Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Speaker 1: I was going to start off today by saying that,
Speaker 1: of course it's the most wonderful time of the year,
Speaker 1: but I think I'm actually already on record saying October
Speaker 1: is the most wonderful time of the year. And of
Speaker 1: course October is because that's you know, monster madness, but
Speaker 1: monster season aside, I think tomato season is the second
Speaker 1: most wonderful time of the year, and we're right in
Speaker 1: it now. Tomato season is pretty wonderful. Um. We're we're
Speaker 1: big tomato fans here in the house. Given the confines
Speaker 1: of imposed by the pandemic, we're actually growing more tomatoes
Speaker 1: at the house than ever before. Um, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been fabulous. We're big fans of panzanella, which is a
Speaker 1: I think a Tuscan chopped salad or originally but it's
Speaker 1: like soaked or soaked stale or toasted bread. We throw
Speaker 1: in basil and then of course the tomatoes. Uh. Similarly,
Speaker 1: we really love a good caprice salad because yeah, a
Speaker 1: great tomato just elevates anything. In my opinion. You know,
Speaker 1: you can do a great tomato. All you need is
Speaker 1: just a little salt and pepper, maybe a drizzle of
Speaker 1: olive oil, and you're good to go. A great tomato
Speaker 1: is I think, in the same class where people think
Speaker 1: of like a great steak. It is just like a
Speaker 1: complete food in itself that is so good, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of makes people moan when they eat it.
Speaker 1: And I definitely grew up thinking that I did not
Speaker 1: like tomatoes. I thought I hated tomatoes. I'd always pick
Speaker 1: them off of a sandwich if if they were on there.
Speaker 1: But I realized later in life the issue was just
Speaker 1: that I hated bad tomatoes. And almost every tomato you
Speaker 1: get in a you know, in a subway or what.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to single them out, but you know,
Speaker 1: any sandwich shop, whatever, it's almost never going to be
Speaker 1: a good one. It's going to be kind of a white, mealy, tough,
Speaker 1: flavorless thing that doesn't have all of the beautiful aromatic
Speaker 1: tomato ee compounds, that doesn't have that perfect juicy texture,
Speaker 1: A ripe, home grown or or you know, farmer's market
Speaker 1: summer tomato that has never been refrigerated, never had to
Speaker 1: be shipped on a big truck any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: It is a thing of beauty. And if you've never
Speaker 1: experienced a tomato that way, you don't know what you're
Speaker 1: missing yet. Yeah, absolutely, you just you're not going to
Speaker 1: get the same thing with a grocery store tomato generally,
Speaker 1: unless you know they are actually servants selling like local
Speaker 1: airlimb tomatoes. I'm a big fan of box meal kits.
Speaker 1: I'm a subscriber to one of them right now. But
Speaker 1: you're just not gonna You're not gonna get a wonderful
Speaker 1: tomato through the mail like that. It's gotta it's got
Speaker 1: to come from your own garden. It's got to come
Speaker 1: from a local um garden. It and when you get
Speaker 1: to dig into it, it is like nothing else. It's
Speaker 1: just miles above uh, the sort of mundane canned tomato
Speaker 1: grocery store tomato experience. Yeah. And I think one reason is, uh,
Speaker 1: just the sheer mechanics of like shipping products. Right, have
Speaker 1: you ever had a really good ripe summer tomato As
Speaker 1: soon as you handle it, you know, like this would
Speaker 1: not survive the like the rough process of getting from
Speaker 1: a farm to the grocery store to my house. It's
Speaker 1: a delicate baby bird. It's the thing that that you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's barely going to survive the trip from the
Speaker 1: vine to your kitchen counter. Oh yeah, and again speaking
Speaker 1: is a very amateur tomato grower here. But the ones
Speaker 1: we bring in from the backyard, like they we have
Speaker 1: to like knock the bugs off of them. They're already
Speaker 1: oozing a little bit. Yeah, this is a very delicate
Speaker 1: balance between the plate and the compost heap. You've got
Speaker 1: to get there just the right time. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, I'm also actually I'm a pretty big fan
Speaker 1: of canned tomatoes for cooked applications. If if it's a tomato,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're making tomato sauce or something like that,
Speaker 1: a decent can of of whole peeled tomatoes that you
Speaker 1: puree yourself from ash to whatever consistency you want works
Speaker 1: just fine. I mean, you know that they're picked when
Speaker 1: they're ideal, and you know they go ahead and can them.
Speaker 1: It's much better than trying to make a say, a
Speaker 1: tomato sauce from tomatoes that are fresh in the off season. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it it ultimately depends, like what is the role of
Speaker 1: the tomato in the dish is is this a starring
Speaker 1: vehicle for a fresh tomato. If so, nothing but a
Speaker 1: really good fresh tomato is going to work. But if
Speaker 1: it's something where the tomato is more of a supporting player,
Speaker 1: then perhaps one of these other things will work. And then,
Speaker 1: of course there's not just one tomato. Obviously, there's so
Speaker 1: many different types. For my own purposes, I find that
Speaker 1: when it's not tomato season, those little like grape tomatoes
Speaker 1: are pretty good if you have to get some of
Speaker 1: the store. Absolutely, I'm a hundred percent in agreement, cherry tomatoes,
Speaker 1: grape tomatoes are the much better option if you need
Speaker 1: fresh tomatoes in the off season. So listeners, as you
Speaker 1: can probably tell, we're going to be talking about tomatoes
Speaker 1: not for one episode, but for two whole episodes. And
Speaker 1: if you're thinking, well, the tomato is just so mundane,
Speaker 1: it's so every day, this is gonna be a you know,
Speaker 1: two episodes of of backyard um um like hoakery here
Speaker 1: that I can just skip on stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Nothing could be further from the truth, because there is
Speaker 1: so much weirdness in these episodes. There's quackery, there's myth making,
Speaker 1: they're tall tails, and there's all space colonizations, yes, space colonization.
Speaker 1: It's going to cover really like a broad area of
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind content, even though at the
Speaker 1: center of it is this fruit that has become just
Speaker 1: such a staple of most of our diets in one
Speaker 1: form or another. So maybe we should start off just
Speaker 1: by looking at the tomato plant as an organism. What
Speaker 1: what is this organism and how did we end up
Speaker 1: with the modern cultivated tomato. Yeah, this is a great,
Speaker 1: great place to start, because this is another one of
Speaker 1: those stories where if you don't think about it too close,
Speaker 1: if you don't research it yourself, you just might think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: tomatoes have always been everywhere, they have always been a
Speaker 1: part of our diet because they're just so ubiquitous now.
Speaker 1: But this is not the case. Okay, So, first of all,
Speaker 1: you've probably just heard us say the word fruit. This
Speaker 1: is one of those facts I think most people know
Speaker 1: at this point. You probably learned this before. But in
Speaker 1: biological terms, a tomato is a fruit rather than a vegetable,
Speaker 1: and part of this comes down to the different ways
Speaker 1: that we use the term fruits and vegetables in a
Speaker 1: sort of culinary or nutritional sense versus in a botanical sense.
