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
Speaker 1: 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 this question you've had
Speaker 1: for a while, Robert, I think based on reading a
Speaker 1: placard at a botanical garden, which is, did the people
Speaker 1: 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 what say, you're which European nation, and during what
Speaker 1: period of the tomatoes um rise to power as a
Speaker 1: global food source. But I came across a great article
Speaker 1: that is by the same author as the author of
Speaker 1: a book that we talked about in in the last episode,
Speaker 1: a book about tomatoes. Uh Andrew F. Smith. Smith is
Speaker 1: also the author of an article that was published in
Speaker 1: nineteen in the journal Pharmacy and History called Tomato Pills
Speaker 1: will Cure All Your Ills. And this is a fantastic
Speaker 1: article about, you know, tomato pills for your jaundice and
Speaker 1: your diarrhea. It's a wild ride and I can't wait
Speaker 1: to get into it. Well, let's definitely get into it.
Speaker 1: But first, just your reminder, this is a part two.
Speaker 1: We do encourage you to go back and listen to
Speaker 1: part one before proceeding by all means Part one first. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: as we discussed previously, when the tomato was first introduced
Speaker 1: to Europe from meso America, of course, in meso America,
Speaker 1: among the waddle speaking p bowl it was cultivated as
Speaker 1: a food crop, and then it's spread from there to
Speaker 1: Europe and then to the rest of the world. But
Speaker 1: when this first happened, some European writers did claim that
Speaker 1: the tomato was was not good food, it was not
Speaker 1: fit to put in one's body. Uh, And they wrote
Speaker 1: 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 were ard it as in some way,
Speaker 1: you know, not good to eat. Definitely through a lot
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century, though that was changing, and then
Speaker 1: it underwent a relatively rapid transition during a few decades
Speaker 1: in the first half of the nineteenth century. So he
Speaker 1: says that around eighteen twenty, it was still a pretty
Speaker 1: widespread belief within the United States that tomatoes were somehow
Speaker 1: inedible and maybe poisonous, 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 were the scene a quanon
Speaker 1: of 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 good story. Okay, So, as we alluded to
Speaker 1: last time, many books and supposed botanical or horticultural experts
Speaker 1: in Europe and the colonies since the sixteenth century seemed
Speaker 1: to think there was something wrong with eating tomatoes, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they were poisonous, maybe inedible. Clearly not everybody in
Speaker 1: Europe thought this way. Tomatoes were, you know, very popular
Speaker 1: in Italy and France and Spain and Portugal and more
Speaker 1: and more. People of course, were of course cooking with
Speaker 1: tomatoes all the time, but in England. Philip Miller, who
Speaker 1: was a superintendent of the Chelsea Physic Garden, wrote in
Speaker 1: the seventeen fifties that small yellow love apples were starting
Speaker 1: to be directed for medicinal use by one call in
Speaker 1: their dispensatory, and Miller even in the seventeen fifties noted that, well,
Speaker 1: even some English people are eating tomatoes in soup. Uh,
Speaker 1: though at the same time he says, quote there are
Speaker 1: persons who think them not wholesome. So this ambiguity still
Speaker 1: exists somewhat, But by the seventeen fifties it's clear that
Speaker 1: some doctors and medical students are trying trying experiments with
Speaker 1: tomatoes as medicine, and some English people just straight up
Speaker 1: put him in the stew uh. And apparently an early
Speaker 1: evangelist for tomatoes in the British colonies in America was
Speaker 1: a doctor named John de Sequeira, who was born in
Speaker 1: London but educated in Leyden, and who Thomas Jefferson claimed
Speaker 1: had introduced tomatoes to Williamsburg, Virginia. Jefferson also claimed that
Speaker 1: des Aquaira was fond of saying that quote, a person
Speaker 1: who should eat a sufficient abundance of these apples would
Speaker 1: never die. Now. I don't know if he meant that in,
Speaker 1: you know, with a touch of irony, or if he
Speaker 1: was serious that though it does make me think that, hey,
Speaker 1: what if the humble tomato was actually the fruit of
Speaker 1: the tree of life, Because there's always been a debate
Speaker 1: about in the story of the Garden of Eden in
Speaker 1: the Book of Genesis, what the fruits of these trees
Speaker 1: are actually supposed to be. The Book of Genesis does
Speaker 1: not say in this story what the fruits of the
Speaker 1: Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of
Speaker 1: good and evil we're supposed to be a lot of
Speaker 1: people have assumed them to be apples, but there it's
Speaker 1: that's not explicitly stated. So people have proposed all kinds
Speaker 1: of answers to this question. Maybe they're apples, maybe figs,
Speaker 1: maybe pomegranate, I think unsurprisingly, Terrence McKenna said, the story
Speaker 1: was supposed to include a reference to a mushroom, but
Speaker 1: what if the forbidden fruit was a tomato? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that actually checks out with what
Speaker 1: we know about the origins of the tomato, but I
Speaker 1: like the idea. No, it would certainly not check out.
Speaker 1: Like the authors of the Book of Genesis would not
Speaker 1: have known what a tomaked was right because it was
Speaker 1: from South America. But Smith points out that many of
Speaker 1: the early promoters of tomatoes in the colonies were doctors,
Speaker 1: and this is not all that surprising since tomatoes were
Speaker 1: becoming accepted during the eighteenth century as a medical plant.
Speaker 1: For example, James Meece who published one of the first
Speaker 1: known recipes for tomato ketchup around the year eighteen twelve.
