Do you recognize this? Has the taste of tangerines really changed?
Sprouts taste less bitter, cauliflower no longer smells out the pan. Chinese food is adapted to the Dutch taste. Ready food from the supermarket tastes like nothing. “What does that whole cucumber still taste like?” The Dutch geneticist and bioengineer Theo van Hintum of Wageningen University and Research is concerned about the cucumbers that are in the supermarket today. They have little taste and are too watery, he thinks.
The manipulation with DNA in everything and everyone, the way in which fruit and vegetables are grown, makes everything adapted to the average taste of the consumer.
And the consumer? It keeps buying the cheapest junk.
When does it stop?
mandarins
The tangerines season has come. But different reactions at De Inspecteur on Radio 2 show that the taste of the fruits has decreased in recent years. Mandarins would be flawless, dry and tasteless. “It is true that the great flavour diversity is out,” says Professor of Tropical Agriculture Patrick Van Damme.
Genetically Modified
This is what our fruit looked like before it was genetically engineered. Peaches, bananas, watermelons and corn; they once looked very different, if we were to believe researchers — and the following pictures. Do you remember the infamous March Against Monsanto? The online action against the well-known food conglomerate that was under attack because of its frequent genetic manipulation of food. Now it turns out that farmers have “manipulated” their crops for millennia. And that it's positive for us, too. Since the birth of agriculture, some 12,000 years ago, farmers have tried their best to cultivate their crops selectively so that their fruits were better suited to their personal preferences. Less kernels, more flesh, bigger crops and more flavorful, the motto was.