Speaker 1: Um like we in a culinary or nutritional sense, we
Speaker 1: intuitively sort things into categories of fruits and vegetables, I think,
Speaker 1: largely based on sugar content and whether they're primarily used
Speaker 1: in sweet or savory preparations, So plants that are savory
Speaker 1: or vegetables plants that are sweet or fruits. However, even
Speaker 1: this is somewhat arbitrary as a cultural convention, because there
Speaker 1: are ways in which these these types of groupings can
Speaker 1: vary widely from culture to culture. One example is avocad
Speaker 1: oos our avocados a sweet food or a savory food.
Speaker 1: I think for me and for most Americans, the answer
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly would be its savory food. They go in guacamole,
Speaker 1: you pair them with lime and salt, you put them
Speaker 1: on toast, you put them in a burrito. But for
Speaker 1: millions of people in like South America and Asia, avocados
Speaker 1: are primarily a sweet food, used more often in dessert dishes,
Speaker 1: which seems very strange to us. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: If you think of it as kind of basically just
Speaker 1: a buttery substance, it starts to click in place. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I always grew up thinking of it certainly
Speaker 1: something you add a little salt and pepper two against
Speaker 1: some olive oil two and you have a great dish.
Speaker 1: But we're big fans of going to local like bubble
Speaker 1: tea places, uh and Asian dessert places, and you will
Speaker 1: find like avocado smoothies as a as a you know,
Speaker 1: a standard item you encounter on menus and I've tried
Speaker 1: it before. It's it's delicious, But yeah, you wouldn't you
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily think about it from a Western perspective of
Speaker 1: being the dessert item. But either way, these culinary distinctions
Speaker 1: often just don't have a biological basis. In fact, other
Speaker 1: culinary vegetables things we think of as vegetables in a
Speaker 1: cooking sense, are biologically fruits. Cucumbers, chili, peppers, eggplants, all fruits.
Speaker 1: But to go even better, the tomato is not only fruit,
Speaker 1: it is technically a berry and one thing that I
Speaker 1: think you could probably even into it just looking at say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're growing a variety of heirloom tomato
Speaker 1: in your backyard and you see this monstrous fruit hanging
Speaker 1: off of a vine that you have to prop up
Speaker 1: on a steak or a cage or otherwise, this gigantic
Speaker 1: fruit is just gonna make it drooped down on the ground. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's the you know, it looks like a thing
Speaker 1: that should not be in a way. Um. So you
Speaker 1: might be able to into it that tomatoes have not
Speaker 1: always been this way, like many of the modern fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables we eat, it had to be adapted from
Speaker 1: a naturally occurring fruit or vegetable that did not necessarily
Speaker 1: grow as large in the edible part um. And it
Speaker 1: appears that modern cultivated tomatoes, which have the scientific name
Speaker 1: Solanum lycopersicum, are descended from a wild berry that grew
Speaker 1: in northwestern South America, maybe around the area of Peru
Speaker 1: or a little farther north. And the research tracing these
Speaker 1: biological origins has been summarized in a few sources. I
Speaker 1: looked at, for example, in the Oxford Companion to Food,
Speaker 1: which was edited by Alan Davidson. Uh. They looked at
Speaker 1: studies by, for example, Sophie co in N and other
Speaker 1: researchers over the years that found that the wild ancestor
Speaker 1: of the tomato was very likely. They identify a couple
Speaker 1: of species, one Lycopersicon seraciform. And then another one, so
Speaker 1: Lantum pimpanellifolium, which is today known as the current tomato.
Speaker 1: Not current as in timely, but current as in the
Speaker 1: fruit a current. And it's called this because in a way,
Speaker 1: these these wild tomatoes, the Slanum pimpanilla folium, sort of
Speaker 1: resemble currents. They're these tiny little berries, almost kind of
Speaker 1: current or blueberry sized. Yeah, So some of the examples
Speaker 1: I was reading was that if you went back to
Speaker 1: pre Columbian Peru, you would encounter, if you knewhere to look,
Speaker 1: you would find these wild growing, essentially yellow berries that
Speaker 1: were the predecessor, the likely predecessor to the modern tomato. Yes,
Speaker 1: now exactly how it went from that wild berry to
Speaker 1: the cultivated varieties that people eat that that's still um.
Speaker 1: We know some things, but it's still a somewhat open question.
Speaker 1: That there have been some genomic studies that I'll talk
Speaker 1: about in just a minute, but we know that such
Speaker 1: a thing as the cultivated tomato existed by the time
Speaker 1: the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica. By that time, the az
Speaker 1: tech people are the no waddle speaking people, were eating
Speaker 1: tomatoes that they grew as crops, and they were eating
Speaker 1: them in dishes, often prepared in conjunction with chili peppers.
Speaker 1: But of course we we know that this wild ancestor
Speaker 1: of the tomato, this berry grew in northwest South America.
Speaker 1: It was you know, this wild fine and so there's
Speaker 1: still a question of how exactly that wild fruit made
Speaker 1: its way up north to Meso America in order to
Speaker 1: be cultivated as a food crop by the Aztecs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's already even at this early stage in the history
Speaker 1: of of the global tomato. It's kind of a botanical
Speaker 1: game of telephone, right. Uh. So I was trying to
Speaker 1: look up what is some of the most recent scientific
Speaker 1: work on this, and there was a new study about
Speaker 1: the domestication history of the tomato that was published just
Speaker 1: this year, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution
Speaker 1: by Razafard at All. And so what they present is
Speaker 1: a little complicated. I'm going to try to do the
Speaker 1: simplest version I can. So the authors say that before research,
Speaker 1: our best guess about the domestication history of the tomato
Speaker 1: went like this, So you had this wild berry in
Speaker 1: South America. It's growing up in the andes up in
Speaker 1: the northwest corner of South America, and this is Solanum
Speaker 1: pimpanella folium. Here again, this is the one we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: The fruits are going to be about the size of
Speaker 1: a blueberry. Then in this older understanding, this was transformed
Speaker 1: into the semi domesticated plant Clanum Lycopersicum saraciform or SLC.
