There's definitely several grades of taste. In the U.S. I've had massive, red strawberries. They look gorgeous. But they taste like water compared to the comparatively "ugly" ones back home in Sweden.

But then I pick an orange off a tree here in Greece, and it's unlike any orange I've ever eaten. Eating an orange is like drinking a glass of freshly-squeezed juice, only there's no need to add sugar or anything. Of course, to get Oranges up to Sweden, they need to be picked early, and they get to ripen in the back of a truck...

And then we have the modern expectation of being able to get anything out-of-season, I'm sure that also causes farmers to pick breeds that grow well, but taste less.

My wife and I spent some time in France last summer.

One day, we bought some celery for a recipe we were making. When we ate it, I couldn't believe the taste. "Celery has a FLAVOR?"

This was just regular supermarket celery, not from a farmers market. I'm not sure I've ever seen celery at a farmer's market in the US, actually.

Interesting, I've been living in Vienna for more than 7 years now and didn't notice the fruits and vegetables tasting any worse when I visited Atlanta, Georgia.

They did cost more than here in Austria tho, which surprised me (I assumed everything consumable would be cheaper in the US).

Yeah, I was overgeneralizing - what I meant were industrial Californian tomatoes. The taste is probably much better in other regions of the US.

Also it probably depends on what chain you buy them from - it wasn't Walmart but it was still some big retailer iirc. If you buy tomatoes from Hofer here they won't taste very good either (but still a lot better than the ones I had in CA).

    Yeah, I was overgeneralizing - what I meant 
    were industrial Californian tomatoes. The 
    taste is probably much better in other 
    regions of the US.

I'd actually be surprised that a rich and organic/health obsessed place like California wouldn't have much better produce than Atlanta/Georgia :)

It always amazed me how bad the supermarket produce was in California. Almost all of it is grown within 100miles of LA, even Mexico is only a couple of hours away and yet all of it was terrible factory-grade long life varieties and expensive.

That's the other weird thing for a european, the supermarkets are more expensive than the corner vegetable stores, there are no fruit/veg markets - only either farm gate trucks or fancy expensive farmers markets

Supermarket food is grown in the Central Valley, which is at least 100 miles from L.A.

Only Farmer's Market foods are grown in quantity close to L.A.

I was in Europe last summer, and the tomatoes I got on sandwiches in Denmark and Germany were 100x better than the ones we get in Canada. I really don't care for tomatoes here, but I just loved them in Europe.

Maybe it's the high quality bread, meat and cheese that they use in Europe, but I'm still shocked that I had the best sandwich of my life at the hauptbahnhof in Munich.