Speaker 1: He was a medical graduate of the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and he wrote about how he was familiar with the
Speaker 1: culinary use of tomatoes from French immigrants, who were probably
Speaker 1: Creole refugees from Haiti. But beginning in the eighteen twenties,
Speaker 1: American physicians started to talk about tomatoes as a cure
Speaker 1: for what they called at the time billious diseases. These
Speaker 1: would be diseases that were associated with disorders of the
Speaker 1: liver or bile, which apparently sort of became a catch
Speaker 1: all category for diseases involving jaundice, naza, and vomiting along
Speaker 1: with fever. You know, if there's something wrong with your guts,
Speaker 1: they thought you had some kind of bile problem. Smith
Speaker 1: gives a number of examples. One is a doctor Horatio
Speaker 1: Gates Spafford, who wrote in the New York Farmer Quote
Speaker 1: that tomato sauce removed headaches, a bad taste in the mouth,
Speaker 1: straightness of the chest, painful heaviness in the liver, and
Speaker 1: improved the action of the bowels. So hey, that's an
Speaker 1: all in one. Yeah. But probably the single largest influence
Speaker 1: on the tomatoes image as a promoter of good health
Speaker 1: was a man named Dr John Cook Bennett. Robert I
Speaker 1: have attached a sketch of him, and I noticed he
Speaker 1: he really kind of looks a little bit like Adam Scott,
Speaker 1: but in a strange military uniform with epaulets and the sword. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that Adam Scott. I also see a
Speaker 1: little bit of of of Grand mof Tarke in here,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a combination of the two
Speaker 1: for me. Absolute lutely so. Bennett lived from eighteen o
Speaker 1: four to eighteen sixty seven, and he's actually probably best
Speaker 1: known for his short tenure as an associate of Joseph
Speaker 1: Smith and an early leader of the Latter Day Saints
Speaker 1: movement also known as the Mormons. Before all that, Bennett
Speaker 1: was a doctor who Andrew Smith claims founded one of
Speaker 1: the first medical diploma mills in US history, so he's
Speaker 1: a diploma mill pioneer. Apparently, Bennett would go around the
Speaker 1: Midwest selling medical degrees for ten bucks apiece, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure that created some awesome doctors, but it seems some
Speaker 1: people didn't really like that practice. He fell under some
Speaker 1: criticism for for selling degrees like that, so instead he
Speaker 1: accepted a position as a professor of midwifery at Willoughby
Speaker 1: Medical College of Lake Erie University in Ohio, where he
Speaker 1: jumped decisively onto the tomato train. This would have been
Speaker 1: in the early to mid eighteen thirties, and Smith writes
Speaker 1: as follows quote. In his introductory lecture at Willoughby, Bennett
Speaker 1: declared that tomatoes successfully treated diarrhea, violent bilious attacks, and
Speaker 1: dyspepsia or indigestion. He recommended that tomatoes replace calamel because
Speaker 1: they were less harmful, predicting that quote, a chemical extract
Speaker 1: will probably soon be obtained from it, which will altogether
Speaker 1: 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 each year tomatoes, you know, drink some
Speaker 1: tomato sauce on the train and you'll be right as right. Uh.
Speaker 1: To continue with with Smith's paragraph here, quote Bennett urged
Speaker 1: all citizens to eat tomatoes raw, cooked, or in ketchup,
Speaker 1: as they were quote the most healthy article of all
Speaker 1: the material alimentary. Bennett included recipes for tomato sauce, fried tomatoes,
Speaker 1: tomato pickles, tomato ketchup, and eating raw tomatoes. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the recipe for eating raw tomatoes is, but uh,
Speaker 1: to go back to earlier, So, so Bennett is setting
Speaker 1: tomatoes up as a foil to this substance called calamel.
Speaker 1: And this reference to calamel here. Calumel was a mineral
Speaker 1: form of mercury chloride that was widely used as medicine
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, even though nobody was quite sure
Speaker 1: how it was supposed to work. Apparently, primarily what it
Speaker 1: did was it was what they called a purgative, basically
Speaker 1: a laxative um. But it would also cause mercury poisoning,
Speaker 1: and it tended to kill the tissue of the mouth
Speaker 1: and gums. So they're all these stories of people taking
Speaker 1: calamel and like their teeth becoming loose and their mouths
Speaker 1: kind of rotting, And even into the twentieth century, alarmingly,
Speaker 1: calumel powder was used as a as a powder to
Speaker 1: be applied to children's gums as they were teething and
Speaker 1: led to these horrible conditions as a result. Benjamin Rush,
Speaker 1: you know, the physician and one of the so called
Speaker 1: founding fathers, he was a big fan of calamel and
Speaker 1: promoted it. I think he even tried to give some
Speaker 1: to Alexander Hamilton's at some point. Calumel is just terrible medicine,
Speaker 1: extremely worth replacing with something else. For example, calumel was
Speaker 1: often used to treat dysentery, but as a diuretic itself,
Speaker 1: it could speed up the dehydration process. So as you
Speaker 1: already have dysenterry, you're also taking a laxative and this
Speaker 1: this actually did kill some people. So yeah, So this
Speaker 1: is definitely an example of a so called medicine that
Speaker 1: is not only it's not just doing nothing, it is
Speaker 1: it is actively heaping more harm on top of whatever
Speaker 1: you're trying to treat. Yeah, I mean, I guess I
Speaker 1: can't verify that it was never doing anything useful, but
Speaker 1: I think it's absolutely clear that if it was doing
Speaker 1: anything beneficial at all, the side effects were far worse
Speaker 1: than whatever it was trying to treat. Yeah, And like other,
Speaker 1: you know, mercury based things, I think it was just
Speaker 1: generally used as a cure all. It was a panacea
Speaker 1: of the time. And anything that is supposed to cure
Speaker 1: everything probably cures nothing. So anyway, Bennett is offering up
Speaker 1: tomatoes as an alternative to calamel. He's saying, hey, tomatoes
Speaker 1: can do all the stuff that calamel does, accept it
Speaker 1: without all the side effects. And so Bennett was on
Speaker 1: the tomato train. He was soon forced out of his professorship,
Speaker 1: but he did not give up on his tomato crusade,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen thirty five, He repeated the claims of
Speaker 1: his to Aato Panacey 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 convince 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 of steaking tomatoes. So, Robert, You've got tomatoes
Speaker 1: growing in your yard right now, right? What what do
Speaker 1: you do to to get the vines standing upright, Oh,
Speaker 1: you have to use like a metal cage and um.