Speaker 1: But if you see SLC and tomato literature, don't confuse
Speaker 1: that with Salt Lake City. It means this species, and
Speaker 1: this would have happened within South America. These fruits would
Speaker 1: have been about the size of a cherry, so kind
Speaker 1: of similar to cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes that you
Speaker 1: could buy at the store today. Obviously somewhat different, but
Speaker 1: similar somewhat in in look, in size. And then finally,
Speaker 1: this middle species, the s l C, was transformed into
Speaker 1: the larger, fully domesticated clandum Lycopersicum very lycopersicum. And this
Speaker 1: was the Aztec food crop that was developed into the
Speaker 1: tomatoes that people eat all around the world today. And uh,
Speaker 1: strange fact lyco persicum. I think Robert you might have
Speaker 1: a note about this later, but it means literally wolf peach. Yes, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah that it's this is interesting because this was
Speaker 1: some sort of a fruit that was described by Galen
Speaker 1: who lived two hundred C, which obviously as well before
Speaker 1: tomatoes actually came to uh To, uh To to Europe,
Speaker 1: so obviously Galen was not describing a tomato. But this
Speaker 1: just this description ends up getting wound up in the
Speaker 1: classification of tomatoes in the West later on. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: so anyway, the authors of this study from US population
Speaker 1: genomic methods to try to reconstruct a genomic map of
Speaker 1: the modern tomatoes domestication history, and they conclude quote A,
Speaker 1: results suggest that the ore gen of SLC may predate domestication,
Speaker 1: and that many traits considered typical of cultivated tomatoes arose
Speaker 1: in South American SLC, but we're lost or diminished once
Speaker 1: these partially domesticated forms spread northward. These traits were then
Speaker 1: likely re selected in a convergent fashion in the common
Speaker 1: cultivated tomato prior to its expansion around the world. So
Speaker 1: a little complicated. Basically, they're saying that the semi domesticated
Speaker 1: breed of tomato that may have been used as as
Speaker 1: not not a cultivated crop but a semi domesticated food
Speaker 1: by some people in South America. It had some traits
Speaker 1: that arose naturally, and then those traits were re selected
Speaker 1: and emphasized by growers in meso America before the tomato
Speaker 1: finally spread all over the world. Interesting, Now, we've already
Speaker 1: touched on the fact that the tomato isn't the only
Speaker 1: case of this. There there's a whole thing about what
Speaker 1: you call breeds of plants and how to and how
Speaker 1: to know whether you talking about the same fruit or plant.
Speaker 1: When you're using different names throughout history, it can become
Speaker 1: very confusing. Um. But just about the history of the
Speaker 1: word tomato itself. The English word tomato, of course comes
Speaker 1: via the Spanish tomate, which was adapted from the original
Speaker 1: now Wattle word tomadel. Now I've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: sources claimed that to model was simply the Noattle word
Speaker 1: for the fruit for the tomato. But the entry and
Speaker 1: the Oxford companion actually goes a little deeper. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting again about linguistic confusion. So apparently
Speaker 1: in the now Wattle language, tom model simply meant plump fruit.
Speaker 1: So to indicate the ancestor of our tomato you had
Speaker 1: to add the prefix z. So the word was z
Speaker 1: to model that was the ancestor of the tomato we
Speaker 1: have today, and this distinguished it from the husked ancestor
Speaker 1: to modern tomatos, which the as texts called meal to model,
Speaker 1: and then the Spanish ended up using the word tomata
Speaker 1: for both tomatillo in Spanish that just means little tomato,
Speaker 1: though they are not actually large and small versions of
Speaker 1: the same fruit. They're totally different species but that but
Speaker 1: they are related. Um these are all in the nights
Speaker 1: shade family, and we'll get into to that. Um into
Speaker 1: that in a bit. But the authors of the Oxford
Speaker 1: Companion point out this led to a bunch of confusion
Speaker 1: for Spanish chroniclers who just didn't always seem to understand
Speaker 1: which fruit was being talked about. Uh. THEO and I
Speaker 1: have mentioned this before, But they also point out that
Speaker 1: in as Tech cuisine, tomatoes were consistently linked with chili peppers,
Speaker 1: and I gotta say it's a good combination. Tomatoes and
Speaker 1: chili peppers are are two fruits that go well together. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But here once we have contact between the hemispheres, this
Speaker 1: opens up the doors of of of spread of this
Speaker 1: plant all over the world, and eventually it does spread.
Speaker 1: Now I have to say that the way that the
Speaker 1: tomato spreads uh through and around the world is it
Speaker 1: both is it was it once alarming, like it's really
Speaker 1: it's really a success story. But it's also not one
Speaker 1: of these situations where you can say, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: individual brought the tomato to Europe and then it was
Speaker 1: an enormous success and here we are like, it's not
Speaker 1: that simple and uh and and we we certainly encourage
Speaker 1: people are interested in this to seek out some of
Speaker 1: the books were going to mention here in a bit
Speaker 1: because they'll get into a lot more detail about this.
Speaker 1: It is um, I guess you would say it is.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of touch and go uh, false starts, um.
Speaker 1: And as we'll discuss a little bit too, there's some
Speaker 1: myth making involved in some some legend regarding just how
Speaker 1: the tomato takes off and what is standing in its way.
Speaker 1: I would also say that the tomato has a somewhat
Speaker 1: complicated and murky uh. If it were a text, we
Speaker 1: would call it the reception history. Yeah. Absolutely, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we are going to dive into some of the issues
Speaker 1: of its spread through Europe. And then paradoxically like back
Speaker 1: into North America. Alright, we're back. So, uh, we may
Speaker 1: have talked in the past, you and I about doing
Speaker 1: a tomato episode, Uh, doing something about the tomatoes. Tomatoes
Speaker 1: have definitely come up on the show before, but my
Speaker 1: wife this summer had had specifically mentioned She said, you
Speaker 1: guys should do tomato episode. You should do it, you should,
Speaker 1: you should really dive in there. And I think something
Speaker 1: that helped encourage this is that we encountered a sign
Speaker 1: at a botanical garden that was describing tomatoes. Then it
Speaker 1: mentioned that in the past people thought they were poisonous.
Speaker 1: So I have to admit that that was like, that
Speaker 1: was a real key area of interest for me going
Speaker 1: into this episode, getting into you know, just just discussing
Speaker 1: whether people ever actually considered the tomato to be poisonous
Speaker 1: and what does that mean, because it just seems ridiculous
Speaker 1: on the face of it, Right, the tomato has conquered
Speaker 1: the planet. We know the tomato is not poisonous, and
Speaker 1: the idea of people being afraid to eat it because
Speaker 1: they think it is poisonous, Uh, it just seems completely looney. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's funny because even once you investigate it, I
Speaker 1: would say that this irony remains, because the irony remains
Speaker 1: because we are going to encounter people who are saying
Speaker 1: the tomato is poisonous, but they're not saying it at
Speaker 1: a time when nobody was eating tomatoes because everybody thought
Speaker 1: they were poisonous. They'd be like, well, some people eat them,
Speaker 1: but they're poisonous, right, Yeah, you didn't have like single
Speaker 1: voices with a global reach saying we do not eat
Speaker 1: tomatoes or no one should eat tomatoes, because you have
Speaker 1: a lot of um, you know, a lot of division
Speaker 1: based on like who's talking about it, what country they're in,
Speaker 1: what you know, what levels of society they're at, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And then on top of additional legends that pop up.
Speaker 1: But but this basic idea that people specifically, you'll see
Speaker 1: like Europeans or Americans used to be afraid to eat
Speaker 1: tomatoes because they thought they were poisonous. You see this everywhere.
