Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick. Today's the Thursday, and normally on
Speaker 1: a Thursday you'd be getting a brand new core episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, but a couple of
Speaker 1: us here on the team are out for a day
Speaker 1: this week, so instead we are moving up the Vault
Speaker 1: episode that was originally scheduled for this Saturday. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with new episodes of Weird House Cinema on Friday
Speaker 1: and Listener Mail on Monday, and then all new core
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesday of
Speaker 1: next week. But for today, we hope you enjoy Part
Speaker 1: two of our series on the tomato originally published on
Speaker 1: August Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part two of our talk about tomatoes.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a question last time that we
Speaker 1: explored at some length, which is, uh, this question you've
Speaker 1: had for a while, Robert, I think, based on reading
Speaker 1: a placard at a botanical garden, which is did the
Speaker 1: people of the past few hundred years regard tomatoes as poisonous.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's this generalization made that you know, it used
Speaker 1: to be that everybody thought tomatoes were poison but now
Speaker 1: we figured out that's not true. Now, of course tomatoes
Speaker 1: are not poisonous, but it's also the historical characterization is
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that, right. Yeah, Again, it
Speaker 1: kind of depends on what part of the world you're
Speaker 1: looking at. What say, you're which European nation, and during
Speaker 1: what period of the tomatoes um rise to power as
Speaker 1: a global food source. But I came across a great
Speaker 1: article that is by the same author as the author
Speaker 1: of a book that we talked about in in the
Speaker 1: last episode of Book about Tomatoes, Uh, Andrew F. Smith.
Speaker 1: Smith is also the author of an article that was
Speaker 1: published in nineteen in the journal Pharmacy and History called
Speaker 1: Tomato Pills Will Cure All Your Ills. And this is
Speaker 1: a fantastic article about, you know, tomato pills for your
Speaker 1: jaundice and your diarrhea. It's a wild ride and I
Speaker 1: can't wait to get into it. Well, let's definitely get
Speaker 1: into it. But first, just your reminder, this is a
Speaker 1: part two. We do encourage you to go back and
Speaker 1: listen to part one before proceeding. By all means Part
Speaker 1: one first. Okay, So, as we discussed previously, when the
Speaker 1: tomato was first introduced to Europe from meso America. Of course,
Speaker 1: in meso America, among the waddle speaking people, it was
Speaker 1: cultivated as a food crop, and then it's spread from
Speaker 1: there to Europe and then to the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: But when this first happened, some European writers did claim
Speaker 1: that the tomato was was not good food, it was
Speaker 1: not fit to put in his body. Uh, and they
Speaker 1: wrote as much in their their culinary and horticultural treatises. Though,
Speaker 1: as we talked about last time, a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of these writers will sort of note that, well, people
Speaker 1: in Spain and Italy somehow eat these things, but uh,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless they are not good to eat or their
Speaker 1: poison or whatever. But this changed over time, and by
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, tomato use was definitely on the rise
Speaker 1: throughout Europe, especially throughout southern Europe, though some of the
Speaker 1: old ideas still lingered here and there. According to Smith,
Speaker 1: though within the culture of the United States specifically, and
Speaker 1: I guess this would have been you know, the British
Speaker 1: colonies in the east of the United States, and then
Speaker 1: after the Revolution in the early United States, the tomato
Speaker 1: was still pretty widely regarded as in some way, you know,
Speaker 1: not good to eat. Definitely through a lot of the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, though, that was changing, and then it underwent
Speaker 1: a relatively rapid transition during a few decades in the
Speaker 1: first half of the nineteenth century. Uh So, He says
Speaker 1: that around eighteen twenty, it was still a pretty widespread
Speaker 1: belief within the United States that tomatoes were somehow inedible
Speaker 1: and maybe poisonous, is not good to eat. But um,
Speaker 1: he says, quote, within three decades after eighteen twenty, farmers
Speaker 1: cultivated tomatoes the length and breadth of the country in
Speaker 1: almost every garden from Boston to New Orleans, and Americans
Speaker 1: served them on every table from July to October. According
Speaker 1: to a British observer, Americans served tomatoes every day, prepared
Speaker 1: in every imaginable way. And we're the scenic quanon of
Speaker 1: American existence. So that that's a pretty dramatic shift. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: to go from poison to just the thing that you
Speaker 1: eat like crazy for its entire season, yeah exactly. So
Speaker 1: what led to this change in attitudes over such a
Speaker 1: relatively short time. Well Smith notes that there were many reasons,
Speaker 1: but it seems one of the most important was quacks.
Speaker 1: I love it, I love it, I love a good
Speaker 1: quacks for goods to worry. Okay, So, as we alluded
Speaker 1: to last time, many books and supposed botanical or horticultural
Speaker 1: experts in Europe in the colonies since the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: seemed to think there was something wrong with eating tomatoes.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they were poisonous, maybe inedible. Clearly not
Speaker 1: everybody in Europe thought this way. Tomatoes were you know,
Speaker 1: very popular in Italy and France and Spain and Portugal
Speaker 1: and more and more. People of course were of course
Speaker 1: cooking with tomatoes all the time. But in England, Philip Miller,
Speaker 1: who was a superintendent of the Chelsea Physic Garden, wrote
Speaker 1: in the seventeen fifties that small yellow love apples were
Speaker 1: starting to be directed for medicinal use by one college
Speaker 1: in their dispensatory, and Miller, even in the seventeen fifties
Speaker 1: noted that well even some English people are eating tomatoes
Speaker 1: in soup. Uh, though at the same time he says, quote,
Speaker 1: there are persons who think them not wholesome, so this
Speaker 1: ambigue it. He still exists somewhat, but by the seventeen
Speaker 1: fifties it's clear that some doctors and medical students or
Speaker 1: trying trying experiments with tomatoes as medicine, and some English
Speaker 1: people just straight up put him in the stew uh
Speaker 1: And apparently an early evangelist for tomatoes in the British
Speaker 1: colonies in America was a doctor named John de Sequeira,
Speaker 1: who was born in London but educated in Leyden, and
Speaker 1: who Thomas Jefferson claimed had introduced tomatoes to Williamsburg, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Jefferson also claimed that des Aquaira was fond of saying
Speaker 1: that quote, a person who should eat a sufficient abundance
Speaker 1: of these apples would never die. Now I don't know
Speaker 1: if he meant that in, you know, with a touch
Speaker 1: of irony, or if he was serious that though it
Speaker 1: does make me think that, hey, what if the humble
Speaker 1: tomato was actually the fruit of the tree of life,
Speaker 1: Because there's always been a debate about in the story
Speaker 1: of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 1: what the fruits of these trees are actually supposed to be.
Speaker 1: The Book of Genesis does not say, in this story,
Speaker 1: what the fruits of the Tree of Life and the
Speaker 1: Tree of the knowledge of good and evil we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be a lot of people have assumed them to
Speaker 1: be apples, but there it's that's not explicitly stated. So
Speaker 1: people have proposed all kinds of answers to this question.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're apples, maybe figs, maybe pomegranate, I think unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: Terrence McKenna said, the story was supposed to include a
Speaker 1: reference to a mushroom, but what if the forbidden fruit
Speaker 1: was a tomato? Yeah? I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 1: that actually checks out with what we know about the
Speaker 1: origins of the tomato, but I like the idea. No,
Speaker 1: it would certainly not check out, like the authors of
Speaker 1: the Book of Genesis would not have known what a
Speaker 1: tomato was, right because it was from South America. But
Speaker 1: Smith points out that many of the early promoters of
Speaker 1: tomatoes in the colonies were doctors, and this is not
Speaker 1: all that surprising since tomatoes were becoming accepted during the
Speaker 1: eighteen century as a medical plant. For example, James Mees,
Speaker 1: who published one of the first known recipes for tomato
Speaker 1: ketchup around the year eighteen twelve. He was a medical
Speaker 1: graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and he wrote about
Speaker 1: how he was familiar with the culinary use of tomatoes
Speaker 1: from French immigrants, who were probably creole refugees from Haiti.