Speaker 1: And then as that they grow more and more gigantic,
Speaker 1: you end up or at least we have to end
Speaker 1: up reinforcing that, and and they see and if if
Speaker 1: you're not totally on top of it, you'll still end
Speaker 1: up with the vines falling onto the ground and tomatoes
Speaker 1: just sitting there on the ground. Right. So most people
Speaker 1: who grow tomatoes today they staked them in some way.
Speaker 1: You put like a structure up and you allow the
Speaker 1: vine to hang on that off in a metal cage
Speaker 1: or a stick of some kind. But Bennett opposed steaking
Speaker 1: because he claimed it was against God and against nature,
Speaker 1: and that God had intended for tomato vines to lie
Speaker 1: on the ground. If God had meant for them to
Speaker 1: be steaked, he would have had them stand up on
Speaker 1: their own. Though I think Ben it might be confused
Speaker 1: about the fact that the tomato, of course, being a
Speaker 1: cultivated fruit that was sort of created by humans in
Speaker 1: a way, the original natural form of the tomato is
Speaker 1: a tiny berry, you know, It's not this big, heavy,
Speaker 1: juicy thing that we eat today. Yeah. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: fruit of the modern tomato. It's especially it's larger forms.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's gigantic, it's swollen, 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, oh, man,
Speaker 1: this feels like overkill. But then a month two months later,
Speaker 1: and uh, and whatever structure you raised might be struggling
Speaker 1: to keep all of that stuff up in the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns into a precarious tower of juice. Yes. Should
Speaker 1: we take a quick break before we come back to
Speaker 1: discuss Spinnett's encounter with the LDS Church. Let's do it. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. We're talking about tomatoes as a miracle or
Speaker 1: that for just about anything that at the very least
Speaker 1: was a preferable cure all to a calamel, which was
Speaker 1: a dangerous mercury based cure. All right. Uh, And this
Speaker 1: claim was being made in the eighteen thirties by this
Speaker 1: doctor named John Cook Bennett. Now we talked about how
Speaker 1: he started making all these claims about tomatoes and their
Speaker 1: supposed health benefits and curative properties. Apparently, in eighteen forty,
Speaker 1: after he'd been making these tomato claims for a while,
Speaker 1: he was working in Illinois and Bennett got involved with
Speaker 1: the Latter Day Saints movement. He became friends with its
Speaker 1: leader Joseph Smith, and his claims about the health benefits
Speaker 1: of tomatoes actually proved influential within the church. But tragedy struck,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen forty two Bennett got excommunicated from the
Speaker 1: Latter Day Saints movement. He was excommunicated by Joseph Smith
Speaker 1: himself after some kind of ambiguous scandal and involving a
Speaker 1: bunch of alleged sexual impropriety, including adultery and maybe some
Speaker 1: kind of unsanctioned polygamy, with what Smith viewed as as
Speaker 1: dubious spiritual or revelatory justifications. After Bennett was banished from
Speaker 1: the church, he sort of went ballistic on Joseph Smith
Speaker 1: and then published a bunch of allegations against him in return.
Speaker 1: I think he actually accused Smith of murder and fraud
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other things, and then the two
Speaker 1: just win at each other in a full scale pr
Speaker 1: war Joseph Smith versus John Cook Bennett. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing was, apparently this pr war did not undermine uh
Speaker 1: the the Latter Day Saints movements fondness for tomatoes and
Speaker 1: acceptance of their ideas of the health benefits that had
Speaker 1: come from Bennett. So Bennett's claims proved very popular, and
Speaker 1: they caught on and were repeated in lots of cookbooks,
Speaker 1: household manuals, farming and gardening journals, and even in Latter
Speaker 1: Day Saints literature. Uh and so, so there was this
Speaker 1: whole tomato for health craze that caught on big in
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties and continued into the eighteen forties. And
Speaker 1: uh Andrew F. Smith points out that whatever his possibly
Speaker 1: dubious medical or moral credentials, Bennett was a genuinely very
Speaker 1: talented promoter. It seems like he probably could have been
Speaker 1: great in the twentieth century in an advertising and marketing context,
Speaker 1: and that this contributed significantly to the popularization and normalization
Speaker 1: of tomatoes in the United States. Uh So, Bennett eventually
Speaker 1: predicted that you know you're you're gonna be able in
Speaker 1: the future to get the health benefits of tomatoes without
Speaker 1: even having to eat a tomato. You can just take
Speaker 1: a miracle pill that will be made from a from
Speaker 1: a tomato extract. And this prediction actually came true. In
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty five, a doctor A. J. Holcomb of Glassboro, Alabama,
Speaker 1: started producing pills made out of a tomato extra act,
Speaker 1: and other pills also came on the market. Smith quotes
Speaker 1: advertising for one brand of tomato pills from a doctor
Speaker 1: named Dr Miles, and it goes like this, The tomato
Speaker 1: used as an article of refection is highly medical, highly medical,
Speaker 1: and doubtless prevents many bilious attacks. We inferred from this
Speaker 1: fact the possibility of preparing from it a medicine of
Speaker 1: great virtue. Dr Miles and his associates have spent years
Speaker 1: and fortunes we understand and experimenting, and finally have produced
Speaker 1: the compound extract. It has been used by many in
Speaker 1: the city and out of it, and is as near
Speaker 1: we can learn, generally approve. But then I thought this
Speaker 1: was interesting. Apparently, so Smith's sites some of the other
Speaker 1: packaging copy, and some of this copy attacks calamel directly.
Speaker 1: So it says, for example, humane physicians deplore the sad
Speaker 1: evils resulting from the murph curial practice. And remember this
Speaker 1: because calamel is mercury chloride, and we'll gladly hail the
Speaker 1: introduction of an article that can safely be substituted for calamel.