Speaker 1: You see this again it but uncle gardens. You see
Speaker 1: this popping up in um news stories about the tomato,
Speaker 1: and it is often just presented as just a straight
Speaker 1: up fact. Uh. But again, when I started looking into it,
Speaker 1: I became increasingly less sure because on one hand, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds too good to be true, and then you
Speaker 1: do encounter these um these are these, these wrinkles in
Speaker 1: the description that really um drive home that Okay, not
Speaker 1: everybody thought this at the same time. So again we're
Speaker 1: not going to cover the entire history of the tomatoes
Speaker 1: um influx into Europe and then it's um it's acceptance
Speaker 1: by European societies. But the first known European reference to
Speaker 1: tomatoes comes in four from Italian herbalist Peito Andre Matthioli,
Speaker 1: and he wrote of the mala aria the golden apples
Speaker 1: we she described as ripening from green to yellow. Now
Speaker 1: he classified the tomato with the man drake, which was
Speaker 1: of course part of this big night shade family. And
Speaker 1: this is, of course this is accurate. I mean they
Speaker 1: are in this family. We consider the tomato to be
Speaker 1: a night shade, along with things like the eggplant. Um.
Speaker 1: But this is often held up is one aspect of
Speaker 1: the poisonous reputation that tomatoes gathered in European society, with
Speaker 1: botanists signifying that they were a part of this family
Speaker 1: that contained things um uh like deadly nightshade or like
Speaker 1: like the man drake. Root, which of course has all
Speaker 1: these connotations with various medicinal and sort of magical practices,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, at the only discussed how
Speaker 1: tomatoes were cooked and eaten at the time much in
Speaker 1: the same way as eggplants, which were another imported food,
Speaker 1: only this this eggplants came from Asia um And and
Speaker 1: they were again part of the night shade family. And
Speaker 1: this has to be this seems to be a major
Speaker 1: sticking point for a large portion of of the tomatoes
Speaker 1: European tradition uh with it and the related egg plant
Speaker 1: not traveling all that well into New European cuisines, or
Speaker 1: not all of them anyway, because of their association with
Speaker 1: man brakes and poisons as well as I would imagine
Speaker 1: just sort of a a general hesitation to take up
Speaker 1: new plants into a into a pre existing culinary tradition.
Speaker 1: One one really interesting example of this UHM. I was
Speaker 1: reading about UH regards the seventeenth century German garden. I
Speaker 1: was reading when the tomato was purely ornamental considering New
Speaker 1: World foods in seventeenth century Berlin. And this was by
Speaker 1: Millie Taylor Pulaski, published in Transatlantic Trade and Global Cultural
Speaker 1: transfer since fourteen. This was published in twenty nineteen. So
Speaker 1: the author mentions that tomatoes were purely ornamental summer plants
Speaker 1: in most Berlin gardens in sixteen fifty six, and this
Speaker 1: was due in large part to a German naturalist by
Speaker 1: the name of Johann uh Sigismund el schotz Um, who
Speaker 1: highlighted its connections first of all to the vile eggplant
Speaker 1: which uh um, which was also present in the gardens
Speaker 1: of Berlin, but not consumed, just grown so you could
Speaker 1: look at it. But Taylor at Polinski also points out
Speaker 1: that el Schultz didn't argue that either of these plants
Speaker 1: was poisonous, only that they were unhealthy. And he also
Speaker 1: seems to mention with some disdain that Italians eat them
Speaker 1: and Spaniards did too at the time. So um, the
Speaker 1: idea is that there was likely um a large amount
Speaker 1: of anti Catholic sentiment here as well, Like this is
Speaker 1: this is a plant. Yes, you can eat it, the
Speaker 1: Italians eat it, the Catholics eat it, but Protestant Germans
Speaker 1: should not eat it because it's bad for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems to go along with some of the things
Speaker 1: I was reading. And and and this is interesting because we
Speaker 1: see a similar trend actually if you look at potatoes,
Speaker 1: which are also part of the large night shade family. Again,
Speaker 1: where a new food is destined just destined for widespread
Speaker 1: popularity and ultimately is going to have a life sustaining success. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. With the potato particularly, it ends up being
Speaker 1: embraced by um lower levels of the socio economic um
Speaker 1: uh ladder first and those communities that take up the
Speaker 1: potato benefit from them like nutritionally uh and and and
Speaker 1: dietarially um and then of course ultimately it it just
Speaker 1: takes over. But initially something like the potato as well,
Speaker 1: it's grown only for decoration before it is ultimately embraced
Speaker 1: by everybody for decoration. Potato for decoration. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I could I guess I could see it.
Speaker 1: I see it less with the two with with the potato,
Speaker 1: but certainly to tomato is a bright plant. It is
Speaker 1: pleasing to look at. But it's impossible for for me
Speaker 1: to really imagine like a guarden, walking into a garden
Speaker 1: where you have ripe tomatoes and eggplants and you're just
Speaker 1: gonna stand back and say, oh, look at that. Isn't
Speaker 1: that isn't that beautiful. Isn't that nice? No, you need
Speaker 1: to harvest that stuff and make a raditui. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the really wonderful text that we were both
Speaker 1: looking at for for this pair of episodes, uh is
Speaker 1: a book by Andrew F. Smith titled The Tomato in America, which, again,
Speaker 1: if you if you're tantalized by our discussions in these
Speaker 1: episodes and you want more about the tomato, this is
Speaker 1: the book for you. Highly recommended. But Smith points out
Speaker 1: that some Renaissance herbalist when they were considering the the tomato,
Speaker 1: they looked at these other sources, one of which is
Speaker 1: Galen and the idea of the wolf peach. And that's
Speaker 1: again when we have the scientific name that we have
Speaker 1: for the tomato. But also there were descriptions of um
Speaker 1: of of glossium by Pedanius Dioscorides who lived forty through nineties,
Speaker 1: and this was a Syrian herb that was so named
Speaker 1: because it was recommended as a treatment for eye ailments.
Speaker 1: Um So that was another sort of pre existing classification
Speaker 1: that helped inform how we thought about tomatoes, or certainly
Speaker 1: how naturalists and botanists thought about them at the time.
Speaker 1: But neither of these, Uh is the tomato, just to
Speaker 1: be clear, but they do tie into some of the
Speaker 1: they frequently mentioned associations that were made at the time
Speaker 1: with tomatoes. Now, to get into some of the myth
Speaker 1: making a little bit, here's another frequently mentioned tail that
Speaker 1: I imagine a number of you have heard, and this
Speaker 1: is how it goes. Uh, this is the story. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this is this correct. We'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a second. But the story goes that when the
Speaker 1: tomato originally found its way onto European plates, you had
Speaker 1: aristocrats who were like, oh, I'm gonna try out this.