Speaker 1: But beginning in the eighteen twenties, American physicians started to
Speaker 1: talk about tomatoes as a cure for what they called,
Speaker 1: at the time billious diseases. These would be diseases that
Speaker 1: were associated with disorders of the liver or bile, which
Speaker 1: apparently sort of became a catch all category for diseases
Speaker 1: involving jaundice, nausea, and vomiting along with fever. You know,
Speaker 1: if there's something wrong with your guts, they thought you
Speaker 1: had some kind of bile problem. Smith gives a number
Speaker 1: of examples. One is a doctor Horatio Gates Spafford, who
Speaker 1: wrote in the New York Farmer Quote that tomato sauce
Speaker 1: removed headaches, a bad taste in the mouth, straightness of
Speaker 1: the chest, painful heaviness in the liver, and improved the
Speaker 1: action of the bowels. So hey, that's an all in one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But probably the single largest influence on the tomatoes image
Speaker 1: as a promoter of good health was a man named
Speaker 1: Dr John Cook Bennett Robert I have attached a sketch
Speaker 1: of him, and I noticed he he really kind of
Speaker 1: looks a little bit like Adam Scott, but in a
Speaker 1: strange military uniform with epaulets and a sword. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see the Adam Scott. I also see a little
Speaker 1: bit of of of grandmof Tarke in here, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a combination of the two for me. Absolutely. So.
Speaker 1: Bennett lived from eighteen o four to eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: and he's actually probably best known for his short tenure
Speaker 1: as an associate of Joseph Smith and an early leader
Speaker 1: of the Latter Day Saints movement also known as the Mormons.
Speaker 1: Before all that, Bennett was a doctor who Andrew Smith
Speaker 1: claims founded one of the first medical diploma mills in
Speaker 1: US history, So he's a diploma mill pioneer. Apparently, Bennett
Speaker 1: would go around the Midwest selling medical degrees for ten
Speaker 1: bucks apiece, and I'm sure that created some awesome doctors,
Speaker 1: but it seems some people didn't really like that practice.
Speaker 1: He fell under some criticism for for selling degrees like that,
Speaker 1: so instead he accepted a position as a professor of
Speaker 1: midwifery at Willoughby Medical College of Lake Erie University in Ohio,
Speaker 1: where he jumped decisively onto the tomato train. This would
Speaker 1: have been in the early to mid eighteen thirties, and
Speaker 1: Smith writes as follows quote in his introductory lecture at Willoughby,
Speaker 1: Bennett declared that tomatoes successfully treated diarrhea, violent bilious attacks,
Speaker 1: and dyspepsia or indigestion. He recommended that tomatoes replaced alamel
Speaker 1: because they were less harmful, predicting that quote, a chemical
Speaker 1: extract will probably soon be obtained from it, which will
Speaker 1: altogether supersede the use of calamel in the cure of diseases.
Speaker 1: Tomatoes were also good for citizens traveling to the west
Speaker 1: or to the south, as tomatoes would quote save them
Speaker 1: from the danger attendant upon those violent bilious attacks to
Speaker 1: which almost all unacclimated persons are liable. So basically saying
Speaker 1: like travel diarrhea, right, I think so, I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure what so is. Was there an idea at the
Speaker 1: time that if you go to the south or the west,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have bilious attacks? I've never heard of that before,
Speaker 1: but oh yeah, travel diarrhea would make sense as an interpretation.
Speaker 1: But hey, just eat your tomatoes, you know, drink some
Speaker 1: tomato sauce on the train, and you'll be right as
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah Bash. To continue with with Smith's paragraph here,
Speaker 1: quote Bennett urged all citizens to eat tomatoes raw, cooked,
Speaker 1: or in catchup as they were quote the most healthy
Speaker 1: article of all the material alimentary Benet included recipes for
Speaker 1: tomato sauce, fried tomatoes, tomato pickles, tomato ketchup, and eating
Speaker 1: raw tomatoes. I don't know what the recipe for eating
Speaker 1: raw tomatoes is, but uh, to go back to earlier.
Speaker 1: So so Bennett is setting tomatoes up as a foil
Speaker 1: to this substance called calamel, and this reference to calamel here.
Speaker 1: Calumel was a mineral form of mercury chloride that was
Speaker 1: widely used as medicine in the nineteenth century, even though
Speaker 1: nobody was quite sure how it was supposed to work.
Speaker 1: Apparently primarily what it did was it was what they
Speaker 1: called a purgative, basically a laxative um. But it would
Speaker 1: also cause mercury poisoning, and it tended to kill the
Speaker 1: tissue of the mouth and gums. So they're all these
Speaker 1: stories of people taking calamel and like their teeth becoming
Speaker 1: loose and their mouths kind of rotting, And even into
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, alarmingly, calamel powder was used as a
Speaker 1: as a powder to be applied to children's gums as
Speaker 1: they were teething and led to these horrible conditions as
Speaker 1: a result. Benjamin Rush, you know, the physician and one
Speaker 1: of the so called founding fathers, he was a big
Speaker 1: fan of calumel and uh promoted it. I think he
Speaker 1: even tried to give some to Alexander Hamilton's at some point.
Speaker 1: Calumel is just terrible medicine, extremely worth replacing with something else.
Speaker 1: For example, calumel was often used to treat dysentery, but
Speaker 1: as a diuretic itself, it could speed up the dehydration process.
Speaker 1: So as you already have dysentery, you're also taking a
Speaker 1: laxative and this this actually did kill some people. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is definitely an example of a so called
Speaker 1: medicine that is not only it's not just doing nothing,
Speaker 1: it is it is actively heaping more harm on top
Speaker 1: of whatever you're trying to treat. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess I can't verify that it was never doing anything useful,
Speaker 1: but I think it's absolutely clear that if it was
Speaker 1: doing anything beneficial at all, the side effects were far
Speaker 1: worse than whatever it was trying to treat. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like other, you know, mercury based things, I think it
Speaker 1: was just generally used as a cure all. It was
Speaker 1: a panacea of the time. And anything that is supposed
Speaker 1: to cure everything probably cures nothing. So anyway, Bennett is
Speaker 1: offering up tomatoes as an alternative to calamel. He's saying, hey,
Speaker 1: tomatoes can do all the stuff that calamel does, accept
Speaker 1: it without all the side effects. And so Bennett was
Speaker 1: on the tomato train. He was soon forced out of
Speaker 1: his professorship, but he did not give up on his
Speaker 1: tomato crusade, and in eighteen thirty five he repeated the
Speaker 1: claims of his tomato panasy a lecture in dozens of outlets.
Speaker 1: He wrote letters forwarding his address to farming and horticultural magazines,
Speaker 1: to household magazines, um and he also wrote to other
Speaker 1: influential Americans to convinced them of his claims, including somebody
Speaker 1: named Constantine Rafinesque who was a medical botanist and who
Speaker 1: promoted a lot of diet based cures. So he got
Speaker 1: some followers other medical authorities, or at least people who
Speaker 1: were somewhat perceived as such, jumped on the tomato train
Speaker 1: with him. Uh So, I just wanted to list a
Speaker 1: couple more of Bennett's other interesting tomato claims, as as
Speaker 1: relayed by Andrew F. Smith. First of all, he said
Speaker 1: that he had studied all of the ancient texts and
Speaker 1: he his studies proved conclusively that there was nowhere on
Speaker 1: Earth where the tomato was not indigenous. This was not true. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we we I think we we properly debunked that
Speaker 1: notion in the first episode. Uh. He also attacked the
Speaker 1: process of staking tomatoes. So, Robert, you've got tomatoes growing
Speaker 1: in your yard right now, right, what what do you
Speaker 1: do to to get the vines standing upright? Oh, you
Speaker 1: have to use like a metal cage and um. And
Speaker 1: then as that they grow more and more gigantic, you
Speaker 1: end up or these we have to end up reinforcing
Speaker 1: that and and they see and if if you're not
Speaker 1: totally on top of it, you'll still end up with
Speaker 1: the vines falling onto the ground and tomatoes just sitting
Speaker 1: there on the ground. Right. So, most people who grow
Speaker 1: tomatoes today, they staked them in some way. You put
Speaker 1: like a structure up and you allow the vine to
Speaker 1: hang on that off in a metal cage or a
Speaker 1: stick of some kind. But Bennett opposed steaking because he
Speaker 1: claimed it was against God and against nature, and that
Speaker 1: God had intended for tomato vines to lie on the ground.
