Rod Dreher

Good Thing Seculars Aren’t Religiously Violent

The Proof Is In The Tasting

By Rod Dreher • August 7, 2012, 12:12 PM

A friend writes:

At Whole Foods after Church Sunday I decided to spend some extra money on the Atlantic Salmon. Normally I just buy the cheap “Salmon” from the Kroger or Tom Thumb. Its really hard to fully describe the difference. This Salmon was delicate and sweet, melted in your mouth practically. A world apart from the cheap Salmon (fatty and fishy). I know I keep reading “eat less of a higher quality meat.” I don’t think its ever been as clearly demonstrated to me how big a difference it can make. I would forgo several nights of meat if I knew it meant getting to work with a higher quality fillet of Salmon. I don’t think I’ve ever had “organic” or “free-range” chicken, I’m always suspicious of it so I just go with whats cheapest. In my most recent copy of Cooks Illustrated they actually compared brands of whole chickens so now at least I have a starting point. (The cheapest brand being called “OK,” some found this broth-injected bird “spongy,” “wet,” and “bland beyond description.”” whereas the highest scoring chicken used descriptions I never would have expected with chicken like “clean,” “sweet,” “buttery,” “savory,” “chicken-y,” and “juicy,” with “richly flavored” dark meat that was “so moist” and “tender.” In sum: “Really perfect.”)

Before when I read about the need or suggestion or whatever you want to call it for eating less but buying a higher quality I understood it on an intellectual level. Now I get it though.

Yep. I’ve been there for a while. I eat less meat than I did before, but I eat better meat. It’s worth the sacrifice, I find. In 2003, not long after we moved to Dallas, we bought and baked a pasture-raised chicken from some folks at the farmer’s market. It was way more expensive than supermarket chicken, but I cannot begin to tell you how much more delicious it was. We served it at a small dinner party, and one of our guests raved, “This chicken tastes like chicken!”

It’s hard to explain this to people, but once you taste the difference, you get it, and like my friend (and myself), you may find it easier to go vegetarian more often so as to be able to afford good-quality meat.

With chicken, I’ve found that the farm-raised birds go even further than supermarket birds because you can make such a delicious stock from them. Because they really do taste more like chicken than factory-farmed birds, the stock you make from boiling down the carcass after you’ve picked it clean is especially good.

Any of you readers have any of these “proof is in the tasting” epiphanies?

Posted in Food. Tagged chicken, salmon, taste, Whole Foods.

45 Responses to The Proof Is In The Tasting

jaybird says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:26 pm

I’m incredibly skeptical of stuff like this – if you just spent twice what you’d normally pay on a cut of free-range meat, bottle of wine, organic vegetables or whatever, you are considerably more likely to rate the quality/taste as being better. what else are you going to say: “Hey, I just wasted a bunch of money on a fancy version of something that’s not appreciably different than the bargain stuff I usually buy!” This is borne out over and over again in double-blind taste tests, where people consistently fail to correctly discern organic/free-range foods from the regular mass-produced/factory-farm versions of same. Even “professional” wine-tasters can be fooled into thinking a chardonnay is a merlot by adding a few drops of red food-coloring. Spend your money however you want, but don’t believe the hype™.
cecelia says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:28 pm

concord grape jelly – grow the grapes, make it then jar it. You will never eat supermarket grape jelly (even the expensive stuff) without cringing. Actually – I used to get my grapes from a friend who sadly sold up and moved – so now I go to the Amish farmer’s market in the fall and buy them organic there. I would say all jams and jellies taste better when made from scratch.
Franklin Evans says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:29 pm

My personal experience has been astonishment over how people can settle for anything but the “real thing”.

Our family always had a vegetable garden. From the age of 10, for about three years, it was my garden, on former farmland that had been resting for over a century. I think back on the beefsteak tomatoes, radishes, four varieties of lettuce, cucumbers and more whenever I eat something from the supermarket produce section, and miss them dearly.

