Shannon Illingworth, Founder of GP Solutions, Wants You to Know Why Tomatoes in America Are Flavorless

Inventor of GrowPods aims to raise awareness about farming methods in the United States

CORONA, Calif., Dec. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- GP Solutions, Inc (Ticker: GWPD), announced that company founder, Shannon Illingworth, is speaking out about the tomato industry in America. His new organization, "Know the Grow," is dedicated to educating the public about where and how food is grown in America.

In his book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, author Barry Estabrook examined the issue.

"For the last 50 or more years, tomato breeders have concentrated essentially on one thing and that is yield," Estabrook told NPR. "They also want those fruits to be able to stand up to being harvested, packed, artificially turned orange [with ethylene gas] and then shipped away and still be holding together in the supermarket a week or 10 days later."

According to Science Magazine, modern production methods favor production over flavor. Commercial tomatoes contain "significantly lower amounts of many important flavor chemicals than older varieties," they report.

And lack of flavor isn't the only problem.

Nutritional values have plummeted in recent decades. According to Estabrook, tomatoes grown in the 1960's had 30 to 40 percent more vitamin C, and more niacin and calcium.

Harmful chemicals also are endemic to today's corporate-grown tomato crops. A recent study found that pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and rodenticides are frequently used for the protection of plants. "Those active substances can absorb from the treated surface and act systemically, and thus can accumulate in the plant posing a higher risk to consumers," according to study authors.

Shannon Illingworth, Founder of GP Solutions, and the inventor of GrowPods, said most  people don't even know what a normal tomato is supposed to look like.

"Today, there are a few so-called 'ugly' tomatoes at some stores, but for the most part, tomatoes are bred for uniform shape and coloration, and ability to withstand disease and distribution, not for flavor or nutritional value," Illingworth said.

"My hope is that people understand how their food was grown," Illingworth added. "It's still possible to get fruits and vegetables the way nature intended, but you have to be a knowledgeable and careful consumer."

For more information on Know the Grow, visit: www.knowthegrow.org.

To contact GP Solutions, visit: www.growpodsolutions, or call: (951) 549-9490.

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SOURCE GP Solutions