Speaker 1: If God had meant for them to be steaked, he
Speaker 1: would have had them stand up on their own. Though
Speaker 1: I think Bennett might be confused about the fact that
Speaker 1: the tomato, of course, being a cultivated fruit that was
Speaker 1: sort of created by humans in a way, The original
Speaker 1: natural form of the tomato is a tiny berry, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not this big, heavy, juicy thing that we eat today. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fruit of the modern tomato, it's especially it's larger forms.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's gigantic, it's and it's breaking apart
Speaker 1: with its own juices, you know, And it's ultimately quite
Speaker 1: impressive the amount of biomass that these things produce enough
Speaker 1: to wear. You know, when you first stake up that
Speaker 1: tomato plant or or put a cage around it, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh man, this feels like overkill. But then a month
Speaker 1: two months later and uh and whatever structure you raised
Speaker 1: might be struggling to keep all of that stuff up
Speaker 1: in the air. Yeah, it turns into a precarious tower
Speaker 1: of juice. Yes. Should we take a quick break before
Speaker 1: we come back to discuss Spinnett's encounter with the LDS Church.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, alright, we're back. We're talking about tomatoes
Speaker 1: as a miracle cure that for just about anything that
Speaker 1: at the very least was a preferable cure, all to
Speaker 1: a calamel, which was a dangerous mercury based cure. All right. Uh,
Speaker 1: And this claim was being made in the eight third
Speaker 1: is by this doctor named John Cook Bennett. Now we
Speaker 1: talked about how he started making all these claims about
Speaker 1: tomatoes and their supposed health benefits and curative properties. Apparently
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty, after he'd been making these tomato claims
Speaker 1: for a while, he was working in Illinois and Bennett
Speaker 1: got involved with the Latter Day Saints movement. He became
Speaker 1: friends with its leader Joseph Smith, and his claims about
Speaker 1: the health benefits of tomatoes actually proved influential within the church.
Speaker 1: But tragedy struck and in eighteen forty two Bennett got
Speaker 1: excommunicated from the Latter Day Saints movement. He was excommunicated
Speaker 1: by Joseph Smith himself after some kind of ambiguous scandal
Speaker 1: involving a bunch of alleged sexual impropriety, including adultery and
Speaker 1: maybe some kind of unsanctioned polygamy, with what Smith viewed
Speaker 1: as as dubious spiritual or revelatory justifications. After Bennett was
Speaker 1: banned from the church, he sort of went ballistic on
Speaker 1: Joseph Smith and then published a bunch of allegations against
Speaker 1: him in return. I think he actually accused Smith of
Speaker 1: murder and fraud and a bunch of other things, and
Speaker 1: then the two just win at each other in a
Speaker 1: full scale pr war, Joseph Smith versus John Cook Bennett.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing was, apparently this pr war did
Speaker 1: not undermine, uh, the the Latter Day Saints movements fondness
Speaker 1: for tomatoes and acceptance of their ideas of the health
Speaker 1: benefits that had come from Bennett. So Bennett's claims proved
Speaker 1: very popular, and they caught on and were repeated in
Speaker 1: lots of cookbooks, household manuals, farming and gardening journals, and
Speaker 1: even in Latter Day Saints literature. Uh and so so
Speaker 1: there was this whole tomato for health craze that caught
Speaker 1: on big in the eighteen thirties and continued into the
Speaker 1: eighteen forties. And uh Andrew F. Smith points out that
Speaker 1: whatever his possibly dubious medical or moral credential, Bennett was
Speaker 1: a genuinely, very talented promoter. It seems like he probably
Speaker 1: could have been great in the twentieth century in an
Speaker 1: advertising and marketing context, and that this contributed significantly to
Speaker 1: the popularization and normalization of tomatoes in the United States.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Bennett eventually predicted that you know you're you're
Speaker 1: going to be able in the future to get the
Speaker 1: health benefits of tomatoes without even having to eat a tomato.
Speaker 1: You can just take a miracle pill that will be
Speaker 1: made from a from a tomato extract. And this prediction
Speaker 1: actually came true. In eighteen thirty five, a doctor A. J.
Speaker 1: Holcomb of Glassboro, Alabama, started producing pills made out of
Speaker 1: a tomato extract, and other pills also came on the market.
Speaker 1: Smith quotes advertising for one brand of tomato pills from
Speaker 1: a doctor named Dr. Miles, and it goes like this,
Speaker 1: the tomato used as an article of refection is highly
Speaker 1: medical highly medical and doubtless prevents many bilious attacks. We
Speaker 1: inferred from this fact the possibility of preparing from it
Speaker 1: a medicine of great virtue. Dr Miles and his associates
Speaker 1: have spent years and fortunes we understand and experimenting, and
Speaker 1: finally have produced the compound extract. It has been used
Speaker 1: by many in the city and out of it, and
Speaker 1: is as near we can learn, generally approved. But then
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting. Apparently so Smith's sites. Some
Speaker 1: of the other packaging copy, and some of this copy
Speaker 1: attacks calamel directly. So it says, for example, humane physicians
Speaker 1: deplore the sad evils resulting from the mercurial practice, and
Speaker 1: remember this because calamel is mercury chloride, and will gladly
Speaker 1: hail the introduction of an article that can safely be
Speaker 1: substituted for calamel. And it goes on about how people
Speaker 1: just know in their hearts that mercury is ad, even
Speaker 1: if they can't explain why um, and that you may
Speaker 1: have to choose between two evils of having of taking
Speaker 1: mercury or having a torpid liver. But now they're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have a torpid liver, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to take mercury. You can fight your torpid
Speaker 1: liver with tomato pills. Well, that would certainly be ideal
Speaker 1: if you wanted to consume the medicinal essence of tomatoes
Speaker 1: out of outside of tomato season. Oh yeah, I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about that. Yeah, you wouldn't. You wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: go through eating a mealy one in the winter if
Speaker 1: you wanted to fight your torpid liver. Um. But but
Speaker 1: I will say that so while I think the tomato
Speaker 1: pill probably had very little actual medical merit, especially for
Speaker 1: the billious diseases that they were said to counteract, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that simply by being offered as an
Speaker 1: alternative to calamel, tomato pills or or just tomatoes might
Speaker 1: have done significant medical good just because calamel was so bad.
Speaker 1: Like so, if you're taking something that does nothing instead
Speaker 1: of taking calamel and getting mercury poisoning and gangrenous flesh
Speaker 1: and rotting gums and all that, that that actually does
Speaker 1: seem like an upgrade, even though this is probably not
Speaker 1: useful as medicine. Plus, there's a hint of tomato to it,
Speaker 1: so it's got that going for it. Oh yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I wonder if you you know, if you're actually
Speaker 1: eating any tomato flesh, I wonder if if you can
Speaker 1: get some placebo effect just from the fact that it
Speaker 1: tastes nice. Maybe not, I don't know, that might be reaching,
Speaker 1: but anyways, it's still the placebo effect is powerful. So
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's always going to be a part
Speaker 1: of any of these considerations. Oh absolutely, I mean that
Speaker 1: that might be something that was at work in calamel
Speaker 1: and in tomato and tomato pills, except uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the tomatoes aren't full of mercury um. So it seems
Speaker 1: that some of the attacks against tomato pills did not
Speaker 1: make the accurate charge that or at least I would
Speaker 1: guess what is accurate it, which is that they probably
Speaker 1: just didn't do much, but instead accused them of, say,
Speaker 1: being inferior to calamel and effectiveness. And there were some
Speaker 1: that accused tomatoes and tomato pills of bringing on implausible
Speaker 1: side effects, side effects I would judge to be very implausible.