Philadelphia has several farmers’ markets around the city. The one around Rittenhouse Square has brightened my culinary life immensely. You have not had a potato, my friends, until you’ve had some grown locally and set out for you without special cleaning or packaging. My epiphany, as it were, was potatoes, not animal protein.
James C. says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:31 pm

Oh, yes. Even my Rush Limbaugh-listening father noticed the difference when I made him burgers from local grass-fed beef. He was so surprised! That beef went right around his political barriers and went straight to his taste buds. And you should have seen him when I got him a bottle of Mexican Coke made with sugar cane. Now he avoids the corn syrup stuff now that he’s had the real thing.

People get so used to cheap meat, and they forget that meat was always quite expensive until the factory farms came in.
James C. says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:39 pm

And I always tell people who aren’t fond of milk to find some unpasteurized stuff from grass-fed cows. The taste is extraordinary because we’ve all gotten used to the adulterated crap. And you can make everything from it, yogurt, butter, sour cream, etc. And instead of turning horribly rancid when left out, it clumps up and gives out a blue-cheesy smell. A much more pleasant, unprocessed product.

Alas it’s hard to find because of Big Brother and Big Dairy. Score one for France, where you can buy raw milk from vending machines!
grendel says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:41 pm

Warning: I’m writing from coastal British Columbia were we know a thing or two about salmon.

Was the generic salmon Atlantic or Pacific? I ask because cheap salmon is usually farm raised Pacific salmon. At least around here, but I think that’s true elsewhere too. There’s just a lot more Pacific salmon than there is Atlantic salmon. There is a world of difference between the two in taste, colour, and texture. The two fishes are very different, and not that closely related. In order to get a real comparison you would need to compare Whole Foods Atlantic salmon with grocery store Atlantic salmon. Mark sure you are comparing apples to apples.
Joshua says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:44 pm

My next-door neighbor got into hunting turkey somewhat recently. Early one morning he announced he’d bagged a bird. That evening we had an early Thanksgiving, and believe me, the taste difference was noticeable!
BradleyP says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:44 pm

This is a surprise because Atlantic Salmon is all farm-raised, which usually makes fish taste the way the flamingo pond at a zoo smells. All Pacific salmon is–for now, at least–wild, and the difference in taste is enormous. We grilled a frozen full-size Pacific coho salmon fillet last night, and it was heavenly as usual. Canned Salmon is wild. We avoid Atlantic except occasionally for lox–the smoke and copious onions cover up the unpleasant flavor.
Rod Dreher says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:46 pm

I’m incredibly skeptical of stuff like this

Well, skepticism is healthy, but it’s important not to let this tip over into cynicism. For vegetables, I think that by far the reason farmer’s market veggies taste better than supermarket veggies is freshness. As far as meat goes, I disagree with you there, and disagree strongly.

I have to agree with Cecelia on the jelly thing, too. I’ve never had homemade grape jelly, but homemade fig preserves are way, way better than what you can buy in the store. Again, I think it’s a matter of freshness.

I agree with you, jaybird, about the wine tasting thing, because just the other day I was reading about how studies have shown that even wine experts can be fooled, and have been fooled in laboratory experiments. That said, I recently had the experience of drinking two bottles of Burgundy wine, made from the same grape, by two different vineyards. One was a $34 bottle of wine; the other was $18. The taste test wasn’t blind, but I far and away preferred the cheaper bottle. Maybe this says something about my own tastes, I dunno. But I wasn’t swayed by the knowledge that one bottle was more expensive than the other, even though I had bought both of them.
Tom S says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:51 pm

I usually get meat, fish, fruits and vegetables at Whole Foods and use the local supermarket for everything else. One night I got caught short and to get some pork chops from the local supermarket. I cooked them the way I do (baked at 350, brushed with soy sauce and sprinkled with maple sugar). These chops lierally bled water, shrank, and were flavorless.
Charles Cosimano says:

August 7, 2012 at 12:57 pm

I’ve never been able to tell the difference.
bmj says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:00 pm

@JamesC: I agree with you about raw milk. It’s akin to drinking a milkshake. That said, some people can be turned off the “gamy” taste it can sometimes have. Personally, I love raw milk cheese, but my sister-in-law, who does like raw milk, just can’t get into it.

