shipping sit on the shelves and finally get to the consumer and these issues are
what lead to some of these really big differences between the mass Market tomatoes and the ones that you grow yourself or find at the farmers market that are allowed to ripen fully on the vine accumulate more sugar acid and
Aroma compounds and have the fullest flavor so if you are growing your own Tomatoes you can literally take it from the garden straight to your plate in a couple of minutes or at a local farmers market they likely have picked their
just a day or two before where they are then immediately sold to Market goers however in order to have mass-produced tomatoes year round most of the grocery firmer texture so they hold up to the transport a uniform size and color to
appeal to Shoppers and lastly a consistent flavor which while the flavor is consistent from tomato to Tomato most of us in a side by-side test with another Farmers Market tomato will say yeah it's consistently worse now one
thing I was wondering is how do they get these Tomatoes perfectly red looking but still just lacking in flavor most commercially produced Tomatoes today are grown in green or hot houses which as shown in the shipping calendar can
really be done all year round in North America and this is why it is so common to see the term Greenhouse or hot house grown at the grocery store now because of the shipping and transport time a lot of these tomatoes grown in green houses
or hot houses need to be picked before they actually get ripe on the vine after produce shelves a lot of the prematurely picked Tomatoes will then be exposed to ethylene gas in rooms until they change color and soften enough for selling and
this is the same process that happens with other climacteric fruits like bananas apples and avocado and in general this tactic has allowed for produce to be picked early and shipped before it is softened in the field
radically transforming the global produce shipping landscape now not every tomato at the grocery store goes through this process it it does depend on the variety another common option you may see at the store are Vine ripened
Tomatoes or tomatoes sto still on the vine and according to the USDA fine riped tomatoes are harvested at a slightly riper stage and ripen fully without ethylene treatments quote the stem imparts a strong tomato smell that
appeals to Consumers as being an indicative of good flavor and freshness these Tomatoes also have a longer shelf life than beef steak tomatoes since they are smaller and have a thicker skin and Greenhouse Growers initially position
tovs in the marketplace as having Superior taste today there are typically vine like this and do they actually taste better it kind of depends a lot I mean I think a little bit of that human element is going on here where like we
better but if you do a side-by-side taste test with like an heirloom tomato or something like this you'll realize these still taste quite a lot better ripening is one piece of the puzzle but there's also another reason most
commercial Tomatoes end up lacking in flavor as noted in this paper on chilling induced tomato flavor loss a major part of the problem is a post Harvest handling system that chills the fruit low temperature storage is widely
used to slow ripening and reduce decay of tomatoes however chilling results in the loss of Flavor Flavor Associated volatiles are sensitive to temperatures below 12° C and their loss greatly
reduces the flavor quality now many people use this as justification that you should never refrigerate your Tomatoes but as I found out that's not the case sometimes you should refrigerate your tomatoes and
other times they are better left on the counter so how do you figure it out by asking yourself a single common sense question how ripe is your tomato if the leave it on the counter until you are ready to eat it and this is what I would
recommend for most mass-produced tomatoes in general we can perceive more Aroma and taste with a room temperature tomato compared to a cold one however if your tomato is already perfectly ripe you've got two options obviously number
one eat it and enjoy it right away now if you have some very ripe tomatoes that you grew or bought at a farmers market and leave it out for an extra day or two they can literally go soft and mushy in just that time now I need to throw out
half of this tomato instead I should have used option two store it in the fridge and bring it to room temperature for eating and this made me wonder could tomatoes that are the same temperature
at eating but one of them have been refrigerated well I put it to the test for this BLT test I took the same variety of tomato at equal ripes and added one to the fridge for 26 hours the other I just left out on the counter
it out of the fridge and set it outside for 20 minutes to raise it back to 70° F before making my perfect BLT which I'm kind of particular about it starts with
potato PR with a very thin slathering of mayo then I add a cracker thin crispy bacon layer light buttercrunch lettuce and a thick 1/2 in slice of tomato before adding the other top piece of
bread this right here is my ideal BLT and I'm so excited for this taste test so two were made with the refrigerated and then reheated which again did have a when I was kind of feeling them but let's see if I actually can blindfold up
and tell the difference between them so let's go
bacon and just a juicy tomato with a little lettuce
two dude oh my God I'm literally going to eat both of too like I I don't even know if these two are different I I like potentially
those were slightly different in tanginess but just both amazing still so nothing really going on let's go to number
taste test is it's kind of tomato forward when you bite in but then the bacon is kind of what lingers around so it is kind of hard to tell a difference it is kind of hard to tell a difference between any of
them I'm not really getting much difference here I would maybe wager two and three might be the same and one is different but no
no sorry I just got to I got to finish these real quick I'm starving that you shouldn't refrigerate tomatoes but I think what matters a lot more is