Speaker 1: This sounds great, and they started eating these tomatoes. But
Speaker 1: then they started becoming very sick, and they end up
Speaker 1: pronouncing the fruit to be poisonous. But it would turn
Speaker 1: out that the acid in the tomatoes was leaching lead
Speaker 1: out of the plates they were served on, which incidentally
Speaker 1: made poorer members of society um less susceptible to the
Speaker 1: poison because they would be eating off of the wooden
Speaker 1: plates or earthenware plates. Now, whether or not this claim
Speaker 1: is true, it is actually true, of course, that that
Speaker 1: acidic fruits and vegetables, when cooked in or eaten on
Speaker 1: certain types of pots, of pans or plates can actually
Speaker 1: react with the material. One example is if you cook
Speaker 1: overly acidic foods, including tomato based foods, in for example,
Speaker 1: aluminum cookware. Sometimes this isn't great, like they can react
Speaker 1: with each other. The food can pick up a kind
Speaker 1: of nasty metallic taste from the aluminum. The acid can
Speaker 1: sort of damage the surface of the aluminum. So so
Speaker 1: there are reactions like that that can't happen, right, And
Speaker 1: we have discussed lead making its way into food and
Speaker 1: lead poisoning in at least a couple of episodes in
Speaker 1: the past. I know we did Cupids leaden Arrow, which
Speaker 1: discussed lead quite a bit, and then we also did
Speaker 1: one of one of our three or four Dangerous Foods
Speaker 1: episodes touched on lead poisoning. But anyway, this idea of
Speaker 1: tomatoes sucking the lead out of your your your plate
Speaker 1: where uh. This ended up being circulated in the United
Speaker 1: States as well, um, with commentators highlighting the lead issue,
Speaker 1: and there were also concerns over the general effect of
Speaker 1: the acidity of the tomato on the stomach, with some saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the you know, the the acidity and the tomatoes dangerous
Speaker 1: to the stomach, others saying no, no, it's really beneficial.
Speaker 1: Another thing I've read, Actually, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: overlaps with the lead issue or not, but the specific
Speaker 1: substance I saw mentioned was pewter plates. Was that like
Speaker 1: that they would discolor. When you put tomatoes on a
Speaker 1: pewter plate, it would allegedly discolor the plate, and this
Speaker 1: led to concerns. Yeah, now, Andrew F. Smith does right
Speaker 1: that the acid content of tomatoes was a topic of
Speaker 1: concern in Europe and the United States for a while.
Speaker 1: The Paris Society for Horticulture published a paper warning about
Speaker 1: the possibility of leaching with metal plates uh including copper,
Speaker 1: recommending that you should use wooden and earthenware plates instead.
Speaker 1: But but I looked into this a bit more, reading
Speaker 1: from a book titled Death by petticoat American His Three
Speaker 1: Myths Debunked by Mary Miley Theobald, and the author points
Speaker 1: out that in British barber surgeon published a botanical book
Speaker 1: that claimed tomatoes were actually poisonous, while also noting that
Speaker 1: the French and Italians did eat them. So I guess
Speaker 1: it was like, these are dangerous to humans unless you're French.
Speaker 1: Or Italians somehow, I don't know. Apparently this uh that
Speaker 1: this was this was no expert um, this particular barber surgeon.
Speaker 1: I guess it would be like the modern equivalent of
Speaker 1: say a a like a YouTube based dietary expert. I'm
Speaker 1: not positive, but I think that's referring to somebody who
Speaker 1: cited in another paper by Andrew F. Smith. Not that
Speaker 1: book we're looking at, but a paper I'm gonna sighten
Speaker 1: a bit. I think that is John Girard, a barber
Speaker 1: surgeon and the superintendent of the gardens of the College
Speaker 1: of Physicians in Holborn. And Smith says of of of
Speaker 1: this barber surgeon guy, that in addition to repeating the
Speaker 1: claims of others that the tomatoes poisonous, he also made
Speaker 1: strange comments such as quote the temperature of the tomato
Speaker 1: was in the highest degree of coldness, which he said
Speaker 1: was left quote to every man's censure. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: I don't know, well, I know about the censure. It
Speaker 1: just seems like, okay, yes, disdain in the tomato alright, Well,
Speaker 1: at any rate, Um theobald of contends that quote this
Speaker 1: book set the state for the negative view of tomatoes
Speaker 1: among the English that lasted more than a century. However,
Speaker 1: by the end of the seventeen hundreds, tomatoes had overcome
Speaker 1: this bad press. Yeah, that seems in line with a
Speaker 1: lot of what I was reading as well, that it's
Speaker 1: not that everybody thought that tomatoes were poisonous, but that
Speaker 1: there were some prominent writers that had made or repeated
Speaker 1: these allegations that the tomato was in some way potentially
Speaker 1: poisonous or unhealthy, and that these misimpressions trickled down to
Speaker 1: some people in society, but not everybody. So some people
Speaker 1: were reading tomatoes, other people we're saying, no, that's dangerous,
Speaker 1: don't do that, And over time the non dangerous faction
Speaker 1: grew in numbers. Yeah, I think, you know, it's easy
Speaker 1: to look back at history and assume that there would
Speaker 1: be sort of weirdly to think there would be some
Speaker 1: sort of consensus at the time about whether you know
Speaker 1: wrong or correct about particular foods. But obviously we just
Speaker 1: look around the world today and we see how um are,
Speaker 1: our understanding of the nutritional values of various foods shifts
Speaker 1: with our understanding, and also just sort of the popular
Speaker 1: idea of what we should be eating, what is good,
Speaker 1: what is tasty, what is stylish, and even what is
Speaker 1: healthy shifts as well. Yeah, you're exactly right, and and
Speaker 1: there is a grain of truth here at least in
Speaker 1: the fact that, uh that plants in the soul and
Speaker 1: a C family, including you know, say potatoes for instance,
Speaker 1: to do sometimes in some parts of the plant have
Speaker 1: do accumulate toxins that can be dangerous. For example, if
Speaker 1: you consume the leaves or something, or even um, we've
Speaker 1: talked before about there there are ways that toxins can
Speaker 1: accumulate in potatoes if they say, left out for a
Speaker 1: long time, if you have a really old potato, it
Speaker 1: can get a lot of soulanine in it, which can
Speaker 1: lead to potato poisoning. Yeah, it turns green on the
Speaker 1: sunlit countertop, that sort of thing. Um. Yes. Smith points
Speaker 1: out that well, first of all, as far as um
Speaker 1: acidity goes, it's gonna very quite a bit across the
Speaker 1: varieties of tomato. But then in terms of um potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous alkaloids, those are going to be mostly in the
Speaker 1: leaves and stem. That's where the highest concentrations are going
Speaker 1: to be in a tomato plant. And there have been
Speaker 1: cases where say a child consumed a tea made from
Speaker 1: those leaves, and it has resulted in severe reactions. But
Speaker 1: as you can guess from the like billions of pounds
Speaker 1: or whatever of catchup and other tomato products that people
Speaker 1: eat around the world every day, the tomato itself is
Speaker 1: over elming le safety. There's just yeah, there's nothing to this,
Speaker 1: right and and certainly any of these cases where we're
Speaker 1: discussing a place or a people or a community that
Speaker 1: was afraid of the tomato, or did not eat the tomato,
Speaker 1: or only grew it ornamentally, there was an all likelihood
Speaker 1: um people or a place not too far away where
Speaker 1: it was just a part of the It had already
Speaker 1: become part of the culinary tradition. So yeah, you would
Speaker 1: have english people or Germans that were not eating the tomato.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, in Italy and Spain and France and Portugal
Speaker 1: they were already all in I mean, it was already
Speaker 1: a food crop when Europeans first encountered it. Yeah. Absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting paper I mentioned a minute ago
Speaker 1: by also by Andrew F. Smith, from from the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties that was about the history of how perceptions of
Speaker 1: the tomato changed in the United States during the first
Speaker 1: half of the nineteenth century, and there are some some
Speaker 1: interesting reasons involved in that transition that Smith gets into.