Speaker 1: And it goes on about how people just know in
Speaker 1: their hearts that mercury is bad, even if they can't
Speaker 1: explain why. Um, and that you may have to choose
Speaker 1: between two evils of having of taking mercury or having
Speaker 1: a torpid liver. But now they're saying, hey, you don't
Speaker 1: have to have a torpid liver and you don't have
Speaker 1: to take mercury. You can fight your torpid liver with
Speaker 1: tomato pills. Well, that would certainly be ideal if you
Speaker 1: wanted to consume the medicinal essence of tomatoes out of
Speaker 1: outside of tomato season. Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. You wouldn't have to go through eating a
Speaker 1: mealy one in the winter if you wanted to fight
Speaker 1: your torpid liver. Um. But but I will say that so,
Speaker 1: while I think the tomato pill probably had very little
Speaker 1: actual medical merit, especially for the billiest disease eas is
Speaker 1: that they were said to counteract, it seems to me
Speaker 1: that simply by being offered as an alternative to calamel.
Speaker 1: Tomato pills or just tomatoes might have done significant medical
Speaker 1: good just because calamel was so bad. Like, so, if
Speaker 1: you're taking something that does nothing instead of taking calamel
Speaker 1: and getting mercury poisoning and gangrenous flesh and rotting gums
Speaker 1: and all that, that that actually does seem like an upgrade,
Speaker 1: even though this is probably not useful as medicine. Plus
Speaker 1: there's a hint of tomato to it, so it's got
Speaker 1: that going for it. Oh yeah, I mean I wonder
Speaker 1: if you, you know, if you're actually eating any tomato flesh,
Speaker 1: I wonder if if you could get some placebo effect
Speaker 1: just from the fact that it tastes nice. Maybe not,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that might be reaching, but anyway, it's
Speaker 1: still the placebo effect is powerful. So I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's always going to be a part of any of
Speaker 1: these considerations. Oh absolutely, I mean that that might be
Speaker 1: something that was at work in calamel and in tomato
Speaker 1: and tomato pills, except uh, you know, the tomatoes aren't
Speaker 1: full of mercury um. So it seems that some of
Speaker 1: the attacks against tomato pills did not make the accurate
Speaker 1: charge that or at least I would guess what is accurate,
Speaker 1: which is that they probably just didn't do much, but
Speaker 1: instead accused them of, say, being inferior to calamel and effectiveness.
Speaker 1: And there were some that accused tomatoes and tomato pills
Speaker 1: of bringing on implausible side effects, side effects I would
Speaker 1: judge to be very implausible. For example, uh Andrew Smith
Speaker 1: cites one dctor dio Lewis, who was a popular lecturer
Speaker 1: and a practitioner of homeopathy, who claimed to who claimed
Speaker 1: that the use of tomatoes and their extract would cause
Speaker 1: quote piles tender and bleeding gums, teeth set on edge,
Speaker 1: and loss of teeth due to salivation, which which sounds
Speaker 1: closer to the actual effects of calamel. But anyway, despite
Speaker 1: these attacks, tomato pills proved very popular, and by eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: Smith notes that tomato extract was listed as an ingredient
Speaker 1: in lots of supposed panacea is even pills that weren't
Speaker 1: just tomato pills. You know, you know this is doctor
Speaker 1: Doctor Rotten Bottoms, you know, excellent cure all that would
Speaker 1: list tomato extract as one of the ingredients, and this
Speaker 1: gave rise at the time to the slogan tomato pills
Speaker 1: will cure all your ills. There you go, at rhymes.
Speaker 1: Can't argue with that, right, uh. And just as an
Speaker 1: interesting side note, Smith includes a few other bizarre claims
Speaker 1: made against tomatoes, including one accusation. This is from the
Speaker 1: later nineteenth century, so not the eighteen forties period we're
Speaker 1: talking about now, but later in the century there was
Speaker 1: a doctor John Hilton who reported that quote, tomato cells
Speaker 1: were identical to cancer cells under the microscope, and that
Speaker 1: there was much cancer were tomato those were eaten. This
Speaker 1: does not appear to be true in any way. That
Speaker 1: sounds real. This This sounds like when um Chancellor Palpatine
Speaker 1: is telling Anakin that the the Jedi and the Sith
Speaker 1: they're virtually alike in every way. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I wonder like, did this guy owned stock in a
Speaker 1: 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 universe, silly accepted, and extremely popular food in America
Speaker 1: and counteract some of the lingering concerns that might have
Speaker 1: been present among some people about their toxicity. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna basically, if you're gonna take up some sort
Speaker 1: of crazy new diet or some sort of weird medication,
Speaker 1: it's 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: Likecopene is a carotenoid that serves as a pigment, giving
Speaker 1: the tomato it's pinkish reddish color. Uh. And there are
Speaker 1: other carotenoid pigments that are nutritionally relevant. For example, beta carotene,
Speaker 1: the pigment that gives carrots and some of their vegetables
Speaker 1: their orange color that gets metabolized in the body and
Speaker 1: turns into vitamin A, which is of course a an
Speaker 1: essential nutrient. So dietary carotenoids are very important for supplying
Speaker 1: the body with compounds that it can't synthesize internally. And
Speaker 1: there's long been a debate in the scientific literature about
Speaker 1: what the health benefits of tomatoes and specifically lycopine might be.
