For those that don't, when you pick a tomato from your garden, you've picked it at your desired color and freshness. When you buy a tomato from the supermarket (most if not all), you're buying a tomato that wasn't fully ripened on th vine, but instead is blasted with some ethylene, a naturally occurring gas that normally is produced by tomatoes actively ripening, causing the tomato to continue to mature but not develop some of the complexity of taste you get from proper vine ripening. They're often picked a little green when in super-farms because they're firmer and less prone to damaging that way, and then ripened during packaging. That, and the tomato you eat from supermarkets and fast food are all super homogenous and bred specifically for mass yield.

[–] ChronosWing@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

Grocery stores sell vine ripened tomatoes. They tend to also sell locally grown ones from local farmers which taste just as good as the ones you can grow at home. Any other ones you should just steer clear of for the reasons you listed.