As for the apparent increased quality of naturally raised meat–I’d be willing to put my farmer’s grass-fed, pastured ground beef against just about anything, and I suspect you would pick his. As for price, I pay $5 per pound–not terribly cheap, but not terribly expensive, either, and perfectly reasonable for a meal once a week (given that a pound will provide dinner my family).
Steve says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:05 pm

About two years ago, after having a convincing steak taco dinner at my brother’s house, I started buying 90 percent of my family’s meat directly from an organic farmer in Iowa who comes into Chicago once a month. He raises cows and feeds them solely grass (no grain or garbage that factory cows are fed. Grass-fed beef is much, much better for you than standard factory beef.) He has a network of other organic farmers from which he sources pork and poultry products. Terrific stuff, you can really taste the difference.

My conservative-leaning father-in-law scoffs at the concept of “grass-fed beef” and anything “organic.” But he’s the kind of guy who would never admit to tasting the difference, even if he could.

Chiming in about salmon, the friend might want to try Pacific salmon, specifically wild Alaskan salmon. Wild is the key.
Al-Dhariyat says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:08 pm

I (think I) can sometimes tell the difference when eating steak or plain baked salmon but otherwise, I’ve been flummoxed.

With chicken or fish or veg, I think my inability to tell the difference this speaks to different preparation methods. In my experience, South Asian cooking methods rely on heavily spiced recipes whereas Western cooking seems to emphasize the “natural” flavor of the meat or veg. So if I’m making a curry, I don’t taste a huge difference between the factory vs natural. If I’m cooking Amrikan-style, I can tell a difference in freshness but not necessarily taste.
ThatFriend says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:12 pm

Correction, It was in fact Pacific Salmon. My mistake in writing an e-mail before 7am.
The fish being from “whole foods” really made little difference I’m sure. The biggest difference was that I bought non-farm raised this time. I paid about twice the normal price of the farm raised and it was totally worth it.
MikeCLT says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:15 pm

To keep it simple try tomatoes fresh from the garden vs from the store. There is no comparison.

We bought grass fed beef from the local farmer’s market. Much better than the stuff from super market even if more expensive.
grendel says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:20 pm

Bradley — that’s not quite true. Not all Pacific salmon is wild, though about 95% is. Virtually all Atlantic salmon is farmed, but I think Norway may still sell a bit of the wild stuff. But perhaps not.
Nate says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:23 pm

I’m with Franklin Evans re the veggies from home gardens. I also had a huge garden growing up, as did all of our friends and neighbors. Tthere are certain cases where the store version is such a bummer if you grew up eating (your own) garden veg.
Tomatoes are an easy one (there’s *no way this side of hell* that a blind taste test won’t show the superiority of the garden tomato over the fake-red cardboard cutout they sell in stores).
I’d also say bell peppers and green beans. Especially beans. The garden beans have a nuttiness and a soil-taste (in a good way) that the store bean doesn’t have. And the texture of the store bean is usually way different.

My ‘epiphany’ moment, ironically, was when I was a little kid and was served some pork out at our family friends’ farm. They bought a pig from their hippie neighbor and butchered it. It tasted so…porky and grassy. Like any picky kid, I didn’t like it, since I was used to the bleached version you got in stores. For many years, I thought that store meat was so much better. Heh.
grendel says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:25 pm

By the way, perhaps a crunchy con should not be eating atlantic salmon in the first place. It’s on the SeaChoice list of species to avoid:

http://www.seachoice.org/fish/salmon-3/
Heatherer says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:31 pm

There was a sale to get a free carton of organic milk with a purchase of a cereal I regularly buy anyway, so I tried it. Oh man, it’s so delicious! It was like whole milk flavor in a 1% carton.

Garden grown heirloom tomatoes are the same thing. And no matter how much of a pain it is to make the time, I make my own strawberry and blueberry jam because I cannot imagine going back to the store kind.

I’d be curious to blind test some meat, which I haven’t yet completely switched over on.
Polichinello says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:35 pm

There is no proof in the taste, actually. It’s an entirely subjective standard, and thus can’t really prove anything beyond your own desires.

