Bigger Isn't Better: Why Gigantic Produce is a Terrible Value

My girlfriend noticed these giant tomatoes the size of cantaloupes at Harris Teeter the other day. It's a produce-wide trend - softball-sized avocados, strawberries that are no longer bite-sized, apples that are more of a meal than a snack.

Many people look at giant portions and see a bargain, but abnormally large fruits and vegetables are a terrible value. Especially since many fruits and vegetables are sold by weight, you're paying an inflated price for watered-down taste and nutrition:

• Plants give about the same amount of nutrition to each fruit or vegetable no matter its size, so supersizing just dilutes it
• By breeding for size over nutrition & taste, there's evidence conventional produce nutrition & taste has genetically declined over time
• Fruits and vegetables need time to soak up the sun & develop flavor, but they can be robbed of that by artificially accelerated growing processes

Why would anyone buy these monsters? Even if you don't want to spend a little more on the foods that are worth buying organic, I don't understand the appeal of the wide range of imitation food products, from tasteless tomatoes to process cheese loaves to corn-based pancake syrup. Why not buy real food?

Do Bland Vegetables Make Us Fat?

I was making my work lunch salads tonight and took a bite of the organic green pepper I'd gotten from Harris Teeter - so incredibly tasteless, it was barely a step above cold styrofoam. Then I tried one of the grape tomatoes - my mouth barely even registered that there was something in it. May be time to get off my butt on Saturday mornings & check out the Falls Church Farmers Market.

Are bland vegetables the reason restaurants pile fat, salt & sugar on top of their salads to make them more appealing? Fresh, local vegetables are more expensive than huge cans of refried beans. And the vegetables go bad faster & need to be refrigerated - terrible for profit margins.

So today, we salute you, Mr. Giant Taco Salad Inventor. America couldn't have hit an obesity rate of one in three without you.