Speaker 1: So I was trying to check and see if there
Speaker 1: was a good literature review and meta analysis of of
Speaker 1: all the studies out there on on the possible effects
Speaker 1: of lycopine um the health effects of lycopine, and I
Speaker 1: found an article from seventeen published in the journal Atherosclerosis
Speaker 1: by Chang at All called Tomato and Lycopine Supplementation and
Speaker 1: Cardiovascular Risk Factors a systemic review and meta analysis, and
Speaker 1: essentially the authors here found that quote consuming tomato and
Speaker 1: 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 bio markers of vascular
Speaker 1: risk needs further investigation. So, uh, it seems like, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: like many things studies into the health effects of food,
Speaker 1: there 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 lycope 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 lycopene 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 I don't
Speaker 1: have this quote pulled out, but I remember he cites
Speaker 1: a 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: propably 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 that that that tomatoes they go out on
Speaker 1: the counter or by 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. Yeah, Like ultimately,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It could be that if you keep
Speaker 1: the tomatoes out on the countertop, it will keep demons
Speaker 1: out of your house that that could be the excuse
Speaker 1: as far as I know. Uh yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: could 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 in 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 bone Berry and
Speaker 1: I believe you asked the question about uh, lemon and
Speaker 1: lime juice, in particular about fresh squeze lime juice, and
Speaker 1: he mentioned that some mixologists argue that it's better if
Speaker 1: the lime juice has been squeezed but then placed in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator for a certain amount of time, for a
Speaker 1: short period. I think he said that, like some mixologists
Speaker 1: think that the line like citrus juice is better after
Speaker 1: being refrigerated for like a day or something like that,
Speaker 1: but then after after that it starts getting bad. You'll
Speaker 1: have to go back to that invention interview to to
Speaker 1: to hear the exact numbers, but it was something in
Speaker 1: that ballpark. But anyway, so to bring it back to tomatoes,
Speaker 1: for a long time, the conventional wisdom has been to
Speaker 1: go right along with your household rule. Uh, it's that
Speaker 1: you never put a raw tomato in the fridge. It
Speaker 1: ruins the fresh tomato flavor, It turns the text you're
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 a number 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 cells. 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 wood winds, 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 that's nice and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's something to that, Like the rapturous experience of eating
Speaker 1: a really good tomato is this complex combination of kind
Speaker 1: of like earthy, grassy, juicy, you know, mells and tastes
Speaker 1: that all come together, as as the sort of accents
Speaker 1: on the basic flavors of sweetness and sourness and savoriness
Speaker 1: that are there in the tomatoes flesh. But there are
Speaker 1: some serious reasons for not just taking that research and
Speaker 1: then running straight to the conclusion. Okay, then never put
Speaker 1: your tomato in the refrigerator, because this study is looking
Speaker 1: at sort of one narrow question and one narrow type
Speaker 1: of comparison. So, first of all, if you're buying a
Speaker 1: tomato with the grocery store, that tomato has almost definitely
Speaker 1: already been chilled for some time during transport and storage.
Speaker 1: Because if you think for a minute about the brute
Speaker 1: physical necessities of the food supply chain, uh, and you
Speaker 1: think about the delicacy of an actually ripe tomato, how
Speaker 1: would how would you harvest actually ripe tomatoes at scale
Speaker 1: and then pack them and ship them to their destinations.
Speaker 1: I mean, you couldn't do it. A truck or even
Speaker 1: a crate packed full of plump, ripe tomatoes would just
Speaker 1: be this slurry of moldy pulp by the time it
Speaker 1: got where it was going, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: your your tomatoes are likely coming from California or Florida.
Speaker 1: I think Indiana and Ohio are also up there in
Speaker 1: the top five. Yeah. So often the large scale tomato
Speaker 1: agriculture involves harvesting tomatoes that are still relatively hard and
Speaker 1: green and then packing them in cold storage and exposing
Speaker 1: them to ethylene gas under cold storage, which is a
Speaker 1: gas that's naturally produced by lots of fruits as they ripen,
Speaker 1: but exposure to the gas causes ripening in the storage
Speaker 1: after they've been picked, and that's how the tomatoes turn red. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to be read when you buy them at
Speaker 1: the grocery store. Now, a lot of people are going
Speaker 1: to say that this process is one reason why tomatoes
Speaker 1: you get at the grocery store or often extremely inferior
Speaker 1: to tomatoes that you would get at a farmer's market
Speaker 1: or that you would grow yourself or get from a
Speaker 1: friend's garden. That the process is just totally different in
Speaker 1: terms of the flavor and texture that it produces when
Speaker 1: compared to a tomato that actually ripens on the vine.
Speaker 1: And some of these same concerns driving the supply and
Speaker 1: transport process have also driven the selection of particular tomato
Speaker 1: cultivars that are not necessarily the best to eat, because
Speaker 1: when a farmer is selecting what breed of tomato to grow,
Speaker 1: they don't only have to consider what's going to taste
Speaker 1: the best to the consumer. They have to consider what
Speaker 1: can I actually get to the buyer intact? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it needs to survive the journey and and and look
Speaker 1: like something that the the the customer will actually purchase
Speaker 1: on the other end. Right, But if you're able to
Speaker 1: get your hands on an unrefrigerated tomato out of a
Speaker 1: garden or maybe at a farmer's market or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: The authors here of this paper at least they recommend
Speaker 1: not storing it in the fridge before you eat it
Speaker 1: if you want peak tomato rapture. And that advice might
Speaker 1: be good advice, But there are a number of researchers
Speaker 1: who would say that this type of answer is actually
Speaker 1: looking at the question a little too narrowly and in
Speaker 1: a way that's not always useful to the actual tomato consumer.
Speaker 1: For example, there are a couple of really great in
Speaker 1: depth explorations of this question on the Serious Eats website
Speaker 1: by Daniel Gritzer and Kenji Lopez Alt, and they did
Speaker 1: a couple of investigations over this over the past few years,
Speaker 1: and so they did controlled experiments with blind taste tests
Speaker 1: on multiple ways of storing tomatoes, refrigerated, unrefrigerated, for different
Speaker 1: periods of time and so forth, and they concluded that basically, yes,
Speaker 1: the absolute pinnacle tomato experience is probably letting the tomato
Speaker 1: ripen on the vine then eating it immediately at its
Speaker 1: moment of peak ripeness with no refrigeration on the vine,
Speaker 1: like like a goat man, with the juice flowing down
Speaker 1: your chest. Don't use your hands at all, just face. Yes.
Speaker 1: But 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've in 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 didn't even
Speaker 1: notice all that big of a difference between a tomato
Speaker 1: that had been refrigerated and one that hadn't. It seemed
Speaker 1: to vary, so they came up with a set of guidelines.