As jaybird pointed out, there have been a number of blind taste tests, and no conclusive superiority has been determined. Stossel, Penn & Teller and a lot of others have some fun with the organic fanatics often times with blind taste tests.

I used to buy into the whole organic thing, myself. I’d buy the wildly overpriced fish and meat from Whole Foods for grilling. One day, I decided to go with the Kroger version, and–lo and behold–there was no discernible difference. I didn’t hear a choir of angels sing, nor did I spit out the offending flesh from my mouth. I tasted like salmon, no different than the stuff I got from Whole Foods. I was happy to realize a 50% savings, though.

If you still insist on spending a lot more at Whole Foods, fine. Go ahead. It’s a nice store, and I’m sure the libertarian CEO won’t mind relieving you liberals and crunchies of your excess dollars.
Mike says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:38 pm

Fresh, high quality tuna causes the same reaction for me. Anything after that tastes more like tuna from a can. I’d say the same about Parmesan cheese, which is totall different from the stuff in the green container. And you am shred your own at the same price as grated in a jar.
Jake Meador says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:38 pm

Yes, my parents have a few friends who are farmers and sometimes my dad goes out to help them with work on the farm. One time as a “thank you” they gave my dad a couple steaks from the cows they raised. Unbelievable how great the meat was and how different it was from what you get at the store or even, in Lincoln, at the “local” steakhouses.
Sam M says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:40 pm

I think it’s important to keep diminishing returns in mind. There’s a huge difference between a bottle of crappy rotgut wine that costs $3 and a basic mass market that costs $8 or $10. But after that, you have to be pretty discerning to tell the difference. TO most people, a $12 bottle of wine is the same as a $1200 bottle of wine.

The same holds true with stuff like chocolate. Yes, the stuff that costs $10 a pound is probably better than the crappy hollow Easter bunnies you got as a kid, but I can’t tell a lick of difference between $38 a pound Ethiopian chocolate versus $58 a pound chocalate from Zambia or some such.

Never buy cheap Q-Tips or Saran Wrap.
Peterk says:

August 7, 2012 at 1:49 pm

the freshest chicken I had was in Saudi Arabia. Spent the weekend with a Saudi coworker. Thursday nite we went shopping for that night’s dinner. we pulled up to curb in front of a storefront that numerous wooden crates stacked inside. each crate held live chickens. my friend went in order a couple of birds, then we continued our shopping. we returned in about 30 minutes and the shop owner came out carrying a couple of ziploc bags containing what had been live birds just minutes ago. we grilled these birds on his apartment building roof under a clear sky. the meat fell off the bones and the flavor was out of this world. the next best thing were the oranges we had bought which were from his home province of Najran. haven’t tasted an orange since with such full orange flavor as those.
will says:

August 7, 2012 at 2:02 pm

Pineapple. I traveled to Maui (for work) a couple of months ago and had the most amazing pineapple I’d ever tasted – basically fresh off the tree. I’ve been trying to find an analogue back here ever since; best bet is the super-expensive fresh pineapple in the grocery stores, but even then it’s a bit more sour and a bit less “pineapply.”
Liam says:

August 7, 2012 at 2:04 pm

I regularly patronize farmer’s markets, but I have to say that my experience is that local or organic are by no means going to be reliable indicators of better quality. What really matters? For fruit and produce, the quality of the growing season where they are grown. Corn or fruit grown in a wet growing season is going to taste watery no matter how local or organic it is compared to equivalents grown with good sunshine and somewhat less than normal precipitation (mild dryness tends to be optimal, that is). This will all vary over time. Last year, I didn’t bother with local corn or much fruit (local greens were good, though, and things like broccoli and brussels sprouts on the stalk are very usually best if eaten within a couple of days of being picked, so I prefer those local if I can and if they are up to snuff), and instead bought more at the supermarket.

