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Refrigerating tomatoes may be making them less flavorful, according to a new study.

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Last summer, I went on Morning Edition to talk about the quest for a great-tasting tomato. And at the very end of the conversation, I confidently declared that no one should ever put tomatoes in the refrigerator. It kills the taste, I said. That’s what I’d heard from scientists and tomato growers alike.

Afterwards, I heard from several friends. It seems I’d taken sides in a domestic dispute that has long divided husbands and wives. Someone on Twitter also pointed out a blog post that seemed to contradict my statement. I’ll say more about that later.

First, some new science: There’s a laboratory at the University of University of Florida, in Gainesville, that has been at the forefront of research on tomato taste. Scientists there have been studying the chemical makeup of great-tasting tomatoes, as well as the not-so-great tasting ones at supermarkets.

“There’s a lot of things wrong with tomatoes right now,” says Denise Tieman, a Research Associate Professor there. “We’re trying to fix them, or at least figure out what’s going wrong.”

These researchers studied this refrigeration question. They looked at what happened when a tomato goes into your kitchen fridge, or into the tomato industry’s refrigerated trucks and storage rooms.

Some components of a tomato’s flavor were unaffected, such as sugars and acids. But they found that after seven days of refrigeration, tomatoes had lower levels of certain chemicals that Tieman says are really important. These so-called aroma compounds easily vaporize. “That’s what gives the tomato its distinctive aroma and flavor,” she says.

The researchers also gave chilled and unchilled tomatoes to dozens of people to evaluate, in blind taste tests, “and they could definitely tell the difference,” says Tieman. The tomatoes that weren’t chilled got better ratings.

The scientists also figured out how chilling reduced flavor; cold temperatures actually turned off specific genes, and that, in turn cut down production of these flavor compounds.

Tieman speculates that someday scientists will figure out how to keep those genes turned on, even when chilled, so the tomato industry can have it both ways: They can refrigerate tomatoes to extend shelf life, without losing flavor.

Thankfully, chilling didn’t seem to affect nutrition – the chilled tomatoes were just as nutritious as the non-refrigerated ones.

The new findings appear in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As significant as the results are, they probably won’t end the great tomato refrigeration debate.

“It’s not so clear cut,” says Daniel Gritzer, culinary director at SeriousEats.com, a food website. Two years ago, he did a series of blind taste tests with many different tomatoes, in New York and in California.

“Sometimes I found that the refrigerator is, in fact, your best bet,” says Gritzer.

That’s especially true for a tomato that’s already ripe and at peak flavor, he says. If you let that tomato sit on your counter, it’ll end up tasting worse.

Gritzer wrote a long blog post, detailing his results, and got a flood of reaction. “Some people wrote to say, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve always found, I’m so glad you wrote this,'” Gritzer says. “And then, a lot of people pushed back saying, ‘You’re insane, you don’t know what you’re talking about.'”

It’s a “thorny one,” Gritzer says. People just feel very strongly about their tomatoes.

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The Obama administration is proposing new rules to address passenger complaints about airline service.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

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Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The Obama administration is proposing new rules to address passenger complaints about airline service.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Many travelers have resigned themselves to paying $25 or more to check a bag when flying. But that fee becomes especially onerous when the bag doesn’t show up on the carousel at baggage claim.

The White House is proposing a new rule that would require airlines to refund the checked baggage fee if luggage is “substantially delayed,” though it does not define “substantially.”

NPR aviation reporter David Schaper reports airlines are already required to compensate passengers for lost of damaged luggage. Schaper quotes Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx arguing this next step just makes sense: “If you pay the baggage fee and your bags are not returned to you in a timely manner, you’ve essentially paid for a service you’re not getting.”

The Obama administration is announcing a number of proposed rules today, designed to address common passenger complaints about airline service.

Another target are travel websites which offer comparison ticket shopping. Such websites commonly rank airlines higher or lower based on undisclosed payments or other business incentives.

A new rule proposed by the Transportation Department would require such websites to be neutral “or disclose their bias upfront so consumers can truly comparison shop when booking flights,” Schaper reports.

Another focus of the new rulemaking is airlines’ on-time record. “Major airlines are now only required to disclose on-time performance data for the flights they operate,” reports Schaper. “not those of those small regional partners that the big legacy carriers partner with.”

The new rules will require those regional carriers to also report their on-time performance data.

A spokesperson for the industry group Airlines for America told Schaper that airlines have the same goal of providing quality service, but improvement is already taking place in the marketplace without more government regulation.

“We’ve said for a long time that we think the airline industry is probably the most regulated de-regulated industry you can find and this is another example of it,” said spokesperson Jean Medina.