Raw tomatoes make me gag, between the flavor, the smell, the oozy seed-filled goo, etc., etc. I know that's my issue, my kink, not some objective moral judgment, and I certainly do enjoy tomato products, sauces, and so forth.
But this story drives me nuts. Those around me who like tomatoes (most everyone) laments the blandness of industrially farmed tomatoes from the grocery store. They would, one thinks, leap at the idea of a tomato that tastes good. But those supermarket tomatoes aren't going to improve any time soon. Bottom line:
'Klee remembers attending an industry conference about flavor where one of California’s largest commercial tomato growers kicked off the proceedings by announcing that he had never lost a single sale because his tomatoes didn’t taste good. When new tomato varieties are developed, the field trials measure every imaginable trait: yield, fruit uniformity, appearance, shelf life, shippability, pounds per plant, even whether a tomato plucks clean or is left with tiny piece of stem attached. But not flavor.'
Longer story short, as long as people are willing to buy cheap, bland tomatoes, nobody along the food chain sees any reason to improve things.
The article closes on a more hopeful note, but, damn, that's an indictment of the American food industry. And the American consumer.
A Scientist Has Created the Perfect Tomato—but Supermarkets Refuse to Sell It
Tomato lovers, rejoice, for science has achieved the impossible: the perfect supermarket tomato. The Garden Gem won’t bruise during shipping, it resists many of the major diseases that regularly decimate tomato crops, and it is a flesh-producing powerhouse, turning out up to 22 pounds of tomatoes per plant, which is…
Hm. At all three supermarkets I go to, they have "tomatoes", "organic tomatoes", and "heirloom organic tomatoes", at an increase in price of about 50% for each higher grade, and the heirlooms are routinely sold out. They don't ship well, so supermarkets don't want to carry them, but the markets that do, appear to sell them without a problem.
Which is to say: I think people buy crap tomatoes because they want tomatoes, and that's all they can get. If there are better options, my experience has been that plenty of people choose them.