Speaker 1: For example, uh, Andrew Smith sites one dcor Dio Lewis,
Speaker 1: who was a popular lecturer and a practitioner of homeopathy,
Speaker 1: who claimed to who claimed that the use of tomatoes
Speaker 1: and their extract would cause quote piles tender and bleeding gums,
Speaker 1: teeth set on edge, and loss of teeth due to salivation,
Speaker 1: which which sounds closer to the actual effects of calamel.
Speaker 1: But anyway, despite these attacks, tomato pills proved very popular,
Speaker 1: and by eighteen forty, Smith notes that tomato extract was
Speaker 1: listed as an ingredient in lots of supposed panaceas, even
Speaker 1: pills that weren't just tomato pills. You know, you know
Speaker 1: this is doctor, doctor Rotten Bottoms, you know, excellent cure
Speaker 1: all that would list tomato extract as one of the ingredients,
Speaker 1: and this gave rise at the time to the slogan
Speaker 1: tomato pills will cure all your ills. There you go,
Speaker 1: at rhymes. Can't argue with that, right uh. And just
Speaker 1: as an interesting side note, Smith includes a few other
Speaker 1: bizarre claims made against tomatoes, including one accusation. This is
Speaker 1: from the later nineteenth century, so not the eighteen forties
Speaker 1: period we're talking about now, but later in the century
Speaker 1: there was a doctor John Hilton who reported that quote,
Speaker 1: tomato cells were identical to cancer cells under the microscope,
Speaker 1: and that there was much cancer where tomatoes were eaten.
Speaker 1: This does not appear to be true in any way.
Speaker 1: That sounds real. This This sounds like when um Chancellor
Speaker 1: Palpatine is telling Anakin that the the Jedi and the
Speaker 1: Sith are virtually alike in every way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wonder like, did this guy owned stock in
Speaker 1: a Calumel company? Yeah, But anyway, by the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: basically at this point, there's no going back, Like tomatoes
Speaker 1: had become thoroughly uh normalized and a universally profitable crop
Speaker 1: pretty much in a mainstay of American dining tables. So
Speaker 1: just over the course of a few decades. Really, Smith
Speaker 1: makes the case that even though the the health craze
Speaker 1: for tomatoes was probably somewhat baseless or at least you
Speaker 1: know that if if there are health benefits to tomatoes,
Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly the benefits that these people were claiming, um,
Speaker 1: but that this health craze did help cement tomatoes as
Speaker 1: a universally accepted and extremely popular food in America and
Speaker 1: counteract some of the lingering concerns that might have been
Speaker 1: present among some people about their toxicity. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna basically if you're gonna take up some sort of
Speaker 1: crazy new diet or some sort of weird medication. It's
Speaker 1: better that it's not actual actually poison, right yes. Now.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, on the subject of the health
Speaker 1: benefits of tomatoes, it is worth pointing out that there
Speaker 1: are nutrients present in tomatoes that have been investigated as
Speaker 1: possibly beneficial to health. Just one major example is lycopene,
Speaker 1: like apene, is a carotenoid that serves as a pigment,
Speaker 1: giving the tomato it's pinkish reddish color. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: are other carotenoid pigments that are nutritionally relevant, for example,
Speaker 1: beta carotene, the pigment that gives carrots and some of
Speaker 1: their vegetables their orange color, that gets metabolized in the
Speaker 1: body and turns into vitamin A, which is of course
Speaker 1: a an essential nutrient. So dietary carotenoids are very important
Speaker 1: for supplying the body with compounds that it can't synthesize internally.
Speaker 1: And there's long been a debate in the scientific literature
Speaker 1: about what the health benefits of tomatoes and specifically lycopine
Speaker 1: might be. So I was trying to check and see
Speaker 1: if there was a good literature review and meta analysis
Speaker 1: of of all the studies out there on on the
Speaker 1: possible effects of lycopine um the health effects of lycopine,
Speaker 1: and I found an article from seventeen published in the
Speaker 1: journal Atherosclerosis by chang at All called Tomato and Lycopine
Speaker 1: Supplementation and Cardiovascular Risk Factors a systemic review and meta analysis,
Speaker 1: and essentially the authors here found that quote consuming tomato
Speaker 1: and tomato products is associated with potential beneficial effects to health.
Speaker 1: Current evidence indicates that consuming tomato improves some blood lipids,
Speaker 1: blood pressure, and endothelial function. Tomato consumption may potentially reduce
Speaker 1: the risk of cardiovascular diseases and mortality. And finally, the
Speaker 1: effects of consuming tomato on novel biomarkers of vascular risk
Speaker 1: needs further investigation. So uh, it seems like unfortunate. Like
Speaker 1: many things studies into the health effects of food, there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of conflicting results over the years,
Speaker 1: so the picture is not always totally clear. But it
Speaker 1: looks like on balance, the existing research indicates there probably
Speaker 1: are some good health effects that follow from consumption of lycopine,
Speaker 1: a tomato product, and tomatoes in general, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it has to do with cardiovascular health and blood
Speaker 1: lipids things like that. Well, it's it's no It should
Speaker 1: come as no surprise that not only can you still
Speaker 1: buy tomato pills from a number of different um companies,
Speaker 1: you can also buy lycopene supplements from just about everybody
Speaker 1: who is in the business of making supplements. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I would say, based on the thing on the study
Speaker 1: that I decided, we are not advising you to go
Speaker 1: out and buy lycopine based supplements. You know, that's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Consult with your doctor about that. But
Speaker 1: it looks like on balance it's probably more likely than
Speaker 1: not that lycopine does something beneficial in a cardiovascular sense.
Speaker 1: But anyway, to come back to the report by Andrew F. Smith,
Speaker 1: one of the things that he cites, I don't have
Speaker 1: this quote pulled out, but I remember he cites a
Speaker 1: doctor writing in the late eighteen hundreds who said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, all these claims about how the tomatoes affect
Speaker 1: the liver and the bile and all that there, they
Speaker 1: probably have no basis in reality. But just go ahead
Speaker 1: and eat tomatoes because they're delicious. You don't need to
Speaker 1: consult your liver doctor. Just fed them. Oh but Robert,
Speaker 1: I have a question as we transition to our to
Speaker 1: our next little segment here a question that I wonder
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts on or if your your house
Speaker 1: adheres to a set of conventional wisdom about And that
Speaker 1: question is should you ever refrigerate a tomato? We are
Speaker 1: a non refrigeration house for tomatoes. Now, I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a rule that I knew about or had
Speaker 1: probably learned earlier in my life, but it was one
Speaker 1: that my wife knew, and so it's it's one we've
Speaker 1: stuck to. Yeah, that that that tomatoes they go out
Speaker 1: on the counter or the window. They do not go
Speaker 1: in the refrigerator, though occasionally we'll get like I say,
Speaker 1: I do subscribe to a particular boxed meal company, and
Speaker 1: they'll send the ingredients in a bag, and I'll generally
Speaker 1: just stick that bag in the refrigerator, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: has tomatoes in there, and so the tomatoes will wind
Speaker 1: up being refrigerated. But like we said earlier, those are,
Speaker 1: you know, shipped grocery store tomatoes. So perhaps nothing all
Speaker 1: that wonderful is lost in their being in the fridge.
Speaker 1: But then again, I don't have any I don't have
Speaker 1: any science backing any of this up. This is just
Speaker 1: the way. This is the way, and that's what we do. Well.