Speaker 1: I think we're probably gonna explore that paper in the
Speaker 1: second episode here, but it's got a lot of fun
Speaker 1: quackery in it, so so pulled on for that one.
Speaker 1: I'd say one of the stumbling blocks to understanding the
Speaker 1: idea of the tomato as is being received as poisonous
Speaker 1: or beneficial is that sometimes the best seeming examples, the
Speaker 1: best stories about about this are actually just legends, so
Speaker 1: you know, are completely apocryphal, uh, such as the this
Speaker 1: famous story that I imagined a lot of people have heard, uh,
Speaker 1: the apocryphal legend of Robert Gibbon Johnson. Uh. So they
Speaker 1: are multiple versions of this, and they concern a real
Speaker 1: life individual named Robert Gibbon Johnson who have seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: one through eighteen fifty and he was a notable farmer
Speaker 1: and horticulturist in Salem, New Jersey. He was an actual
Speaker 1: tomato grower, uh and is sometimes credited with having introduced
Speaker 1: the crop into the area in eighteen twenty, and certainly
Speaker 1: they become a major crop around that time. In southern
Speaker 1: New Jersey. But this is was discussing a second like,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem to be the case either. He didn't
Speaker 1: didn't actually introduce the crop. But in this particular story, Um,
Speaker 1: the idea is that he said he was defending the
Speaker 1: tomato and he announced I will publicly eat a basket
Speaker 1: of tomatoes on the old Salem County Courthouse steps. Uh
Speaker 1: that this is the uh in order to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: they are not poisonous. And then and then the town's
Speaker 1: folk burned him as a witch. Wrong Salem. But um,
Speaker 1: but you know, the idea is that people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's gonna eat a basket and tomatoes and die publicly.
Speaker 1: I've got to see that. So people gather to watch
Speaker 1: the spectacle. They come from far and wide. And then
Speaker 1: he eats the tomatoes and does not die. That's the story,
Speaker 1: and it makes for a great story. But everyone seems
Speaker 1: to agree that this is just not true as uh.
Speaker 1: And Andrew F. Smith actually gets into this in the
Speaker 1: first few pages of the book, um, pointing out that
Speaker 1: there's some pretty good records from the time in Salem
Speaker 1: and Johnson being a prominent citizen was mentioned quite a
Speaker 1: bit for his other activities and exploits, like he was
Speaker 1: also in the military and so forth, like he was
Speaker 1: a major deal at the time. But there's nothing about
Speaker 1: him introducing the tomato. There's nothing about him um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, eating tomatoes and as a matter of public
Speaker 1: spectacle to to to prove that they're not poisonous. And
Speaker 1: it just seems like that would be written up if
Speaker 1: he had done that, Like the papers were not shy
Speaker 1: about writing about about this guy at the time. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Smith goes on to note that as far as the
Speaker 1: the idea of him introducing the tomato, this is just
Speaker 1: one of some five hundred different myths about tomato introduction
Speaker 1: in America, and that they often end end up involving
Speaker 1: the the Great Man trope, in which someone such as
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, He's another individual that sometimes is erroneously cited
Speaker 1: as being the introducer of tomatoes is responsible. But in
Speaker 1: reality we don't know who is responsible, you know, specifically
Speaker 1: for introducing tomato. There is no actual American King Tomato
Speaker 1: to credit. I do love the idea though, that if
Speaker 1: this story were true, I mean, so imagine this guy
Speaker 1: sits out in front of the courthouse and eats a
Speaker 1: bushel basket of tomatoes. Like, I don't think that would
Speaker 1: kill him because they're not poisonous, but surely that would
Speaker 1: give him just like horrible diarrhea. What you eat a
Speaker 1: basket of tomatoes with nothing else? Yeah? Maybe so, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Supposedly this whole incident has even been um
Speaker 1: recreated in various past documentaries, but I didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to look them up and see how they presented it,
Speaker 1: if if, because there are different versions of it. So
Speaker 1: maybe in some versions it's just like one tomato, uh,
Speaker 1: and in others it's a whole bushel. I don't know.
Speaker 1: So I've got another story like this about the supposed
Speaker 1: reputation of tomatoes as poisonous, And this is the rumor
Speaker 1: about the George Washington assassination attempt. Okay, so one version
Speaker 1: of the story, as collected in the Snopes article on
Speaker 1: this rumor quote. I remember one of my junior high
Speaker 1: history teachers reading us a suicide note by George Washington's cook.
Speaker 1: The author of the note said that he could not
Speaker 1: forgive Washington's treason against the British and had therefore decided
Speaker 1: to poison him then kill himself. The poison he used
Speaker 1: on Washington was a tomato. That's great story, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's comedic, it generates laughter, and it ties into
Speaker 1: this this ridiculous idea that people once thought that the
Speaker 1: tomato was harmful and and exaggerated to the point where
Speaker 1: it could be used as a lethal weapon. Yeah. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: as great of a story as this is, this one
Speaker 1: is fiction in a literal sense. It comes from a story,
Speaker 1: a short story called the Murder of George Washington by
Speaker 1: Richard im Gordon, which was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery
Speaker 1: magazine in April nineteen fifteen. Mine, I think the author
Speaker 1: is this guy, Richard Gordon, who was also a surgeon
Speaker 1: and uh an enthusiologist who who wrote historical fiction underpen names.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the story, uh this, this cook wants
Speaker 1: to kill Washington because he's a British loyalist, and so
Speaker 1: he waits until Washington is quote afflicted with a cold
Speaker 1: in his head which has seriously impaired his sense of taste. Okay,
Speaker 1: so perfect opportunity, right, He's not going to be able
Speaker 1: to taste the poison that the cook adds to his stew,
Speaker 1: which comes in the form of quote the scarlet flesh
Speaker 1: of a fruit of a variety of the deadly nightshade.
Speaker 1: And then, after serving what he assumes to be the
Speaker 1: deadly poison, the cook writes a ps to his suicide
Speaker 1: note quote. As a cook, I have a prejudice against
Speaker 1: dying by poison. I am too corpulent to hang. But
Speaker 1: by reason of my calling, I am expert with a
Speaker 1: carving knife. So it is alleged that he takes his
Speaker 1: own life somehow with the aid of a carving knife.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, I think the reader is just
Speaker 1: left to assume that this guy's scheme does not work
Speaker 1: because the poison does not work, because it is a tomato.
Speaker 1: That's great, but no basis in history whatsoever. It sounds
Speaker 1: like the author was merely having fun with some of
Speaker 1: these very these very topics that we've been discussing here.