You see, I think like someone who’s gardened since I was 10 that is, about 40 years), rather than someone who tries to fit his food into a philosophy. I know how my own crop varies tremendously in quality from season to season depending on weather patterns. So too I have found with local farms, just on a larger scale.
brians says:

August 7, 2012 at 2:37 pm

Chicken/turkey/pork bologna is way better than beef bologna. The proof’s in the tasting. Yes, Rod, I’m a populist, but not porky at all. You can get dried beans & oatmeal at Walmart or Aldi, too. And $6 gallons of milk violate the principles of household economy.
Susan D. says:

August 7, 2012 at 2:51 pm

When I was a growing up, we always got pasture-fed beef from a local farmer who did business with my father. I took it for granted until I was grown up and out on my own, and bought “beef” at a supermarket for the first time. It tasted like it was adulterated with God-knows-what,and I ended up throwing it out. I’ve been wary of supermarket meat ever since. I’ll buy it occasionally, especially if I’m making something that’s highly seasoned; otherwise, I avoid it like boils.
Saint Andeol says:

August 7, 2012 at 2:59 pm

My example is a bit of a reversal, but I would rather drink tap water from the sink than have a bottled water. I’ve tried all different kinds in various situations, and they all have that weird bottled water taste. But drinking from the sink? Delicious.
Douglas C. says:

August 7, 2012 at 3:14 pm

Radishes. Growing up, my grandmother used to grow radishes in her garden that I would eat like apples. Nothing could compare, and even at Whole Foods and Farmer’s Market’s, I’ve never found anything to compare.
DS says:

August 7, 2012 at 4:01 pm

Steak. I love steak, but I only eat it a few times a year, and then it’s either grass-fed beef from the farmer’s market or the rich and tender stuff from a restaurant that really knows what to do with a steak. I remember every bite. It’s probably been 5 years since I’ve bought a saran-wrapped steak from the supermarket.

I’m getting that way with burgers, too. Better to have a great one once a month than a forgettable one once a week.
Todd says:

August 7, 2012 at 4:06 pm

To echo what others have said, it’s odd that your correspondent is singing the praises of Atlantic salmon. Essentially all Atlantic salmon sold in the United States is farmed, not wild. Its pink flesh is only the result of pigment added to its feed. Absent this bit of engineering, farmed salmon would have grey flesh. Taste wise, Atlantic salmon tends to be fattier but less flavorful than wild Pacific salmon.
Catechist says:

August 7, 2012 at 4:14 pm

Oh yes, I get this effect all the time, for insrance when I buy a fresh pineapple abd cut it up, and my kids won’t touch it because they prefer the tasteless, colorless rings that come neatly stacked in a can. They can taste the difference.

Oh.
Catechist says:

August 7, 2012 at 4:18 pm

Pardon my fat-fingered typing in the comment above.

I should add, I cook for all vegetarians, and so only get meat when we eat out. My Orthodox neighbors have fed me frshly fried kosher chicken, and it puts to shame any other chicken I have eaten in my entire life.
Chris S says:

August 7, 2012 at 4:20 pm

Being from Portland, ME, I’ve really had no seafood-related epiphanies since I’m rather accustomed to eating the good, fresh stuff (don’t bother with Maine mussels though, buy PEI ones).

My epiphany involves pork. I grew up with that white, leathery substance with hard-rubber fat around the edges that were called pork chops. For most of my life I thought I hated pork chops.

Fast forward to a few years ago when I was reading a sidebar article about modern pork in Molly Stevens’ book, “All About Braising.” It inspired me to seek out naturally raised local pork from heirloom breeds.

One night, I picked up some 8oz pork chops from Rosemont Market in Portland, our locally owned localvore market. I baked them with a simple fresh breadcrumb breading from Cooks’ Illustrated, and bit in.

OH BOY. What an epiphany! The fat, first of all, was worth eating by itself. It had a tender, creamy quality similar to pork belly, far, far from the hard rubber substance of supermarket chops. The flesh was juicy, loaded with flavor, tender, just amazing in every way. I cannot even begin to describe how amazing this was.

Alas, these pork chops are something like $13/lb, so they’re an occasional treat, but I really look forward to pork chop night now (most recently, last night).

I still buy the occasional supermarket boston butt, but use it to make pulled pork in the slow cooker. I buy every other cut from local farms.
James C. says:

August 7, 2012 at 4:36 pm

My example is a bit of a reversal, but I would rather drink tap water from the sink than have a bottled water. I’ve tried all different kinds in various situations, and they all have that weird bottled water taste. But drinking from the sink? Delicious.

