Bert commented,

From molasses and Marmite, which have been wimped down; and fruit and vegetables that have been picked before they are ripe so that they can be shipped halfway 'round the world.

Flavor is gone from most many, many fruits and vegetables not so much because of early picking but because the hybridizers and breeders don't give a durn for flavor. Flavor is not an economic good, to them. For instance, tomatoes. They select and breed for looks, and for economic volume production, for machine harvesting with minimal bruising, and for shelf life, and for disease-and-pest resistance. But flavor? Nahhh! The consumer has already made the purchase before (s)he ever gets that beautiful tomato between the teeth.

And even if you should want to raise tomatoes in your own garden, you'll have almost no chance of getting seeds for the good old-time-flavor tomatoes (what are referred to as "legacy tomatoes"). The great, great, great majority of tomatoes are bred and produced for ketchup, and tomato soup, and pasta sauce and the like. The seed companies produce seeds industrially for varietals intended for those industries, or for mass-raised beautiful-but-tasteless TSOs(*), sort of round objects which can be shipped and merchandised cheaply; flavor is not a desideratum.

(*)TSOs = Tomato shaped objects.

End of rant.

Dave Oesterreich