Speaker 1: They 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. And of course storing
Speaker 1: it in the fridge will allow it to stay at
Speaker 1: peak ripeness longer than it would store it at room temperature.
Speaker 1: But they do say it's important if you have refrigerated
Speaker 1: a tomato, let it come up to room temperature before
Speaker 1: you eat it, because eating a cold tomato is not
Speaker 1: very pleasant. That's good, that's good. But then the second
Speaker 1: half of this is if your tomato has already been refrigerated,
Speaker 1: and this would apply to almost any tomato you would
Speaker 1: get it a grocery store or any kind of mass
Speaker 1: agricultural vendor. In that case, if it's already ripe, put
Speaker 1: it in the fridge until you're ready to eat it.
Speaker 1: If it's not ripe yet, let it ripen at room temperature.
Speaker 1: Then once it's ripe, move it to the fridge until
Speaker 1: you're ready to eat it, and once again let it
Speaker 1: come up to room temper before you actually put it
Speaker 1: in your mouth. And I think I really respect the
Speaker 1: work they put in on coming up with these guidelines,
Speaker 1: and uh, thus saith the Lord. Okay, I got a
Speaker 1: second tomato storage trick, also confirmed through empirical testing by
Speaker 1: Kenji Lopez Ald. So you know how tomatoes often lose
Speaker 1: juiciness and partially desiccate as they sit out and rest.
Speaker 1: You you've probably seen them, like on the tops near
Speaker 1: where the stem is, they'll get kind of wrinkly and
Speaker 1: start to sages. This is partially due to moist you're
Speaker 1: evaporating out of the tomato as it rests now. The
Speaker 1: skin of the tomato is actually very good at keeping
Speaker 1: moisture in, but the weak point is actually the stem area,
Speaker 1: a little depression where the tomato connected to the vine.
Speaker 1: And so there's an easy way to prevent moisture escaping
Speaker 1: through this area, and it is to store tomatoes upside
Speaker 1: down on a flat surface, so the stem area is
Speaker 1: sort of sealed off by the by the soft flesh
Speaker 1: of the tomato around it. Or in fact, if you
Speaker 1: want to go farther, you can even do what Kinji
Speaker 1: did to test this theory about where the moisture evaporates from.
Speaker 1: He shows in a video that he put a little
Speaker 1: piece of tape over the stem depression to seal it off,
Speaker 1: and this also kept the tomato from losing juice over time.
Speaker 1: So if you want your tomatoes to stay ju see
Speaker 1: a storm upside down, or or maybe even give them
Speaker 1: a little little sealed hat. All right, all right, on
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: when we come back we will explore the topic of
Speaker 1: off world tomatoes. Thank alright, we're back. So at this point,
Speaker 1: tomatoes a spread pretty much everywhere. As Michael Pollen pointed
Speaker 1: out in his book Cooked, the tomato is perhaps the
Speaker 1: most important vegetable crop in the world, with onions coming
Speaker 1: in second. As we discussed in our invention episode about
Speaker 1: Ketchup the culinary invention of Ketchup, so Europeans tried to
Speaker 1: recreate Asian sauces with an imported fruit from the America's
Speaker 1: and then this weird concoction eventually returns to Asia as well.
Speaker 1: I was reading an article titled Tomatoes and Chinese Cooking
Speaker 1: by Rhonda Parkinson for the Spruce Eat site, and the
Speaker 1: author mentions that even though tomatoes only arrived in China
Speaker 1: roughly a hundred to a hundred fifty years ago, they've
Speaker 1: managed to carve out their own niche in certain Chinese cuisines,
Speaker 1: much in the same way that chili peppers have found
Speaker 1: a home in numerous Asian cuisines. Examples of popular dishes,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I've had any of these, but
Speaker 1: it was interesting to these were pointed out. One is
Speaker 1: tomato egg drop soup, and the other is a dish
Speaker 1: called tomato beef, which is apparently a stir fry with
Speaker 1: thick tomato wedges, like really big thick pieces beef added.
Speaker 1: And then oyster sauce. Oh, that sounds like a delicious
Speaker 1: umami bomb. Of course, because a lot of natural Asian
Speaker 1: flavorings are are big umami bombs, like soy sauce or
Speaker 1: oyster sauce. They bring a lot of the glutamate based flavors,
Speaker 1: but tomatoes are also rich imglutamates and have that rich
Speaker 1: eu mammy flavor. So yeah, that sounds like a savory delight.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to to contemplate this kind of thing too,
Speaker 1: where tomatoes are recent enough um arrival in Chinese cuisine
Speaker 1: that they haven't completely they still have you know, they're
Speaker 1: still completely taken over or anything like that. But but
Speaker 1: looking at where they're utilized first, like where are the
Speaker 1: successes for the tomato as opposed to some thing like
Speaker 1: um Italian cuisine, which it really can be kind of
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine for for many of us anyway, to
Speaker 1: imagine something like Italian cuisine without the tomato, right, because
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of our minds immediately go. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I would say that's especially true of like Italian American cuisine,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the Italian dishes that became especially
Speaker 1: popular among Italian Americans were tomato forward. Yeah. So here's
Speaker 1: a big question. If tomatoes have essentially taken over our planet,
Speaker 1: my tomatoes go beyond being a mere international sensation. Could
Speaker 1: they become an interplanetary sensation? Yes, the answer is yes.
Speaker 1: When 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, we've discussed before a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of very intelligent people have argued
Speaker 1: that the long term survival of the human race depends
Speaker 1: 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. The cost of getting
Speaker 1: the food into orbit alone is already incredibly high, compounded
Speaker 1: then by the cost of getting it the rest of
Speaker 1: the way, for example, to a lunar colony or to
Speaker 1: a Martian colony. That means you're gonna have to grow
Speaker 1: your food at your lunar or Martian colony, uh, at
Speaker 1: least to supplement um costly deliveries, if not sustain colonists completely.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I can't wait to subsist entirely on a
Speaker 1: diet of like protein that's created from algae and incubators.
