How can I use these new findings on tomatoes to my advantage?

Picking a tomato which is individually ugly isn't going to help you. It's still the same variety and grown, stored and shipped under the same conditions as the other tomatoes in the pile.

Try looking for a store (farmers' and ethnic markets are good for this) which has a whole bin of ugly tomatoes; those are a different variety and/or handled differently. Heck, here in California, there's even a hybrid brand which is marketed under the name "Uglyripe", which is quite tasty.

Also, just "ugly" isn't a sufficient description. What you're looking for is irregularities in color, shape and size. Bruising, blemishes, wormholes and brown streaks don't indicate a better-tasting tomato, just one which has been abused.

Tasty doesn't sell. Pretty does.

This is particularly true with tomatoes. Even if you can find ripe tomatoes in a store they will usually have inferior flavor. They weren't bred for flavor- they were bred to ship well.

As consumers we don't have a lot of choice when it comes to grocery store produce. You can try buying organic but that doesn't guarantee quality. You can look for local farmers who grow heirloom varieties. Around here there are produce co-ops where you basically subscribe for seasonal produce. Even these though are hit and miss and don't usually include heirloom varieties.

In my opinion, tomatoes are one of the vegetables with the best bang for your buck to grow at home. They are easy to grow, grow prolifically, and you can select varieties with more going for them than just being sturdy. My preferred heirloom seed source is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Growing your own also opens up a whole new world of vegetables that have not been homogenized by a century of industrial agriculture.

Don't believe in studies you read about in the newspaper.

Here's how science/medical reporting goes:

1. Some researcher did some genetic research on tomatoes, that researcher wrote an academic paper in dense scientific language.

2. Some journalist who knows nothing about science found the paper and after reading the abstract decided there's something newsworthy there.

3. That journalist wrote an entire article based on a flawed understanding of what is essentially the first paragraph in a paper in a language he does not understand.

4. Usually the journalists doesn't even call the researcher before publishing, even if he does he only picks one or two sentences that support the article's claim from the interview (the journalists is on a deadline and has to produce an exact number of words, if the topic is complicated and requires explanation it isn't good, if it turns out to be not newsworthy it's even worse).

5. Once the findings are mis-published in one newspaper every other newspaper in the world quotes it like it's proven fact.

It's true that tomatoes from your local grocery store have a dull taste - but it's just as likely to happen because it has been picked prematurely days before they got to you and not due to genetic conditions.

You can run your own experiment - grow some kind of fruit or vegetable, pick one good looking fruit and eat it immediately and you get a very strong flavor, leave it in the refrigerator for 3 days and it tastes more like industrial food - pick it prematurely, store it for a week and drive it all across the country and you get the industrial taste.

Now, I'm not saying the newspaper article is wrong, what I'm saying is that science (and medical) coverage in newspaper is so bad and often wrong you should just ignore it.

if you want to see how bad it is this blog by a journalists who is actually a doctor covers bad medical news reports in UK - if you follow this blog for a while you will never believe any science related newspaper article again