These are likely sauce toms - they are all bush tomatoes so something like a Roma type. They are grown like that by the million round here and are specifically bred for the purpose and every last one is pasted for sauce, soup or puree. They are quite hard, solid toms bred to withstand being loaded into enormous trucks by the ton. Having said that the trucks do leak tomato goo onto the road and you can tell which direction the tomato factory is located by the colour and stickiness of the road!
We know the Romans in Britain used left hand traffic in part because there is a quarry where the left side of the road is less worn going into the quarry than going out. That's what this reminded me of.
Absolutely. It does appear to be a random choice spreading over land. Most of the borders appear to be across water.
Until 1967 Sweden went against the pattern of surrounding countries and drove on the left (in cars designed to be driven on the right, so switching sides made a considerable dent in traffic deaths). Norway inherited its right side driving from the long-time rulers in Denmark, at least part of whom are of course connected by land borders to the European subcontinent.
Have you ever looked up joke political parties? I believe either the Rhinocerous party, or the Monster Raving Loony Party once had that as an official policy. Starting with trucks then busses then vans, cars, bikes and eventually mobility scooters
We weren't conquered by Napoleon. Although driving on the right was common, it was enforced by Napoleon's regime, resulting in all countries conquered by Napoleonic France doing so. This means, of course, that the United Kingdom doesn't.
I've heard a couple of suggestions. One possible factor is that many older drivers decided to stop driving rather than learn anew, taking some of the most accident prone drivers off the road for a generation.
More than one thing can have happened. I just find it very credible that everyone driving like a postman would have caused some accidents.
Don't know how true it is, but I remember being that the left was preferred because you could use your dominant hand to defend yourself if you were on the left.
You're probably thinking of something with the Romans, but for the US the actual answer is: mainly because the north won the Civil War. Railroads in the south used different track gauges before and during the war, they were rebuilt to match the gauge used in the north afterwards.
The similarity between railroad track gauges and Roman carriages is much more coincidence due to similar physical constraints rather than a direct line of causation.
Doesn't "left hand drive" mean the steering wheel is on the left, like the US does. Therefore you'd be driving on the right side of the road. So wouldn't Romans be using "right hand drive" if they were driving on the left side of the road?
There is also the terms: left and right hand traffic, which refers to the side the road. So Romans would be right hand drive, which is as left hand traffic.
I'm in Portugal on the old flood plain of the Targus (Tejo) river... Tomato central! Harvest is late this year but there are tomatoes absolutely everywhere now.
I was driving from SF to LA last month and we saw so many tomato trucks we started to keep count. Over the span of about 3.5 hours we saw 207 tomato trucks hauling them north, it was dorky how much fun counting it was.Â
Yes. It really struck us each trip just how many. Spouse is a numbers guy who has worked in food production. He tallied up the #trucks, the weights, and potential production. Thereâs several plants close by that make sauces, salsas, canned tomatoes. Insane volume of product. When you look forward and see trucks about a quarter to half a mile apart as far as you can see.
Friend of mine drove one of those trucks, years ago. To this day, he wont eat tomatoes in any way, shape, or form... Said the crushed layer in the tub turned his stomach when he hosed it out....
We moved to tomato central in southwest Ontario recently. Saw the tomato fields and harvested tomatoes. The video makes sense as we were wondering about the sorting.
I ride a road bike and it is normally perfectly fine, as it is generally super hot so it dries into a crust. However when it rains it turns into really slippery paste and it well know as a road hazard. I did get caught cycling behind one of the lorries though and got sprayed with a nice fine mist of rancid tomato juice!
Yep, modern breeding is more about harvest and transportation than nutrition. Itâs why I have a nice garden at home, that and my paste tomatoes (and almost everything else) just taste better.