Speaker 1: That's how so much kitchen knowledge is, isn't it? Like
Speaker 1: canonical kitchen wisdom is full of these rules that you
Speaker 1: have no idea whether they have any basis in fact.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're informed by good empirical scientific research or by
Speaker 1: by real experience, or maybe they're just a hunch some
Speaker 1: chef had a hundred years ago and it's been repeated
Speaker 1: from chef to chef ever since. Yeah, Like ultimately, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It could be that if you keep the
Speaker 1: tomatoes out on the countertop, it will keep demons out
Speaker 1: of your house. That that could be the excuse as
Speaker 1: far as I know. Uh yeah, I mean it could
Speaker 1: be one of those things like ceiling in the juices.
Speaker 1: You know, like this totally not true that searing meat
Speaker 1: seals and the juices. I mean, you know, searing meatmates
Speaker 1: taste better. The ceiling in the juices is not real.
Speaker 1: But it does make me think of one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Onion headlines of all time, which was it was
Speaker 1: something like, uh, study finds average father thinks about ceiling
Speaker 1: in the juices four to five hours a day. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, this question reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 1: our our invention interview with Jeff Beach Bumberry H And
Speaker 1: I believe you asked the question about uh, lemon and
Speaker 1: lime lime juice, in particular about fresh squeeze lime juice,
Speaker 1: and he mentioned that some mixologists argue that it's better
Speaker 1: if the lime juice has been squeeze east but then
Speaker 1: placed in the refrigerator for a certain amount of time
Speaker 1: for a short period. I think he said that, like
Speaker 1: some mixologists think that the line like citrus juice is
Speaker 1: better after being refrigerated for like a day or something
Speaker 1: like that, but then after after that it starts getting bad.
Speaker 1: You have to go back to that invention interview to
Speaker 1: to to hear the exact numbers, but it was something
Speaker 1: in that ballpark. But anyway, so to bring it back
Speaker 1: to tomatoes, for a long time, the conventional wisdom has
Speaker 1: been to go right along with your household rule. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's that you never put a raw tomato in the fridge.
Speaker 1: It ruins the fresh tomato flavor, it turns the texture
Speaker 1: meally that you know, the chefs would just say never
Speaker 1: ever do it, And it turns out there's actually been
Speaker 1: a lot of research on this. Uh So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to give you the basic rundown as best I
Speaker 1: can and summarizing some of the work of other people. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, it is true that there are some
Speaker 1: measurable chemical changes that take place when a tomato is
Speaker 1: stored at fridge temperature for an umber of days instead
Speaker 1: of at room temperature. Just one example, as a study
Speaker 1: by Jong at All published in Proceedings of the National
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences in called chilling induced tomato flavor loss
Speaker 1: is associated with altered volatile synthesis and transient changes in
Speaker 1: DNA methylation. And so basically what they found is if
Speaker 1: you take a tomato, you pick it, and then you
Speaker 1: chill it for a week or so, and then you
Speaker 1: compare that to a fresh pick tomato, the sugar and
Speaker 1: acid content will mostly be unchanged, but there will be
Speaker 1: a marked decline in what they call certain flavor and
Speaker 1: aroma compounds. These are volatile molecules that are responsible for
Speaker 1: a lot of the distinctive tomato we smell and taste.
Speaker 1: And they determine that this happened because when you take
Speaker 1: a tomato and you pluck it and you store it
Speaker 1: in cold storage for a week or whatever. This causes
Speaker 1: a down regulation in the expression of specific genes in
Speaker 1: the tomatoes cell. And this this down regulation of these
Speaker 1: genes slows or halts the production of these flavor and
Speaker 1: aroma compounds. And one of the authors, Harry J. Clee,
Speaker 1: speaking to the New York Times, explain their findings as follows. Quote,
Speaker 1: remove the violins and the woodwinds, you still have noise,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same. Add back just the violins,
Speaker 1: and it still isn't right. You need that orchestra of
Speaker 1: thirty or more chemicals in the right balance to give
Speaker 1: you a good tomato. And I think, you know, there's
Speaker 1: something to that, Like the rapturous experience of eating a
Speaker 1: really good tomato is this complex combination of kind of
Speaker 1: like earthy, grassy, juicy, you know, smells and tastes that
Speaker 1: all come together, as as the sort of accents on
Speaker 1: the basic flavors of sweetness and sourness and savoriness that
Speaker 1: are there in the tomatoes flesh. But there are some
Speaker 1: serious reasons for not just taking that research and then
Speaker 1: running straight to the conclusion. Okay, then never put your
Speaker 1: tomato in the refrigerator, because this study is looking at
Speaker 1: sort of one narrow question and one narrow type of comparison. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, if you're buying a tomato at the
Speaker 1: grocery store, that tomato has almost definitely already been chilled
Speaker 1: for some time during transport and storage. Because if you
Speaker 1: think for a minute about the brute physical necessities of
Speaker 1: the food supply chain, uh, and you think about the
Speaker 1: delicacy of an actually ripe tomato, how would how would
Speaker 1: you harvest actually ripe tomatoes at scale and then pack
Speaker 1: them and ship them to their destinations. I mean, you
Speaker 1: couldn't do it. A truck or even a crate packed
Speaker 1: full of plump, ripe tomatoes would just be this slurry
Speaker 1: of moldy pulp by the time it got where it
Speaker 1: was going, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean your your tomatoes
Speaker 1: are likely coming from California or Florida. I think Indiana
Speaker 1: and Ohio were also up there in the top five. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So often large scale tomato agriculture involves harvesting tomatoes that
Speaker 1: are still relatively hard and green and then packing them
Speaker 1: in cold storage and exposing them to ethylene gas under
Speaker 1: cold storage, which is a gas that's naturally produced by
Speaker 1: lots of fruits as they ripen, but exposure to the
Speaker 1: gas causes ripening in the storage after they've been picked,
Speaker 1: and that's how the tomatoes turn red, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to be read when you buy them at the grocery store. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to say that this
Speaker 1: process is one reason why tomatoes you get at the
Speaker 1: grocery store are often extremely inferior to tomatoes that you
Speaker 1: would get at a farmer's market or that you would
Speaker 1: grow yourself or get from a friend's garden. That the
Speaker 1: process is just totally different in terms of the flavor
Speaker 1: and texture that it produces when compared to a tomato
Speaker 1: that actually ripens on the vine. And some of these
Speaker 1: same concerns driving the supply and transport process have also
Speaker 1: driven the selection of particular tomato cultivars that are not
Speaker 1: necessarily the best eat because when a farmer is selecting
Speaker 1: what breed of tomato to grow, they don't only have
Speaker 1: to consider what's going to taste the best to the consumer.
Speaker 1: They have to consider what can I actually get to
Speaker 1: the buyer intact? Yeah, exactly. It needs to survive the
Speaker 1: journey and and and look like something that the the
Speaker 1: the customer will actually purchase on the other end, right,
Speaker 1: But if you're able to get your hands on an
Speaker 1: unrefrigerated tomato out of a garden or maybe at a
Speaker 1: farmer's market or something. Uh. The authors here of this paper,
Speaker 1: at least they recommend not storing it in the fridge
Speaker 1: before you eat it if you want peak tomato rapture,
Speaker 1: And that advice might be good advice, But there are
Speaker 1: a number of researchers who would say that this this
Speaker 1: type of answer is actually looking at the question a
Speaker 1: little too narrowly and in a way that's not always
Speaker 1: useful to the actual tomato consumer. For example, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of really great in depth explorations of this
Speaker 1: question on the Serious Eats website by Daniel Gritzer and
Speaker 1: Kenji Lopez Alt, and they did a couple of investigations
Speaker 1: over this over the past few years, and so they
Speaker 1: did controlled experiments with blind taste tests on multiple ways
Speaker 1: of storing tomatoes refrigerated, unrefrigerated for different periods of time
Speaker 1: and so forth, and they concluded that basically, yes, the
Speaker 1: absolute pinnacle tomato experience is probably letting the tomato ripen
Speaker 1: on the vine then eating it. Immediately at its moment
Speaker 1: of peak ripeness, with no refrigeration on the vine like
Speaker 1: like a goat man, with the juice flowing down your chest.