Indeed, there is a local “fine dinering” establishment I go to near Boston that serves this. The diner is ancient but the current owners have really upped the standards for the food, emphasizing local ingredients—water included! Need I say that diner food made with skill from fresh, quality ingredients is incredibly pleasurable?

Well, anyway, they serve ice water in big glass bottles labelled “tap water”, on which can also be read, “Drink your town’s tap water from the faucet”. I like water from Fiji or Evian-les-Bains, but seriously, self-proclaimed crunchies look silly buying water shipped from thousands of miles away.
sd says:

August 7, 2012 at 7:35 pm

On grass-fed beef: I like this and buy most of my beef grass-fed because its a bit healthier and because it tastes different from grain-fed.

But “different” is the key word – not always “better.” When I do buy regular grain-fed beef I actually find it quite delicious. It’s fattier, and the fat is less healthy. But sometimes less healthy is mighty tasty. Again I don’t prefer it to grass-fed per se. But given that I eat a lot of grass-fed the grain-fed stuff I have tends to be a welcome break and an indulgence.
RealSheree says:

August 7, 2012 at 8:02 pm

It would be interesting to know the prior eating habits of the “taste test” participants who prefer manufactured food to the real thing.

My guess is that someone who has a long history of eating real food prepared from scratch will be able to identify quality food from processed and industrial-farmed crap.

When it comes to taste, organic is irrelevant, the key to taste is the variety. As others have acknowledged: heirloom tomatoes almost always taste better than hybrids, but home-growns, including all hybrids will destroy industrially-farmed tomatoes any day.

Anyone who is a frequent fish consumer can tell the difference between a well-prepared wild caught Pacific salmon and a farmed salmon. I won’t eat the farmed stuff.

I grew up eating food that was home-grown, home-preserved and home-cooked. As a result, I never cared for highly-processed or fast food. And, as I’ve matured and returned to a mostly home-cooked “real food” diet, mostly purchased from farmers markets and other local sources, I’ve found that I can no longer eat banquet meals and most institutionally-prepared food served at meetings, the campus cafeteria, etc.

One of my weaknesses is hot homemade pear preserves made by my mom using heirloom pears from the pear tree growing about 25 feet from the back door.

For those who focus on “cheap food” for the home economy, I say this: You’ll make up the difference in higher healthcare costs, eventually. And if you don’t spend the savings on medical expenses and chronic disease treatments, you’ll still probably feel crappy, tired, rundown, etc. a whole lot more often than those of us who eat real food produced by a real farmer who knows his/her land and animals.
Beyng says:

August 7, 2012 at 8:08 pm

1) Organic food is a scam. It’s an exercise in corporatist sloganeering co-opted by the USDA that allows industrial farms to slap a label on produce (and thus sell it at a premium) after meeting a rather minimal set of standards. It has nothing to do with the scale of the farm, the quality of the food, the locality of its origin, and, most pertinently, its taste.

2) I think your mantra–”the proof is in the tasting”–applies to fruits and vegetables more than anything else. No one on the face of the earth will deny that a garden-grown tomato, still warm from the sun, tastes better than the cardboard counterfeits sold in grocery stores. But this is because you’re effectually comparing–for lack of a better phrase–apples and oranges (tomatoes and tomahtoes?): a garden-grown tomato is actually a ripened fruit; what’s sold in grocery stores, on the other hand, is an (essentially) unripened, immature, genetically mutated, tasteless, Frankensteinian cotton boll. They’re bred specifically to be a cheery red–at the expense of taste. In other words, store bought and garden tomatoes aren’t even the same thing.

3) Accordingly, I’ve found that “free range” chicken vs. (say) Purdue chicken or “grass-fed” beef vs. the generic stuff from the store, while distinct in taste and quality, are not nearly so radically distinct as the two tomatoes. More to the point, the quality between the two isn’t so divergent that I’m willing to pay double or triple (or more!) per pound to get the better chicken or beef.