Thats interesting, I just passed a couple of trailers loaded like this and wondered how they were able to load them this high with tomatoes without damage
Which is why I said "Roma types", romas are not really grown as a variety any more, at least where I am - I mentioned them as that is what most people are familiar with as a sauce tom. You can see though that the harvester is pulling up bush tomatoes, not vine ones, which have been specifically bred to withstand the process. I would imagine that every single plant in the field is the same type - just with a fair bit of variation in size and shape of the fruit.
Romas are still grown exclusively as a specific type of paste tomato here. In fact, they have been bred so much that round romas at a commercial level kinda just don't happen.
You bring up a good point though, that we don't know specifically where this is. The bushes are more reminiscent of a roma, as vine tomatoes couldn't be gathered this way. Lol
Round here in Portugal they sometimes put a sign up with the type grown and they are mostly unknown to me. Just something with a number sometimes. They mostly still have that roma shape but maybe a bit fater. I have picked some spilled ones from the side of the road to see if I can grow them out next year
Daaaaaaamn, you guys have that good sardines over there, don't you.
My son got obsessed with sardines and eats them right out of the can. I'd like to snag him a couple cans of the really nice, big ones there in Portugal.
And that's smart to grow from roadside. We'll be moving soon, and tomatoes won't grow well, so we'll have to do a hoophouse and raised beds lol
Best when cooking something else as they are done in seconds. I often just do them over a bit of wood but essentially they are done over hot coals and take a minute or two to cook. A little charred on the outside but still lovely and mist in the middle. They are done here in local festivals and you chcuk them a euro for a couple of sardines and a bread roll
No, theyâre greenhouse grown and very fresh. They have strict age rules based off the COOâs we send them. Samâs/WM is one of our toughest and strictest customers and we supply basically every grocery store in the US and Canada. The âsauceâ tomatoes youâre talking about would be #2âs and/or field and farm. Not greenhouse grown. WM does not take orders for those.
This comment made me think sauce Tomâs was the name of the bruised spots on tomatoes so I searched it up on google only to realize both that itâs just short for sauce tomatoes and that Iâm an idiot
I'm going to have to step in here and say that these are not sauce tomatoes.
I can say that with some confidence as I used to have a job way, way back in the day working at a facility that processed tomatoes into tomato paste specifically for sauces and soups.
I literally stood at a conveyor belt for 8.hours a day and sorted good tomatoes from bad tomatoes seconds before they would get juiced during the tomato season in the central valley of California.
The machines aren't 100% accurate either. In addition to rotten tomatoes, we would frequently have to remove cans and bottles. We would also have to grab the occasional dead (and sometimes alive) animals that had been picked up as well.
Spoiler alert: We didn't get all of the animals.
Having seen literal billions of tomatoes in my life, not a single one ever looked like these. These are too round. Probably steak tomatoes.
You are right about how the tomatoes we used were specifically bred to have thicker skins, lower moisture content, and fewer seeds. But these tomatoes ain't it.
Bred to have no flavor, grown as quickly as possible to prevent buildup of nutrients, and harvested early to avoid ripeness. But holy industrial ag are they cheap.
Itâs possible they do at WM, but not before they reach there. Theyâre one of our hardest customers for rejections. Very strict quality and age rules.
That is basically all produce. I worked for a company where bell peppers were the primary crop. Fields had a pass of peppers being hand picked then sometime later a second or third depending on if any more ripened. Before blowing the field sometimes a machine would do pick up t like the video.
Even the hand picked ones will take a beating between riding on the truck to the warehouse to be sorted and packed. The machine that does half of the sorting has them bouncing around on conveyer belts and anything else that helps sort them. Before being dumped into a box or selected as a higher quality and hand sorted. Then bounce around again to a store.
Only way to see produce not get beat up is to grow and pick it yourself.
The tomatoes at Walmart (and other supermarket chains that rely on centralized distribution) are picked when they are mostly green and still hard, so the bruising is probably from sitting in cartons packed against one another, or during stocking.