Speaker 1: I'll remember in the Silent Running that's just what Bruce
Speaker 1: Dern's crewmates were happy with. They're like, oh, this is great,
Speaker 1: these cubes of of of of whatever. You know, that
Speaker 1: grown strangeness is perfectly fine. Meanwhile, he's holding like a
Speaker 1: cultivated banana, like the strangest product of modern agricultural science,
Speaker 1: and he's like, this is nature, all right. So obviously
Speaker 1: there are a number of possibilities here, including what you
Speaker 1: just mentioned, like figuring out like what what grows the
Speaker 1: best that we could possibly eat, and let's make that
Speaker 1: be our diet um. But you know, basically, I guess
Speaker 1: the first possibility that comes to mind in terms of
Speaker 1: like growing things in another world is that we just
Speaker 1: bring everything with us. Right, Certainly, we need to bring
Speaker 1: the seeds, But then when you get into the issue
Speaker 1: of water and soil, things get a bit difficult because again,
Speaker 1: the cost of even bringing this stuff into orbit is
Speaker 1: so high. Right, So, on one hand, we could potentially
Speaker 1: go the way of hydroponics and grow with out soil. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's one less thing we'd have to bring up with us, right,
Speaker 1: and perhaps we'd even be able to make use of
Speaker 1: local water. In fact, a paper by Elgin and Union
Speaker 1: published in the Bulleton of the American Astronomical Society argues
Speaker 1: that hydroponics might be our best option. And I'll share
Speaker 1: more on on their argument here in a bit. But
Speaker 1: what about lunar or martian soil? What's preventing us from
Speaker 1: growing our crops just in that stuff? You know? Hey,
Speaker 1: there is there is there dirt on Mars? Is there
Speaker 1: dirt on the moon? Why don't I just grow some
Speaker 1: tomatoes in that? Okay? I guess a major problem would
Speaker 1: be the lack of moisture, but there may be other
Speaker 1: problems as well. Well. All right, yeah, so I guess that.
Speaker 1: Think of it this way. It's like, if you're bringing water,
Speaker 1: you're bringing seeds. Could you just go out get a
Speaker 1: big bucket load of of Martian or lunar regular, bring
Speaker 1: that inside. Uh, adds seeds, add water, and enjoy your
Speaker 1: your bumper crop. I don't know. Actually that's a very
Speaker 1: good question. Uh. The answer is no. But it becomes
Speaker 1: then a question of what could you do to the soil?
Speaker 1: And uh, And on this subject, I was looking at
Speaker 1: another paper. This is the twenty nineteen paper titled Crop
Speaker 1: Growth and Viability of Seeds on Mars and Moon soil
Speaker 1: simulants by Fame link at All published in Open Agriculture,
Speaker 1: and basically the paper sets out to consider whether martian
Speaker 1: or lunar regular could be used to grow crops. Now.
Speaker 1: First of all, on the hydroponics front, the authors here
Speaker 1: argue that while hydroponics is certainly promising, you still need
Speaker 1: a growing medium. For instance, mineral wool is often used.
Speaker 1: It's also known as rock wool, which is a brand name.
Speaker 1: This is stuff that's also used in insulation, filtration and soundproofing,
Speaker 1: but when used as a growing medium, it has to
Speaker 1: be replaced after one or more growing cycles. Um. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: not every crop takes to mineral wool all that well,
Speaker 1: So in other words, you'd still potentially have to ship
Speaker 1: uh this growing medium out to your colony and depend
Speaker 1: on that supply chain. So they ultimately contend that aero ponics,
Speaker 1: in which plants grow in an air or missed environment
Speaker 1: without soil as a growing medium. Um, you know that
Speaker 1: that could be a strong possibility, and certainly that's something
Speaker 1: that NASA sponsored plant experiments have been looking into for
Speaker 1: quite a while, and with good reason to. According to NASA,
Speaker 1: aeroponics systems can reduce water usage by of, fertilizer usage
Speaker 1: by and pesticide usage by all while maximizing crop yields,
Speaker 1: and some crops like tomatoes, have been shown to benefit
Speaker 1: from increased mineral envitamin uptake via aero ponics. According to
Speaker 1: a two thousand seven NASA released, tomato growers traditionally start
Speaker 1: their plants in pots weight twenty eight days or so
Speaker 1: before transplanting them into the ground. However, using an aero
Speaker 1: ponics system, they can then hands plant them from a
Speaker 1: growing chamber to the soil in just ten days, and
Speaker 1: this apparently allows growers to produce six tomato crops cycles
Speaker 1: per year instead of the traditional one or two crop cycles.
Speaker 1: I believe aeroponics have been used in the I s
Speaker 1: s already, haven't they? Yeah? I believe so there've been
Speaker 1: There have been certainly been some experiments with aeroponics. It's
Speaker 1: like I say, it's something that it's not new in
Speaker 1: terms of uh NASA research 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
Speaker 1: eth Okay, Well, in that paper by Elgin and Guni,
Speaker 1: and they point out that there are a number of
Speaker 1: issues with the Martian regular For example, they would have
Speaker 1: to be worked out. So for starters, the regulars is
Speaker 1: full of perclorates. These are chemical compounds containing the perclorate
Speaker 1: ion which are harmful to humans and a challenge to
Speaker 1: my grow organisms as well, And these would need to
Speaker 1: be stripped out of the regular if before you could
Speaker 1: plant anything in it. Furthermore, the Martian regulars is, as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell dead. Uh, that's the start
Speaker 1: difference from the soil we depend on here on Earth,
Speaker 1: which is a rich environment of microbial life, fung gui, arthropods,
Speaker 1: organic nutrients. So they argue that you need to add
Speaker 1: something that you need to essentially resurrect that soil. I
Speaker 1: mean you resurrect that regular to make it soil. You
Speaker 1: would need to add something like worm castings to the mix.