Even if you think the quality and production standards do justify the price premium, the point is that the meat options available to us are close enough in quality to be susceptible to more subjective judgments. Store bought chicken and farm-fresh chicken: the latter is better, but they’re both still discernibly chicken, unlike in the case of tomatoes.

Also, it’s simply not the case that farm-fresh = better. I personally find raw milk disgusting. In fact, I don’t even like whole milk. Call me a cretin, but give me the hyper-pasteurized, bleached, virtually synthetic skim swill while you’re doing it.

tl;dr: Your foodie mantra is overhyped except in the case of fruits and vegetables. I’ve eaten a few grass-fed steaks in fine steakhouses. Truly delicious. But I can grill a steak at home that is, if not better, at least comparable using the mass-market, CAFO cuts from Wal-Mart.

(Disclaimer: I have no love for our industrial agricultural establishment. No love at all. But I also have bills to pay, and the taste difference doesn’t justify the price difference for me in the case of meat.)
Ed says:

August 7, 2012 at 9:10 pm

I used to be a food agnostic. Food is food, right? Wrong. A lot of what passes for food is not.

I was on a flight recently and the gentlemen next to me was reading a small booklet by Prince Charles called The Future of Food. I asked him about it. He proceeded to help me to understand about the industrialization of the food. He is both a policy wonk at a midwest university agriculture school and a life-long farmer.

As our plane landed, I asked him who I should read and his response was Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire. As soon as I got to my hotel, I went to the near-by Barnes & Noble, and bought all four. Needless to say they have transformed my eating habits, as well as my perception of the relationship between big government, big corporations and big university research departments.

Pollan’s mantra is Eat Food, Less of It, Mostly Plants. By food, he does not mean the manufactured, processed food that is mostly available in retail outlets. He means food that is as close it can be to the way it was harvested on the farm. In effect, local and organic.

My guess is that the salmon that you used to buy was raised in ponds, and the salmon you had that day was wild. Eater beware.
JonF says:

August 7, 2012 at 9:12 pm

Beyng,

The main difference between homegrown and store bought tomatoes is that the former are (generally) vine-ripened and the latter are picked still green and ripened (sometimes with hormonal forcing) after the fact.
Genetically, even “heirloom” tomatoes are genetically modified- all, or almost all, our staple foods are. We humans have been breeding plants and animals away from their natural prototypes for millennia now.
JonF says:

August 7, 2012 at 9:17 pm

Re: I’d also say bell peppers and green beans.

Peppers, absolutely! But also, cucumbers and broccoli.
I have trouble telling the difference with beans: cooking technique (IMO) dominates the result with beans.
Eli says:

August 7, 2012 at 10:13 pm

Strawberries and muskmelons like cantaloupe. They were my first epiphanies because I’d hated them for so many years. I always thought of them as the watery and sour fillers in hotel buffet fruit cup. Then I moved to northern California. I won’t ever forget the shock I experienced on first biting into ripe strawberries here. I don’t know how to do justice to it, except to say that I suddenly realized for the first time in my life that “strawberry,” the flavor, actually comes from strawberry, the fruit.

Cantaloupe and all its relatives were a similar experience. You know all those old Persian poets who wrote about melons’ sweetness and perfume? I still can’t believe it took twenty-some years for me to find out that they weren’t just making that shit up!
Rod Dreher says:

August 7, 2012 at 11:49 pm

Also, it’s simply not the case that farm-fresh = better. I personally find raw milk either. In fact, I don’t even like whole milk. Call me a cretin, but give me the hyper-pasteurized, bleached, virtually synthetic skim swill while you’re doing it.

Gack! That stuff tastes like milk-scented water. I don’t care for raw milk, but I love whole milk. The best milk I’ve ever had was everyday grocery-store milk in The Netherlands. I think they have a high butterfat content in theirs.

I won’t ever forget the shock I experienced on first biting into ripe strawberries here.

Yes! I well remember the first time I tried strawberries in northern California. They were the size of a baby’s fist, and bursting with flavor. The Platonic ideal of a strawberry.

I don’t know that I’ve ever had better tomatoes than the good Jersey beefsteaks I used to get in Philly.