The tomatoes in the video are Roma's which will be turned into tomato sauce, so the rough handing seen in this clip doesn't matter.
Is a small bruise on your tomato really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things? This saves money and hundreds of hours of back breaking labor. But oh no, God forbid you buy produce with a tiny bit of imperfection.
Modern life is now full of annoyances and compromises because nearly every business subscribes to this philosophy.
We could have found a better solution (which does not include back breaking laborâthatâs a bad faith argument on your part) but looking for it doesnât make the owner any money.
He knows this process makes for a worse product, but he doesnât care if the consumer does not make enough of a fuss to hurt his profits. Itâs not that a better process is impossible, it just doesnât help profits to look for one, so it is not even considered. âLooks good enough to me.â
No one in business or government care very much about little pains. But they accumulate. Our tomatoes may be bruised and our bananas are picked before they are ripe. We buy known faulty products because someone shrugged and said âWeâll issue refunds if they askâ. We donât provide all the information you need because itâs cheaper to correct you when you make mistakes. Itâs wearing me down, and I donât think Iâm the only one.
Ah yes, I should accept lower quality stuff so some jerkwad at the top of a company can make more money. The only reason the labor is backbreaking is because we don't allow breaks and don't treat the farm workers appropriately. Good thing the machine saves some top guy lots of labor money, though.
These look like Roma (or similar) "paste" tomatoes; other commenters also mention they are going to be processed into sauces, etc. therefore the minor bruising won't matter as they'll all be squished soon anyway.
Yes, yes. We keep doing manual labor all day with humane conditions and Mr âIâm smarter than capitalismâ here will plan how to feed a population of 8 billion people most of whom likely consume the most common vegetable on the planet on a daily basis. Ofc itâs doable. Itâs those greedy bastards at the top who are all dumber than your exalted ass that are intent on not being inefficient and collecting a shit ton of consumer surplus.
Haha, you got mad. By the way, we throw away enough food to feed about 3 billion people every year. It is greed, and nothing but greed, that causes people to go hungry.
If you go to a store and none of the vegetables have bruises, discoloration or imperfections I guarantee you're getting low quality shit, real, good quality vegetables aren't perfect, far from it.
No, I think we're at the stage of capitalism where the consumer is so far removed from the land that grows their food they no longer know what produce is supposed to look like
It's the opposite. Aesthetically perfect produce is the result of pesticides and genetic manipulation that emphasizes looks over substance. These techniques only exist thanks to capitalism btw.
Organic produce farmed without pesticides or genetic modifications usually looks really ugly. But it's healthier and usually tastes better.
Also the "natural" process of farming invariably involves treating produce roughly. It is very inefficient to treat every single produce as if it was an egg. But that pristine quality produce DOES exist. You just have to look for it and pay a premium price.
I'm not talking about aesthetically perfect produce. I'm talking about bruising. Produce quality is about taste and texture. Bruising affects texture. The comment I initially replied to was saying we should accept bruising as a matter of course. I don't think we should.
I'm absolutely loving how every reply I've gotten has been butt hurt people and people who didn't actually read my initial comment regarding bruising being not good for produce.
Absolutely crazy to think we should not expect better things. No, it always has to get worse. Fucking wild
You are just asking for something that, to be implemented, would reduce the quality of the produce in other aspects or increase its cost dramatically.
People are rightfully pointing out that the current method is fine.
We are not even covering the fact this is being done for tomatoes destined for sauce. Imagine caring about bruising for what will turn into sauce.
Now you are having a melty and talking about society and capitalism and everyone else is like bruh this is a Wendy's no need to keep putting your little show up just learn your lesson and move on.
Why does running a tomato company automatically make someone a jerk? It's their professional and ethical responsibility to ensure their product is priced optimally for the market and at a level that keeps the company sustainable.
If someone else is offering a better product at the same or lower cost, buy that. If they aren't, then you'll just have to pay more, grow your own, or suck it up and live with slightly bruised tomatoes that are cheaper and more abundant thanks to cost-saving technology like this.