picking a variety you really really like make sure that variety is ripe and in season and then if you do need to throw it in the fridge for a day or two bring it out bring it up to room temperature if you don't like cold Tomatoes but for
really be worried about these are really delicious either way okay so we understand the history of tomatoes how they are grown some of the whether you should refrigerate them or not but for the rest of this video we've
got three things to talk about one what are the three broad categories of flavor of tomatoes from a chemical composition perspective and lastly how do tomatoes change flavor when they're
there are three main categories of tomatoes first is slicers this is used to refer to large varieties of tomatoes like beef steak big boy or many of those heirloom varieties secondly we have sauce tomatoes these typically refer to
Plum tomato varieties like San Marzano Roma and Amish paste which have a little bit less moisture and more of the Tomato flesh and then third we have snacking Tomatoes typically these refer to small tomato varieties like Cherry great Kari
or sungolds now these are very loose category with tons of variety and there are no rules here you can use slicers to make a tomato sauce use Aroma tomato for your sandwiches the important thing here
is the fine tomatoes that you actually enjoy the flavor of and one of the best ways to do that is with the blind taste test I introduced at the beginning of this video so in this test I have four slicer varieties that are also all
different heirloom varieties that I bought from my local farmers market then I have one sauce tomato the granadero so let's see how they taste side by side I always like to blindfold up when doing these obviously I've never tried
is which I'm just trying to give you some of my observations
juicy Tangy with a little bit of sweetness that one would be really good on a BLT to to pair with bacon wow that's good man that first one's hitting for me all right let's go to number two
so I know that's Aroma just based on the texture less juicy for sure um kind of a more green taste to it as well let's go number
tangy on that one I would love that in kind of maybe a salad dressing or something Eat Alone one still I love one number one number one still I love one number one number four
similar to each other than number one a little bit more on the the Tangy side solid but not my favorite all right number
to number one um taste though more on the sour side it would say less sweet um kind of reminds me of some like a tomato I think I'd want on like an Italian hogy
it's really very interesting to compare and contrast the differences between these though let's uh let's see what we got okay interesting so I would say these three varieties are definitely more on the sour side um and then in
terms of juiciness you can totally feel like the burst um I think this green is is the most balanced for me like the sweet and sour is nice and
balanced yeah but highly recommend giving this a shot if you're out of the farmers market it's really cool to compare and contrast I think for me what balance between the sweetness and the sourness um where these were a little
bit more sour forward that being said I think what you really need to figure out with tomatoes is when to use certain types for certain occasions so what did we learn from this test well first in raw applications I really prefer a
tomato with a balance of sweet and sour and secondly raw tomatoes do not have and this is really important because it kind of explains why tomatoes are so useful and have become popular in basically every cuisine around the world
when we cook with tomatoes we are primarily using them for their sour sweet and Umami taste but then we add a variety of aromatic ingredients to make our food more interesting for example in a pasta put nesca we add garlic an
chovies and olives to our tomatoes for a Pakistani chicken karaji we use garlic ginger and a bunch of spices with our Tomatoes or for a Piko the aromatic ingredients are garlic onion smoked paprika and chili powder and as a
reminder at a high level these six properties make up the flavor of food the human element and we have a breakdown of all these on my website reading but now I know you're probably wondering one thing from a chemical
perspective what is in these tomatoes that causes them to be sweet sour and Umami and why can some tomato varieties end up being so much sweeter than each other so let's take a look at the four parts of the Tomato on the outside we
have the skin and this includes a unique mix of keratinoid that provide the color and lycopene is the main pigment that provides the red color the skin also provides plenty of structure and texture moving inside we have the fruit wall and
this is rich in sugars and amino acids glucose and fructose lend to the Sweet Taste malic and citric acid provide the sour and glutamic acid provides Umami the inner tomato jelly is mostly water but will have some sugar balancing acids
neutral but could be a little bit bitter too if eaten alone and obviously every tomato variety has different amounts so that green red Heir room that I really enjoyed likely had a higher proportion of glucose and fructose compared to the
Malo and citric acid the Malo and citric acid though was likely much higher in that lemon boy variety which I pointed out as sour in a side-by-side test so knowing this context I wanted to do another test I always see these flavor
bomb sweet cherry tomatoes but do these actually taste fairly different or is this just a marketing term so I've got three varieties here these are some kind three varieties here these are some kind of pure multicolored one these are like
a sand a baby sand Marano um and then these are kind of those sweet on the vine cherry tomatoes what I'm going to do is just blindfold up and see if there are noticeable differences here between any of them and
I'm not trying to guess I just like the blindfold to focus really on the balance of sour and sweet so this