Speaker 1: Now that's essentially the refuse of earthworms that are just
Speaker 1: packed with bacteria, enzymes and remnants of plant matter and excrement.
Speaker 1: And you can actually this is stuff you can buy
Speaker 1: for your own garden at gardening supply stores. You just
Speaker 1: get a big container of earthworm poop. Well it's got it.
Speaker 1: It says worm castings, but that's essentially what it is. Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Yeah, the Martian soil is sterile, and this
Speaker 1: would be a way to sift some life into it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: They go on to explore hydroponics in greater detail. Uh.
Speaker 1: And but then to come back to tomatoes for a second,
Speaker 1: we should note that the golden apples of Terra can
Speaker 1: be grown via high hydroponics and aero ponics, so both
Speaker 1: of the 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 Mars, it sounds
Speaker 1: like the tomatoes future would be bright. Now. To come
Speaker 1: back to the fime 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 they're actually several different versions of Regulus similant
Speaker 1: out there, like this one is j s C Mars
Speaker 1: one A, but there's also one called j SC one
Speaker 1: A that is the lunar version, and there are some
Speaker 1: other varieties out there. Um Mars one A is based
Speaker 1: on info gathered from the Viking Landers and the Mars
Speaker 1: path Finder rover, and it's pretty interesting stuff in and
Speaker 1: of itself. This one, in particular is gathered from the
Speaker 1: pooh Nene cinder cone on the Big Island of Hawaii. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that would be it would be like a volcanic
Speaker 1: soil base. Yeah. So anyway, the researchers in this study
Speaker 1: they used a nutrient solution made from a grass used
Speaker 1: as a cattle fodder to enrich the soil, and they
Speaker 1: cultivated ten different crops uh garden crests, rocket, tomato, radish, rye, keeno, spinach, chives,
Speaker 1: pas and leak and they assimilated the properties of lunar
Speaker 1: and Martian regulars and also normal soil potting soil from
Speaker 1: Earth as a control. And if the tin crops. Uh.
Speaker 1: Spinach was the only one that was a complete dud.
Speaker 1: Uh chives and leaks grew steadily but didn't produce much.
Speaker 1: Keenoa didn't produce seeds, which is a bummer because you
Speaker 1: want your off world crop to also produce seeds for
Speaker 1: the next generation. Again, you want to be as removed
Speaker 1: from that supply chain back to the home world as
Speaker 1: much as possible, right, so you can eventually succeed from
Speaker 1: Earth and declare independence. Yeah. Uh. Total biomass was highest
Speaker 1: for the Earth Control trays obviously, but also the Mars
Speaker 1: trays were pretty high. Lunar tray was the worst, and
Speaker 1: the seeds of three species radish, rye and garden crests
Speaker 1: were tested successfully each for German nation. So those worlds
Speaker 1: on only the most promising in terms of of um
Speaker 1: you know, continuing to to grow without more seeds coming
Speaker 1: from home. Well, I know, you're You've got to get
Speaker 1: to the tomatoes. How did they do? The tomatoes did
Speaker 1: pretty well. They were the top biomass producer, and lead
Speaker 1: author here of vigor of om Link is quoted as
Speaker 1: saying that they were thrilled when the Martian tomatoes actually
Speaker 1: turned red whoa. And there are other studies and programs
Speaker 1: looking at space tomato is as well. One I came
Speaker 1: across is an operation known as space UM acronym. It's
Speaker 1: an acronym. Yes, it's probably one of the more amusing
Speaker 1: acronyms I've run across recently for the show. It is
Speaker 1: the Small Plants for Space Expeditions program UM. Uh. So
Speaker 1: it's from the University of California, Riverside, and it's what
Speaker 1: they've done is they've developed a tiny tomato plant uh
Speaker 1: that feature minimal leaves and stems, but produce a normal
Speaker 1: amount of fruit, though in smaller packages. So in other words,
Speaker 1: more biomass is invested into the edible portions of the plant.
Speaker 1: And they also this also minimizes resources and energy consumption
Speaker 1: by producing fruit more quickly than conventional plants. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I hadn't even really considered this, but it makes sense
Speaker 1: that if you were trying to it 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 to could be utilized in aum, 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.
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 side. Now that
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about this is the Space
Speaker 1: team developed these tomato is not via selective breeding, but
Speaker 1: via Crisper case nine gene editing technology. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we've really gotten into their into the use
Speaker 1: of Crisper gene editing in uh in agriculture, but obviously
Speaker 1: this would be huge. Yeah, we often when we're talking
Speaker 1: about crisper, and when I say we not just us,
Speaker 1: but you know, just sort of media in general and
Speaker 1: the public were generally asking the question what about humans though?
Speaker 1: What about humans though? But we should occasionally say we
Speaker 1: stop and ask the question what about tomatoes? And here
Speaker 1: 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 of interesting possibility in
Speaker 1: all 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 energy 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 the 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 just get
Speaker 1: so big they're just bursting. But I guess, on the
Speaker 1: 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, one, or 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 missed the
Speaker 1: point made years ago, and it's going to be Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse shaped watermelons. Like that's that's the future of fruit
Speaker 1: in space. I love it, all right, So there we
Speaker 1: have it. As we said, you know, we did not
Speaker 1: have space in these episodes to discuss the entire history
Speaker 1: of hmen and tomato interaction, nor did we even really
Speaker 1: get to touch on everything that's going on with tomato science,
Speaker 1: tomato research, etcetera. I mean, it's a massively juicy field.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a lot we could come back to,
Speaker 1: that's right. So anyway, hopefully though, it gives it gives
Speaker 1: everybody a lot more to think about when they inevitably
Speaker 1: engage with tomato based cuisine. And hopefully as you enjoy
Speaker 1: some fresh tomatoes or at least reasonably fresh tomatoes this
Speaker 1: growing season. Yeah, it's a short window every year. It's
Speaker 1: 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 Boil your Mind, you
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Speaker 1: Just make sure you 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
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