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're going to take one
Speaker 1: more break, but when we come back, we will discuss
Speaker 1: the killer tomato worm. Than all right, we're back now, Robert.
Speaker 1: Before we went to the break, did you say something
Speaker 1: about a killer tomato worm. Yes, killer tomato worms, which
Speaker 1: is another interesting area that combines like actual um actual
Speaker 1: in this case entomological fact with a fair amount of
Speaker 1: myth making here. Uh and and just uh you know superstition,
Speaker 1: I guess. So it is a fact of life that
Speaker 1: if you're going to raise some crops, uh, you're going
Speaker 1: to have to deal with other organisms that also want
Speaker 1: to eat said crops. And uh. Again, we've been growing
Speaker 1: some tomatoes in our own backyard here, so so we've
Speaker 1: gotten used to this. As again we're growing tomatoes. We
Speaker 1: also have some volunteer summertime pumpkins from our compost. We
Speaker 1: didn't know what they were gonna be. It turns out
Speaker 1: they're useless pumpkins, but they're still fun. Are pumpkins useless? Well,
Speaker 1: most of these are those little ornamental pumpkins. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know the kind uh that you you you buy around
Speaker 1: um Halloween and you set out for decoration and you
Speaker 1: put on the basket on the dining room table. Um.
Speaker 1: That's what's been growing in our backyard. But can you
Speaker 1: can can you imagine a future culture that looks back
Speaker 1: on us with the same disdain that we had for
Speaker 1: people who would have grown tomatoes and eggplants only as decorations,
Speaker 1: and they think that about us about pumpkins. It's true,
Speaker 1: I may be completely off on this. I could be
Speaker 1: wasting these um Like. It does remind me of a
Speaker 1: time time when I was helping deliver for a C.
Speaker 1: S A here in in our area, and you know,
Speaker 1: so I would vote, we would volunteer, and we would
Speaker 1: would get like a free basket of vegetables in return
Speaker 1: for our service. But we would deliver baskets of fresh
Speaker 1: vegetables to various households, and there's a lot of good
Speaker 1: stuff in there. There's stuff like sun chokes that I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever had before. Um. But then we
Speaker 1: would also have a lot of squash, and one of
Speaker 1: them I particularly remember they were acorn squash, which can
Speaker 1: be quite delicious. And I delivered one week to this household,
Speaker 1: and then the next week when I came back, there
Speaker 1: were the acorn squash, uh, not served up inside in
Speaker 1: a dish, but on the porch as decorations. And I
Speaker 1: was thinking, oh my god, those are so delicious and
Speaker 1: you're just gonna use them as porch decorations. Did they
Speaker 1: carve a jackal interface and do them at least? No? No,
Speaker 1: just they just set them out there. But it's possible
Speaker 1: I'm doing the same thing with my summertime pumpkins. Um
Speaker 1: so I do I do not know. Um, But at
Speaker 1: any rate, growing all this stuff in the backyard, um,
Speaker 1: other organisms are interested. Various bugs make a go at it.
Speaker 1: The squirrels, I think, get a little bit bored and
Speaker 1: we'll eat like part of something here and there. And
Speaker 1: we've also even had a rabbit shown up, show up,
Speaker 1: which has been a lot of fun because you get
Speaker 1: anytime you get to watch a rabbit in your own yard. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of magical, at least for me. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll gnaw on your fruits, but they bring bunny magic
Speaker 1: with them in return. Yeah, they're they're fun to watch,
Speaker 1: they're cute. Um. But but then there's but there's a
Speaker 1: different pest we're gonna be talking about here and um
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's quite interesting. According to Smith, there's
Speaker 1: no beating the large green tomato worm, an alarming pest
Speaker 1: that is three to four inches long or can grow
Speaker 1: the three to four inches long. And it has this
Speaker 1: weird horn sticking out of its back, kind of out
Speaker 1: of the final portion of its body. And uh, I've
Speaker 1: included a picture here for you to look at. Joe.
Speaker 1: It's It's really quite impressive, right, it is generally not spiky.
Speaker 1: It just has one giant buttthorn. Yeah, that has kind
Speaker 1: of a crimson or scarlet color to it, as if
Speaker 1: it has already like stabbed a muppet or something. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it is is, so it's pretty impressive. It's closely related
Speaker 1: to the tobacco worm. So if you've seen one or
Speaker 1: the other, you may have an idea what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about here. Smith points out that Ralph Waldo Emerson even
Speaker 1: bemoaned these quote young entomologies that we're eating up his
Speaker 1: tomato plants. So this particular, these particular worms, they are
Speaker 1: the larval stage of the five spotted hawk month and
Speaker 1: it is in fact a different species from the tobacco hornworm.
Speaker 1: But they're closely related. And the confusing thing is that
Speaker 1: both organisms feed on a variety of species that include
Speaker 1: both tomato and tobacco leaves. Oh interesting, but they got
Speaker 1: what different kind of specialties? Uh? Yeah? Or just one
Speaker 1: is in one is more associated with tomatoes and one
Speaker 1: is more associated with tobacco. But the you know, either
Speaker 1: one will eat the leaves of both plants now, will
Speaker 1: will strip your nerves screamingly raw? Yes, apparently so, or
Speaker 1: at least that seems to have been the panic around
Speaker 1: them back in the uh certainly the mid nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Apparently in eighteen forty five New York Farmers Club report
Speaker 1: described them as quote positively shocking to weak nerves. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there were a lot of weak nerves back then.
Speaker 1: Smith has a bit more on this, you just have
Speaker 1: to read in in the book. But but he includes
Speaker 1: these quotations where people were talking about how like the
Speaker 1: worm just ruins tomatoes for them forever, Like they're just
Speaker 1: like they're just too gross. I'm not even going into
Speaker 1: my tomato garden ever again. Oh I see you like
Speaker 1: you see the worm once and it like turns you
Speaker 1: off of the entire fruit. Right. But on top of that,
Speaker 1: some even considered it to be poisonous as well, including
Speaker 1: such claims that the bite could cause instant death, or
Speaker 1: that the spittle, the mere spittle from one of these
Speaker 1: creatures could kill a small child dead. Um, so it's
Speaker 1: it's like it's not only is is it like a
Speaker 1: foul creature to behold? Budd It befouls the entire tomato
Speaker 1: garden and makes it a dangerous place in which to venture.
Speaker 1: So is there any truth to this? Where's this coming from? Uh?
Speaker 1: The thing is apparently not. The idea ran rampant through
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century until you had an Illinois based
Speaker 1: intomologist by the name of Benjamin Walsh who pointed out
Speaker 1: and apparently this made the papers and all saying like, look,
Speaker 1: this is hard, this is harmless to humans, This is
Speaker 1: not going to kill you. This is it's a past. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's maybe a little big, it's a little maybe alarming
Speaker 1: to look at, but it's not going to poison you. Uh. Though,
Speaker 1: as Smith points out, you still you had publications uh
Speaker 1: in um Illinois based papers pointing out Walsh's um uh
Speaker 1: facts here. But then you had other columns where people
Speaker 1: were saying, oh, there was a girl that was killed
Speaker 1: by one of these tomato worms. So it took a
Speaker 1: while for this idea to really go away. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: roommates cousin's friend died from a tomato hornworm. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: I've got another poison tomato rabbit hole to run down here.