Speaker 1: Don't use your hands at all, just face. Yes, but
Speaker 1: but but they say, you know, most of the time,
Speaker 1: that's not how you're going to be eating a tomato. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they point out that letting a tomato go past
Speaker 1: its point of peak ripeness is also very bad for
Speaker 1: flavor and texture, and in fact, we'll ruin the flavor
Speaker 1: and texture significantly more than refrigerating the tomato will. And
Speaker 1: also a lot of times they taste testers even notice
Speaker 1: all that big of a difference between a tomato that
Speaker 1: had been refrigerated and one that hadn't. It seemed to vary.
Speaker 1: So they came up with a set of guidelines. They
Speaker 1: go like this, if your tomato has never been refrigerated,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's out of somebody's yard or a
Speaker 1: good farmer's market seller or something like that, then you
Speaker 1: want to store it at room temperature until it's ripe,
Speaker 1: and then either eat it immediately or put it in
Speaker 1: the fridge, and then you take it out of the
Speaker 1: fridge when you're ready to eat. It, and of course
Speaker 1: storing it in the fridge will allow it to stay
Speaker 1: at peak ripeness longer than it would store it at
Speaker 1: room temperature. But they do say it's important if you
Speaker 1: have refrigerated a tomato, let it come up to room
Speaker 1: temperature before you eat it, because eating a cold tomato
Speaker 1: is not very pleasant. Okay, that's good. That's good. But
Speaker 1: then the second half of this is if your tomato
Speaker 1: has already been refrigerated, and this would apply to almost
Speaker 1: any tomato you would get at a grocery store or
Speaker 1: any kind of mass agricultural vendor in that ace. If
Speaker 1: it's already ripe, put it in the fridge until you're
Speaker 1: ready to eat it. If it's not ripe yet, let
Speaker 1: it ripen at room temperature. Then once it's ripe, move
Speaker 1: it to the fridge until you're ready to eat it,
Speaker 1: and once again, let it come up to room temper
Speaker 1: before you actually put it in your mouth. And I
Speaker 1: think I really respect the work they put in on
Speaker 1: coming up with these guidelines, and uh, thus saith the Lord. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got a second tomato storage trick, also confirmed through
Speaker 1: empirical testing by Kenji Lopez Ald. So you know how
Speaker 1: tomatoes often lose juiciness and partially desiccate as they sit
Speaker 1: out and rest. You you've probably seen them, like on
Speaker 1: the tops near where the stem is, they'll get kind
Speaker 1: of wrinkly and start to sag. Yes, this is partially
Speaker 1: due to moisture evaporating out of the tomato as it
Speaker 1: rests Now. The skin of the tomato is actually very
Speaker 1: good at keeping moisture in, but the weak point is
Speaker 1: actually the stem area, a little depression where the tomato
Speaker 1: connected to the vine. And so there's an easy way
Speaker 1: to prevent moisture escaping through this area, and it is
Speaker 1: to store tomatoes upside down on a flat surface, so
Speaker 1: the stem area is sort of sealed off by the
Speaker 1: by the soft flesh of the tomato around it, or
Speaker 1: in fact, if you want to go farther, you can
Speaker 1: even do what Kenji did to test this theory about
Speaker 1: where the moisture evaporates from. He shows in a video
Speaker 1: that he put a little piece of tape over the
Speaker 1: stem depression to seal it off, and this also kept
Speaker 1: the tomato from losing juice over time. So if you
Speaker 1: want your tomatoes to stay ju see a storm upside
Speaker 1: down or or maybe even give him a little little
Speaker 1: sealed hat. All right, all right, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break, but when we come
Speaker 1: back we will explore the topic of off world tomatoes. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So at this point, tomatoes that spread pretty
Speaker 1: much everywhere. As Michael Pollen pointed out in his book Cooked,
Speaker 1: the tomato is perhaps the most important vegetable crop in
Speaker 1: the world, with onions coming in second. As we discussed
Speaker 1: in our invention episode about Ketchup the culinary invention of Ketchup,
Speaker 1: so Europeans tried to recreate Asian sauces with an imported
Speaker 1: fruit from the America's and then this weird concoction eventually
Speaker 1: returns to Asia as well. I was reading an article
Speaker 1: titled Tomatoes and Chinese Cooking by Rhonda Parkinson for the
Speaker 1: Spruce Eat site, and the author mentions that even though
Speaker 1: tomatoes only arrived in China roughly a hundred to a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty years ago, they've managed to carve out their
Speaker 1: own niche in certain Chinese cuisines, much in the same
Speaker 1: way that chili peppers have found a home in numerous
Speaker 1: Asian cuisines. Examples of popular dishes and I don't think
Speaker 1: I've had any of these, but it was interesting to
Speaker 1: these were pointed out. One is tomato egg drop soup,
Speaker 1: and the other is a dish called tomato beef, which
Speaker 1: is apparently a stir fry with thick tomato wedges, like
Speaker 1: really big thick pieces beef at it and then oyster sauce. Oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a delicious umami bomb. Of course, because
Speaker 1: a lot of natural Asian flavorings are are big umami bombs,
Speaker 1: like soy sauce or oyster sauce. They bring a lot
Speaker 1: of the glutamate based flavors, but tomatoes are also rich
Speaker 1: imglutamates and have that rich eu mammy flavor. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a savory delight. It's interesting to to
Speaker 1: contemplate this kind of thing too, where tomatoes are recent
Speaker 1: enough um arrival in Chinese cuisine that they haven't completely
Speaker 1: like they still have, you know, they're still completely taken
Speaker 1: over or anything like that, but but looking at where
Speaker 1: they're utilized first, like where the successes for the tomato
Speaker 1: as opposed to something like um Italian cuisine, which it
Speaker 1: really can be kind of difficult to imagine for for
Speaker 1: many of us anyway to imagine something like Italian cuisine
Speaker 1: without the tomato, right, because that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: our minds immediately go. Yeah. Well, I would say that's
Speaker 1: especially true of like Italian American cuisine, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of the Italian dishes that became especially popular among the
Speaker 1: Italian Americans were tomato forward. Yeah. So here's a big question.
Speaker 1: If tomatoes have essentially taken over our planet, my tomatoes
Speaker 1: go beyond being a mere international sensation. Could they become
Speaker 1: an interplanetary sensation? Yes, the answer is yes, yea. When
Speaker 1: the aliens get here, they're gonna we're gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming to like uplift our society and
Speaker 1: share your technology, and they're like, get out of the way.
Speaker 1: We're here for your tomatoes, We're here for the golden apples. Yes.
Speaker 1: So a lot of this come back to the basic question,
Speaker 1: all right, if we're you know what we've discussed before.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of very intelligent people have
Speaker 1: argued that the long term survival of the human race
Speaker 1: depends on us branching out and establishing ourselves in other worlds.
Speaker 1: But part of establishing ourselves in other worlds means first
Speaker 1: of all, just being able to survive there, being able
Speaker 1: to eat there, and then ultimately being able to survive
Speaker 1: there there in a way where we're not reliant upon
Speaker 1: a robust supply chain from Earth. Yes, the cost of
Speaker 1: getting the food into Orbit alone is already incredibly high,
Speaker 1: compounded then by the cost of getting it the rest
Speaker 1: of the way, for example, to a lunar colony, or
Speaker 1: to a Martian colony. That means you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: grow your food at your lunar or Martian colony. Uh,
Speaker 1: at least to supplement umu costly deliveries, if not sustain
Speaker 1: colonists completely. Oh boy, I can't wait to subsist entirely
Speaker 1: on a diet of like protein that's created from algae
Speaker 1: and incubators. Well, remember in the Silent Running, that's just
Speaker 1: what Brustern's crewmates were happy with. They're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is great, these cubes of of of of whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: that grown strangeness is perfectly fine. Meanwhile, he's holding like
Speaker 1: a cultivated banana. This like the strangest product of modern
Speaker 1: agricultural science, and he's like, this is nature, all right.
