To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] flavorless food
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:10:36 -0500
A guy from Poland said that the first year he was in the US, he could tell
what he was eating only by color and shape. He said American food has no
taste. When I suggested a garden, he said he tried that and it wasn't much
better. So it might be varieties, or it might be depleted soil. Somewhere
I read something by a guy who said he could taste the effect of the soil on
fruit from different areas. He said the South gave things an earthy taste
he didn't like in the fruit. I wonder if the crops in Poland have more
flavor because the fields were not exposed to nitrogen fertilizers till
recent years. When the N eats up the organic matter, I think it's harder
for the soil to hang onto trace minerals. Ireland was a third world country
till recent decades, my 50 yo husband remembers when chemical fertilizer was
first applied to the fields there, and the potatoes had no flavor that year
or the years afterward.
We met a couple from Quebec who also said American food has no flavor.
I know that organic matter is broken down too quickly in the south, making
me suspect again that the ratio of organic matter may have as much to do
with flavor as anything else. Oh, that and the fact that our red and yellow
clays in the south are worn out and used up. These are very old soils, what
they had is long gone over the millions of years they have been here, and
they aren't all that good at holding anything till you get the pH and
organic matter up. When you do that, then things get screwy because closer
to neutral, it's harder to pick up the very scarce trace minerals. Donna