Speaker 1: Because I was trying to think, okay, well, what if
Speaker 1: you do want to poison somebody with a tomato allah.
Speaker 1: The you know, the early European misunderstandings, or or the
Speaker 1: fictional account of George Washington's cook I do have a
Speaker 1: possible candidate for you. It's not confirmed how lethal this
Speaker 1: tomato would be, but it's at least suspected with good reason.
Speaker 1: And that candidate is the tomaco Now. Weirdly, whereas the
Speaker 1: George Washington story takes a historically factual misunderstanding as the
Speaker 1: inspiration for fiction, this story takes a modern fiction as
Speaker 1: the inspiration for a fact. So there's an episode of
Speaker 1: The Simpsons that aired in called Ei Ei annoyed grunt
Speaker 1: as an e I e I dough uh. And in
Speaker 1: this episode, Homer I guess he's trying his hand at farming,
Speaker 1: and he attempts to farm tomatoes and tobacco plants, but
Speaker 1: he fertilizes his crops with plutonium from the nuclear power plant,
Speaker 1: and this produces a hybrid plant that is basically a
Speaker 1: tomato stuffed with tobacco, which tastes bad but is highly addictive.
Speaker 1: I think Bart says it's so refreshingly addictive, and he
Speaker 1: sells it as tomacco, and everybody gets addicted to it.
Speaker 1: And then I think there's some calamity where where all
Speaker 1: his crops are destroyed. Okay, I'd forgotten about this episode,
Speaker 1: but now that you summarize it, I do remember it.
Speaker 1: But apparently reality caught up because I was reading a
Speaker 1: report in Wired from November of two thousand three by
Speaker 1: Kristen Philip Cooski, and it was about a man named
Speaker 1: Rob Bauer of Lake Oswego, Oregon. Now Bauer, I believe
Speaker 1: he worked in wastewater management, and he had some scientific training, uh,
Speaker 1: and he remembered reading about a similar procedure when he
Speaker 1: had been in college, when I think when he was
Speaker 1: in graduate school, and he decided to try to create
Speaker 1: such a plant in reality, which he did by grafting
Speaker 1: together a tomato plant and a tobacco plant. Apparently, he
Speaker 1: initially experimented with with grafting in in one direction, which
Speaker 1: was putting a tobacco plant on a tomato root, but
Speaker 1: the graft didn't take and when he removed the wrapping
Speaker 1: that held them together, the plant kind of fell apart
Speaker 1: and died. But the inverst grafting procedure did work. He
Speaker 1: put a tomato plant on a tobacco root, and Bauer
Speaker 1: claims that this process was successful and the tomato plant
Speaker 1: with the tobacco roots actually bore fruit, though nobody ate
Speaker 1: the fruit, because he suspected it was at least possible
Speaker 1: that one of these tomatoes could contain a lethal amount
Speaker 1: of nicotine. Wow. Well, on one hand, that's alarming, But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it's I guess it's not completely
Speaker 1: surprising because tobacco is a part of this large night
Speaker 1: shade family. Yeah, exactly, and that's probably why, yeah, why
Speaker 1: the grafting worked out. Uh. So, to be clear, I
Speaker 1: don't I couldn't find any evidence that it was ever
Speaker 1: confirmed that the tomato itself would have been poisonous with
Speaker 1: the lethal amount of nicotine. But it seems like a
Speaker 1: reasonable thing to worry about, at least good reason enough
Speaker 1: not to eat the tomato. Uh And Bower, speaking to Wire,
Speaker 1: had said, quote, I've got this one plant growing and
Speaker 1: it's blooming again. I accidentally left the tobacco on the
Speaker 1: kitchen table, and my wife yelled at me, get that
Speaker 1: thing out of the kitchen, you knuckle head, because it
Speaker 1: looks like a regular tomato. Yeah, don't leave your secret
Speaker 1: poison tomatoes just laying around. But but as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Bauer was apparently not the first person to try this
Speaker 1: plant hybridization. He He mentioned that he had actually read
Speaker 1: about this when he was in college, I think in
Speaker 1: an article that was published in Scientific American in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine that described a similar procedure to what end.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure. I don't know what what you
Speaker 1: really gain by creating a tomato that possibly has nicotine
Speaker 1: in it. I mean, and that's probably ultimately the reason
Speaker 1: you don't see a tremendous amount of effort go into this, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, what is the payoff? What's the incentive?
Speaker 1: Perhaps there's some I just don't know. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything else about that. But hey, if you know of
Speaker 1: a good reason to create a tomato tobacco hybrid right in,
Speaker 1: let us know. All right, Well, we we've reached the
Speaker 1: point we're gonna have to stop and uh and come
Speaker 1: back in another episode to continue our exploration of the tomato.
Speaker 1: But but real quick, Joe, Uh, fresh tomatoes are in
Speaker 1: your kitchen. What's what's one of the first dishes you
Speaker 1: you think you'll you would try to make? Like what
Speaker 1: something is popular right now in your household with tomatoes? Oh?
Speaker 1: Answer to that is extremely easy. Um toast with a
Speaker 1: little bit of mayonnaise with tomato on top, salt and pepper,
Speaker 1: I mean, unbeatable, Like just tomato sandwich with mayonnaise is
Speaker 1: the most delicious thing if it's a good ripe summer tomato.
Speaker 1: Also just a good ripe summer tomatoes sliced with like
Speaker 1: olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe a bit of torn
Speaker 1: basil leaves. I mean, keep it simple. A good ripe
Speaker 1: summer tomato is it's like a steak. It's a dish
Speaker 1: unto itself. Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. I mean it
Speaker 1: reminds me that one of the things we like to
Speaker 1: do here at our house is make a sort of
Speaker 1: b LT. We don't. We don't eat bacon anymore, but
Speaker 1: we will will use um like store bought soysage like
Speaker 1: you get from like Morning Star or t J's. Put
Speaker 1: that on there instead of bacon, and with a really
Speaker 1: good tomato, it's fabulous. I've actually been wondering about trying
Speaker 1: to create a vegetarian version of a b LT, and
Speaker 1: some of the ideas that came across for the bacon
Speaker 1: substitute were like, um uh, sort of dried out charred
Speaker 1: strips of eggplant or smoked strips of eggplant, but then
Speaker 1: also just the idea of using like smoked tempe. That
Speaker 1: sounds good, It sounds good. All right, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna close out then, but obviously we want you to
Speaker 1: come back for the next episode on tomatoes, and in
Speaker 1: the meantime you can certainly right in and give some
Speaker 1: feedback on the journey thus far, share some insight based
Speaker 1: on your own experience with tomato growing with tomato consumption.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. If you want to
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you know where to find us absolutely anywhere you get
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Speaker 1: you rate, review and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
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Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us
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