A study into tomatoes in the fridge reveals they do lose their flavour

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Tomatoes are featuring in the news quite a bit at the moment, but I think I have found out why.

On Monday (17th October 2016), researchers at The University of Florida published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that when tomatoes are stored at the temperature kept in most refrigerators, irreversible genetic changes take place that erase some of their flavours forever.

Harry J. Klee, a professor of horticultural sciences who led the study, and his colleagues took two varieties of tomatoes — an heirloom and a more common modern variety — and stored them at 41 degrees Fahrenheit before letting them recover at room temperature (68 degrees Fahrenheit). When they looked at what happened inside the tomatoes in cold temperatures, Dr. Klee said the subtropical fruit went into shock, producing especially damaging changes after a week of storage. After they were allowed to warm up, even for a day, some genes in the tomatoes that created its flavor volatiles had turned off and stayed off.

In cold months, should you endure a tomatoless diet? There are alternatives, says Dan Barber, chef at Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, who has received multiple James Beard Awards.

“My advice for consumers is don’t eat a tomato in the winter,” he said. “Make a tomato jam in the summer and store and preserve it. Use dried tomatoes from the store. Make a tomato ketchup and can it — you can have it for the whole winter.”

For more information see here - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-refrigerator.html