http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-refrigerator.html 2016-10-17 22:39:58 In Refrigerators, Tomatoes Lose Flavor at the Genetic Level Once a tomato is picked from the vine, there’s only one thing you can do to preserve its flavor: Keep it out of the fridge. === The tomato hitching a ride home in your grocery bag today is not the tomato it used to be. No matter if you bought plum, cherry or heirloom, if you wanted the tastiest tomato, you should have picked it yourself and eaten it immediately. That’s because a tomato’s flavor — made up of sugars, acids and chemicals called volatiles — degrades as soon as it’s picked from the vine. There’s only one thing you can do now: Keep it out of the fridge. Researchers at The University of Florida have found in a Harry J. Klee It’s like a symphony: “Remove the violins and the woodwinds,” Dr. Klee wrote in an email. “You still have noise, but it’s not the same. Add back just the violins and it still isn’t right. You need that orchestra of 30 or more chemicals in the right balance to give you a good tomato.” When you can get fresh tomatoes, Dr. Klee recommends storing them at room temperature, to preserve their flavor, and eating them within a week of bringing them home. If you see your grocer storing them at temperatures that are too cold, tell them not to, he says. But this research may seem mostly academic. The average American consumes After all, most of the tomatoes we eat out of season are plucked from their vines probably in Florida or Mexico, just as they started to ripen. They are sorted, sized, graded and packed into a box with other tomatoes, totaling 25 pounds. Then they stay in a humidity and temperature-controlled room (no less than 55 degrees Fahrenheit) and ingest ethylene, a gas to make them ripen, for two to four days before being transported on a temperature-controlled truck to a warehouse. There they are repackaged, re-sorted and shipped to your grocer. There, if demand is low or if there’s no room, they may be stored in a fridge, and by the time you get them, it’s been a week to ten days. “It’s probably never going to equal the one that matured in your backyard over the 80 or 90 days that you grew it, but it beats stone soup” said In cold months, should you endure a tomatoless diet? There are alternatives, says “My advice for consumers is don’t eat a tomato in the winter,” he said. “Make a tomato jam in the summer and store and preserve it. Use dried tomatoes from the store. Make a tomato ketchup and can it — you can have it for the whole winter.”