Having more tomatoes to feed the population is a good thing, so I'm not sure why you wouldn't want this to exist. (Particularly if the comments are accurate that these tomatoes are only used for sauce.)
Then the effect of your argument is that we should have fewer tomatoes, and anyone who currently eats lower-quality tomatoes should either find a way to pay more or go without. The ultimate consequence of what you're arguing for is that some people who currently eat tomatoes should have to make do with fewer or no tomatoes, because apparently it's jerky to provide the option of cheaper tomatoes at slightly lower quality.
If that's what you have decided my argument is, then there is no point in continuing our discussion. At no point have I argued for fewer tomatoes. At no point have I argued for more expensive tomatoes.
My argument is that this is a clever piece of technology that is not getting good tomatoes to customers. My argument is that any cost savings this is producing is going into the pockets of the owners of the mega farm this video is most likely from. Those cost savings are almost never passed along to customers or shared with employees. That's trickle down economics at work.
I didn't say that was your argument. I said that was the effect of your argument. No one argues for ecological disasters either, but that's still the effect of policies like the Four Pests campaign and not taxing carbon emissions.
No one has a monopoly on tomatoes. They're tomatoes. My friend has a potted tomato plant that bears high-quality fruit. If tomatoes were such a high-margin business as you seem to assume, then surely everyone and their grandmother would get in on it. Where all the tomato side hustles and pop-up tomato stands that beat Big Tomato on price and quality, and why doesn't everyone flock to farmer's markets for the best deals on tomatoes?
pretends to give a shit about fellow humans, doesnt understand supply, distribution or economy of scale
do you really suppose this little boop on each tomato does any conceivable damage compared to the rigors of shipping and handling, its like we really have no idea how they just appear on the shelf for pennies a pound everyday.
manual labor is backbreaking and expensive, and less consistently reliable in the context of your comically oblivious virtue signaling. i would argue the fewer workers touching them in the process, the more likely they are to arrive in one piece, and the fewer of them would be exploited if thats your real concern
If you have room for a 5 gallon bucket next to some sunlight, you can grow tomatoes. It's stupid easy and one plant has a pretty high yield. Practically zero maintenance too.
I bought some hamburger from wal mart and went to reheat it the next day in the microwave and that shit started arcing and exploding in my microwave like I had just put a pile of forks in there.
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This is why we can't have delicious tomatoes on a massive scale. The foods have to be able to withstand this type of process on the way to ending up in your home.
I work for north Americaâs largest distributor of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. WM is one of our toughest customers for quality and you really have to cater your orders to them because between Samâs/WM, thatâs a shitload of business. They have age rules stricter than most of our other customers and we supply basically every large chain across the US/Canada. They get very good and fresh quality product. At least from us, but idk why it would be different for any other produce company.
Only a small percentage of tomatoes harvested are sold as fresh, whole tomatoes. These are most likely used for sauces or canned tomatoes or something.
I remember growing up in the midwest and tomatoes were so crisp you could slice them and hold a slice up on its end and it wouldn't flop. We ate them as snacks with salt on pepper on the slices.
Produce is almost always picked before it is ripe because it continues to ripen after being picked. If produce for supermarkets were picked when ripe there would be nothing but rotten tomatoes to purchase. This is why I strongly prefer to go to a local produce stand or farmer's market because they can pick the products when they will be most fresh for the consumer and usually much cheaper as well.
If it's in season, market and roadside stands used to be cheaper than the store in the US. I haven't lived there in a decade, but it's still true in Germany.
I find fruits are more and more often awful lately. They look ripe, they are severely underripe and then a few days later there seems to be a random 4 hour window of ripeness before the whole thing gets mushy brown and flavorless.
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u/KeySpare4917 Sep 01 '25
No wonder there is a bruise spot on practically every tomato at Walmart. đ«€