sweetness no sourness this one tastes super plain compared to three whoa these are good you kind of do get a little of the smell of like the
get a little of the smell of like the vine that it was these to me are a little bit more tart I feel like my tongue is really watering which is nice um and then these are definitely a little bit more sweeter
was cooking these down to with a sauce and then surprisingly this kind of sandwich ano variety just really doesn't taste like much of anything and in conclusion for this test I would definitely recommend trying out
snacking Tomatoes you can clearly tell some differences between them okay so we tomatoes and the flavor differences between them raw but what happens to tomatoes when they are cooked when we cook Tomatoes down in a sauce a lot of
that free water is evaporated off leading us to a nice thick sauce and there are two big changes happening first we are significantly concentrating the glucose and fructose the malakin citric acid and the glutamic acid and
secondly we are creating new Aromas by various reactions happening and this is why tomato based products taste so much different than raw ones for example in sundried tomatoes they are very concentrated because most of that water
has evaporated off or a small can of tomato paste was likely made from several individual Tomatoes now in one final test I wanted to see if I could tell a difference between an organic and a standard roma
tomato sauce so for this I added 500 G of each tomato along with a Sprinkle of salt and 20 G of olive oil tossed it into the oven at 250° f for 3 hours then just brought those over and poured them into a blender now while these are the
same variety of tomato tomatoes with the organic label are grown according to the USDA organic guidelines meaning natural intervention restricted pesticide use better soil and product regulations keep in mind though that producers do have to
pay for the USDA to come and expect and certify them as organic so a small farmer who is producing incredible Tomatoes may not choose to be labeled as organic and this is what happened when I bought the tomatoes at the farmers
market someone actually asked in line like are these organic tomatoes and he goes I mean they would probably pass but we don't actually pay for them to get organic certified so technically they're not now when raw the organic Roma
tomatoes just look and taste riper to me but what happens when they are cooked down and concentrated in this sauce so can you taste the difference between an organic tomato puree and a standard one let's blindfold up and give
standard one let's blindfold up and give them a
again did look a little less ripe just looks marginally lighter in ripe just looks marginally lighter in color as
noises though really good also I will say this is a great thing to do during the summer with extra tomatoes you can turn this into pizza sauce pasta sauce roasted
Salsas just by depending on what spices and things you add to this first one and things you add to this first one good
tasting oh was that different I'm not sure nothing's leaping off the sure nothing's leaping off the page let me go back through
left off the page from me here if I had a guess guess I would say one and two a guess guess I would say one and two are the same and three are one and two are the same and three is different so I wasn't
same and three is different so I wasn't exactly sure why but one and a little more sour whereas three was definitely a
little bit more rounded so was I able to tell the difference between an organic and a standard roma tomato yes but let me point out a couple of caveats you got to keep in mind from a flavor perspective first these did look
different in terms of ripeness and I could have maybe changed that if I had waited a day or two secondly these were not drastically different and I could have adjusted the sauces I could have tried cooking them down longer adding a
little sugar or honey to sweeten them but then people would also argue the point of buying better tasting ingredients is that you don't need to do anything to them now we've covered a lot of stuff in this video but one thing we
haven't talked about really at all is canned tomatoes and that is because I have done a whole separate video on that but even if you've seen it I would highly recommend going back for the rewatch it makes a lot more sense now
especially now that we do have the context from this video but to round this video out here's how I would recommend buying Tomatoes throughout the year depending on where you are in the US at least from June to September is
your Peak tomato seasoned go buy and try as many different varieties at your farmers market or grow them yourself it is so much fun just tasting them side by side and figuring out for yourself what Tomatoes you like the best some of my
favorite meals to make are BLTs obviously pasta ala panzanella salad and breakfast sandwiches is literally just an English muffin from a bakery crisp up add a spread of cream cheese some crispy bacon and a thick piece of tomato I
could eat that every day during the the summer so take advantage of peak tomato season while you can but then here are the three things that I do from October to May if I need fresh tomatoes for a salad a rice bowl or kind of quick meals
like that I'll typically stick to snacking varieties and in this video I found out I did really like those sweet ones the most secondly if I do want a sandwich I will just buy a grocery store slicer tomato and accept that it's not
going to be great for sauces I'll stick to whole peeled canned tomatoes or specifically I like to look for cans with tomato puree in them also I did that I think I'm going to do a sidebyside blind taste test on the
and subscribe but anyway that will wrap it up for this video I hope you now understand what are the differences between all these varieties of tomatoes typically taste so much better than commercial ones and a little bit of that
tomato history so go out in the world try as many tomatoes as you can this the comments but that will wrap it up for me in this one I will catch you all for me in this one I will catch you all in the next one peace y'all