Speaker 1: So obviously there are a number of possibilities here. Including
Speaker 1: what you just mentioned, like figuring out, like what what
Speaker 1: grows the best that we could possibly eat, and let's
Speaker 1: make that be our diet um. But you know, basically,
Speaker 1: I guess the first possibility that comes to mind in
Speaker 1: terms of like growing things in another world is that
Speaker 1: we just bring everything with us, Right. Certainly we need
Speaker 1: to bring the seeds, But then when you get into
Speaker 1: the issue of water and soil, things get a bit
Speaker 1: difficult because again, the cost of even bringing this stuff
Speaker 1: into orbit is so high. Right, So on one hand,
Speaker 1: we could potentially go the way of hydroponics and grow
Speaker 1: without soil. Uh, that's one less thing we'd have to
Speaker 1: bring up with us, right, and perhaps we'd even be
Speaker 1: able to make use of local water. In fact, a
Speaker 1: paper by Elgin and Union published in the Bulleton of
Speaker 1: the American Astronomical Society argues that hydroponics might be our
Speaker 1: best option. And I'll share more on on their argument
Speaker 1: here in a bit. But what about lunar or Martian soil?
Speaker 1: What's preventing us from growing our crops just in that stuff?
Speaker 1: You know, Hey, there is there is there dirt on Mars?
Speaker 1: Is there dirt on the moon? Why don't I just
Speaker 1: grow some tomatoes in that. Okay, I guess a major
Speaker 1: problem would be the lack of moisture, but there may
Speaker 1: be other problems as well. Well. All right, yeah, so
Speaker 1: I guess that. Think of it this way. It's like,
Speaker 1: if you're bringing water, you're bringing seeds. Could you just
Speaker 1: go out get a big bucket load of of martian
Speaker 1: or lunar regular, bring that inside. Uh, adds seeds, add water,
Speaker 1: and enjoy your your bumper crop. I don't know. Actually
Speaker 1: that's a very good question. Uh. The answer is no.
Speaker 1: But it becomes then a question of what could you
Speaker 1: do to the soil and uh And on this subject,
Speaker 1: I was looking at another paper. This is the twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen paper titled Crop Growth in Viability of Sea on
Speaker 1: Mars and Moon Soil Simulants by Fame link at All
Speaker 1: published in Open Agriculture, and basically the paper sets out
Speaker 1: to consider whether martian or lunar regular could be used
Speaker 1: to grow crops now. First of all, on the hydroponics front,
Speaker 1: the authors here argue that while hydroponics is certainly promising,
Speaker 1: you still need a growing medium. For instance, mineral wool
Speaker 1: is often used. It's also known as rock wool, which
Speaker 1: is a brand name. This is stuff that's also used
Speaker 1: in insulation, filtration and soundproofing, but when used as a
Speaker 1: growing medium, it has to be replaced after one or
Speaker 1: more growing cycles. Um. Furthermore, not every crop takes to
Speaker 1: mineral wool all that well, so in other words, you'd
Speaker 1: still potentially have to ship uh this growing medium out
Speaker 1: to your colony and depend on that supply chain. So
Speaker 1: they ultimately contend that aero ponics, in which plants grow
Speaker 1: in an air or missed environment without soil as a
Speaker 1: growing medium. Um. You know that that could be a
Speaker 1: strong possibility, and certainly that's something that NASA sponsored plant
Speaker 1: experiments have been looking into for quite a while and
Speaker 1: with good reason to. According to NASA, aero ponics systems
Speaker 1: can reduce water usage, by of fertilizer usage, by in
Speaker 1: pesticide usage by all while maximizing crop yields, and some
Speaker 1: crops like tomatoes, have been shown to benefit from increased
Speaker 1: mineral envitamin uptake via aero ponics. According to a two
Speaker 1: thousand seven NASA released, Tomato growers traditionally start their plants
Speaker 1: in pots weight twenty eight days or so before transplanting
Speaker 1: them into the ground. However, using an aero ponics system.
Speaker 1: They can then transplant them from a growing chamber to
Speaker 1: the soil in just ten days, and this apparently allows
Speaker 1: growers to produce six tomato crops uh cycles per year
Speaker 1: instead of the traditional one or two crop cycles. I
Speaker 1: believe aeroponics have been used in the I s s all,
Speaker 1: do you haven't they? Yeah? I believe so there've been
Speaker 1: There have been certainly been some experiments with aeroponics'. Like
Speaker 1: I say, it's something that it's not new in terms
Speaker 1: of uh NASA research uh looking at that as a
Speaker 1: solution for growing things in orbit or certainly ultimately on
Speaker 1: other worlds. Okay, but what about actually using the soil
Speaker 1: on another rocky body like the lunar or Martian regular eath. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: in that paper by Elgin and Guni, and they point
Speaker 1: out that there are a number of issues with the
Speaker 1: Martian regular. For example, they would have to be worked out.
Speaker 1: So for starters, the regular is full of perclorates. These
Speaker 1: are chemical compounds containing the perclorate ion which are harmful
Speaker 1: to humans and a challenge to micro organisms as well,
Speaker 1: and these would need to be stripped out of the
Speaker 1: regular life before you could plant anything in it. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: the Martian regular is, as far as we can tell dead. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the start difference from the soil we depend on
Speaker 1: here on Earth, which is a rich environ of microbial life,
Speaker 1: fung gui, arthropods, organic nutrients. So they argue that you
Speaker 1: need to add something, you know, you need to essentially
Speaker 1: resurrect that soil. I mean you'd resurrect that regular to
Speaker 1: make it soil. You would need to add something like
Speaker 1: worm castings to the mix. Now that's essentially the refuse
Speaker 1: of earthworms that are just packed with bacteria, enzymes and
Speaker 1: remnants of plant matter and excrement. And you can actually
Speaker 1: this is stuff you can buy for your own garden
Speaker 1: at gardening supply stores. You just get a big container
Speaker 1: of earthworm poop. Well it's got it says worm castings,
Speaker 1: but that's essentially what it is. Yeah. Nice. So anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Martian soil is sterile, and this would be a
Speaker 1: way to sift some life into it. Anyway. They go
Speaker 1: on to explore hydroponics in greater detail. Uh. And but
Speaker 1: then to come back to tomatoes for a second, we
Speaker 1: should note that the golden apples of terra can be
Speaker 1: grown via high hydroponics and aero ponics, so both of
Speaker 1: the If if either of those turned out to be
Speaker 1: the way, as opposed to UH doing something to the
Speaker 1: soil on on the Moon or on Marsh, it sounds
Speaker 1: like the tomatoes future would be bright. Now. To come
Speaker 1: back to the fame link paper UM that study, Basically,
Speaker 1: they wanted to see, if we're gonna use regularly, what
Speaker 1: plant species might grow their best. Um Now, since there
Speaker 1: is no regularly available here on Earth, we don't have
Speaker 1: any you know, you can't go and get an actual
Speaker 1: pot of Lunar or Martian soil to experiment with, UH,
Speaker 1: they decided to use the next best thing, which is
Speaker 1: NASA's Mars Regular Simulant j s C Mars one A. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's actually there are actually several different versions of regulars
Speaker 1: simulant out there, like this one is j s C
Speaker 1: Mars one A, but there's also one called j s
Speaker 1: C one A that is the lunar version, and there
Speaker 1: are some other varieties out there. UM Mars one A
Speaker 1: is based on info gathered from the Viking Landers and
Speaker 1: the Mars path Finder rover, and it's pretty interesting stuff
Speaker 1: in and of itself. This one in particular is gathered
Speaker 1: from the pooh Nena cinder cone on the Big Island
Speaker 1: of Hawaii, Okay, So that would be it would be
Speaker 1: like a volcanic soil base. Yeah. So anyway, the researchers
Speaker 1: in this study they used a nutrient solution made from
Speaker 1: a grass used as a cattle fodder to enrich the soil,
Speaker 1: and they cultivated ten different crops uh garden crests, rocket, tomato, radish, rye, keenwah, spinach, chives,
Speaker 1: pas and leak, and they assimilated the properties of lunar
Speaker 1: and Martian regular and also normal soil potting soil from
Speaker 1: Earth as a control. And if the tin crops of
Speaker 1: spinach was the only one that was a complete dud. Uh.
Speaker 1: Chives and leaks grew steadily but didn't produce much. Keenoa
Speaker 1: didn't produce seeds, which is a bummer because you want
Speaker 1: your off world crop to also produce seeds for the
Speaker 1: next generation. Again, you want to be as removed from
Speaker 1: that supply chain back to the home world as much
Speaker 1: as possible, right, so you can eventually succeed from Earth
Speaker 1: and declare independence. Yeah. Uh. Total biomass was highest for
Speaker 1: the Earth control trays obviously, but also the Mars trades
Speaker 1: were pretty high. Lunar tray was the worst, and the
Speaker 1: seeds of three species radish, rye and garden crests were
Speaker 1: tested successfully each for German nation. So those worlds only
Speaker 1: the most promising in terms of of um you know,
Speaker 1: continuing to to grow without more seeds coming from home. Well,
Speaker 1: I know you're You've got to get to the tomatoes.
Speaker 1: How did they do? The tomatoes did pretty well. They
Speaker 1: were the top biomass producer and lead author here of
Speaker 1: Vigor of om Link is quoted as saying that they
Speaker 1: were thrilled when the Martian tomatoes actually turned red. Whoa.
Speaker 1: And there are other studies and programs looking at space
Speaker 1: tomatoes as well. One I came across is an operation
Speaker 1: known as space UM an acronym. It's an acronym. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's probably one of the more amusing acronyms I've run
Speaker 1: across recently for the show. It is the Small Plants
Speaker 1: for Space Expeditions program UM uh So it's from the
Speaker 1: University of California, Riverside, and it's what they've done is
Speaker 1: they've developed a tiny tomato plant uh that feature minimal
Speaker 1: leaves and stems, but produce a normal amount of fruit,
Speaker 1: though in smaller packages. So in other words, more biomass
Speaker 1: is invested into the edible portions of the plant. And
Speaker 1: they also this also minimizes resources and energy consumption by
Speaker 1: producing fruit more quickly than conventional plants. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: hadn't even really considered this, but it makes sense that
Speaker 1: if you were trying to take crops to colonize, uh
Speaker 1: you know, on a space station or another planet, you
Speaker 1: could probably work back home to try to engineer sort
Speaker 1: of the perfect version of the organism to take with you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they also point out that this this is not
Speaker 1: only something we can be utilized in am you know,
Speaker 1: orbital or otherworldly environment, but also it's ideal for vertical
Speaker 1: farming here on Earth. Again, think to those big tomatoes,
Speaker 1: you know, because we end up trying to do some
Speaker 1: forms form of vertical farming, uh sometimes via our steaks
Speaker 1: and tomato cages, and they're just so dern heavy, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea here is is make everything else about the
Speaker 1: plant smaller, focus on the tomato itself, but also the
Speaker 1: tomato is less hefty as well. Well. Hey, I got
Speaker 1: no problem with small tomatoes. As I've said before, I mean,
Speaker 1: uh often the best tomatoes you can get under less
Speaker 1: than ideal conditions, such as like the supply chain that
Speaker 1: gets tomatoes to a grocery store are gonna be cherry
Speaker 1: or grape tomatoes that they may be small, but they
Speaker 1: get a lot of flavor for their size. Now that
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about this is the Space
Speaker 1: team developed these tomatoes not via selective breeding, but via
Speaker 1: Crisper case nine gene editing technology. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we've really gotten into their into the use of
Speaker 1: crisper gene editing in uh in agriculture, but obviously this
Speaker 1: would be huge. Yeah. We often when we're talking about
Speaker 1: crisper and when I say we, not just us, but
Speaker 1: you know, just sort of media in general and the
Speaker 1: public were generally asking the question what about humans though?
Speaker 1: What about humans though? But we should occasionally say we
Speaker 1: had stop and ask the question what about tomatoes? And
Speaker 1: here we are. So on top of those the biomass tweaks,
Speaker 1: they're also looking at a couple of other tweaks. Um
Speaker 1: for an example, in an increase in the photosynthesis rate,
Speaker 1: because this would help replace c O two in an
Speaker 1: enclosed environment with fresh oxygen, which would be ideal for
Speaker 1: any onboard animals such as human beings. So there seems
Speaker 1: to be a lot, you know, interesting possibility in all
Speaker 1: this tweaking alien soils to better support terrestrial food plants,
Speaker 1: and also tweaking those plants to better capitalize on those
Speaker 1: environments and better serving the innerge demands of the humans
Speaker 1: who bring them there. Robert, I just thought of a
Speaker 1: complication here. So we're talking about on on the surfaces
Speaker 1: of other planets with normal gravity. But if you were
Speaker 1: to try to grow tomatoes in micro gravity, say on
Speaker 1: the on the I S S, then potentially you could
Speaker 1: grow tomato plants with big fruits that you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to steak or put in a cage, right because they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be dragged down by gravity. Well that's true, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: But I guess on on that front, I wonder about
Speaker 1: you know, because we've all seen those tomatoes. It just
Speaker 1: get so big, they're just bursting. But I guess on
Speaker 1: the other hand, you'd probably be keeping a pretty close eye.
Speaker 1: And I mean on the I S S they run
Speaker 1: a pretty tight ship, and I imagine that would um,
Speaker 1: that would also be the case with any kind of
Speaker 1: tomato garden up there. Oh yeah, I wonder if the
Speaker 1: tomato would be kind of bouncing around and whatever its
Speaker 1: enclosure is. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Keep it in mind.
Speaker 1: I also wonder, though, how gravity affects um So there's
Speaker 1: something about the shape of a tomato that seems like
Speaker 1: it would somehow be influenced by the presence of gravity,
Speaker 1: and that it's a very heavy fruit and it's got
Speaker 1: a lot of moisture in it, and I wonder if,
Speaker 1: like you know, that it's necessary for the moisture to
Speaker 1: be weighing down towards the bottom of the tomato for
Speaker 1: its morphology to resemble the tomatoes. We know that's true,
Speaker 1: and so we might end up with a more spherical tomato,
Speaker 1: is that what you're saying. I don't know, maybe or
Speaker 1: more maybe a more top heavy tomato, I wonder, or
Speaker 1: maybe it'll be, you know, ultimately where we we missed
Speaker 1: the point made years ago, and that it's going to
Speaker 1: be Mickey Mouse shaped watermelons. Like that's that's the future
Speaker 1: of fruit and space. I love it, all right, So
Speaker 1: there we have it. As we said, you know, we
Speaker 1: did not have space in these episodes to discuss the
Speaker 1: entire history of human and tomato interaction. Nor did we
Speaker 1: even really get to touch on everything that's going on
Speaker 1: with tomato science, tomato research, etcetera. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: massively juicy field. I'm sure there's a lot we could
Speaker 1: come back to, that's right. So anyway, hopefully know it
Speaker 1: gives because everybody a lot more to think about when
Speaker 1: they inevitably engage with tomato based cuisine, and hopefully as
Speaker 1: you enjoy some fresh tomatoes or at least reasonably fresh
Speaker 1: tomatoes this growing season. Yeah, it's a short window every year.
Speaker 1: It's a precious time, so so get them while you can,
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you want to listen
Speaker 1: to more episodes of stuff to blow your mind, you
Speaker 1: know where to find them. Wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: that's where they are and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: Just make sure your rate, review and subscribe if you
Speaker 1: have the ability to on those platforms. Huge things. As
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, or to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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