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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today's Vault episode

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Speaker 1: is the first part of the two part series we

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Speaker 1: did about the humble tomato. Why why did I say

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Speaker 1: humble tomatoes, not humble the beautiful, glorious, majestic tomato. Yes,

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Speaker 1: this is a part one of our episode Tomato tomato,

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Speaker 1: or maybe it was tomato tomato or tomato tomato or

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Speaker 1: tomato tomato. I'm not sure. Did you say tomato tomato?

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Speaker 1: Was that tomato tomato? Um? I love you tomato. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, these were fun. These were some some nice

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Speaker 1: food based botanical explorations, and I believe we got to

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Speaker 1: gush a lot about just how good a tomato can be. Hey,

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Speaker 1: and they're in season again. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I was going

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Speaker 1: to start off today by saying that, of course it's

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Speaker 1: the most wonderful time of the year, but I think

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Speaker 1: I'm actually already on record saying October is the most

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Speaker 1: wonderful time of the year, and of course October is

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Speaker 1: because that's you know, monster madness, but monster season aside,

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Speaker 1: I think tomato season is the second most wonderful time

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Speaker 1: of the year, and we're right in it now. Tomato

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Speaker 1: season is pretty wonderful. Um, We're we're big tomato fans

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Speaker 1: here in the house. Given the confines of imposed by

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Speaker 1: the pandemic, we're actually growing more tomatoes at the house

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Speaker 1: than ever before. Um, and yeah, it's been fabulous. We're

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Speaker 1: big fans of pensanella, which is a I think a

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Speaker 1: tuscan chopped salad or originally but it's like soaked or

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Speaker 1: soaked stale or toasted bread we throw in basil and

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Speaker 1: then of course the tomatoes. Uh. Similarly, we really love

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Speaker 1: a good caprice salad because, yeah, a great tomato just

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Speaker 1: elevates anything. In my opinion. You know, you can do

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Speaker 1: a great tomato. All you need is just a little

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Speaker 1: salt and pepper, maybe a drizzle of olive oil, and

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Speaker 1: you're good to go. A great tomato is I think

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Speaker 1: in the same class where people think of like a

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Speaker 1: great steak. It is just like a complete food in

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Speaker 1: itself that is so good it you know, it kind

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Speaker 1: of makes people moan when they eat it. And I

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Speaker 1: definitely grew up thinking that I did not like tomatoes.

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Speaker 1: I thought I hated tomatoes. I'd always pick them off

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Speaker 1: of a sandwich if if they were on there. But

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Speaker 1: I realized later in life the issue was just that

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Speaker 1: I hated bad tomatoes. And almost every tomato you get

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Speaker 1: in a you know, in a subway or what. I

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Speaker 1: don't mean to single them out, but you know, any

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Speaker 1: sandwich shop, whatever, it's almost never going to be a

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Speaker 1: good one. It's going to be kind of a white, mealy, tough,

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Speaker 1: flavorless thing that doesn't have all of the beautiful aromatic

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Speaker 1: tomato ee compounds, that doesn't have that perfect juicy text.

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Speaker 1: You're a ripe, home grown or or you know, farmer's

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Speaker 1: market summer tomato that has never been refrigerated, never had

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Speaker 1: to be shipped on a big truck, any of that stuff.

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Speaker 1: It is a thing of beauty. And if you've never

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Speaker 1: experienced a tomato that way, you don't know what you're

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Speaker 1: missing yet. Yeah, absolutely, you just you're not going to

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Speaker 1: get the same thing with a grocery store tomato generally,

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Speaker 1: unless you know they are actually serve as selling like

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Speaker 1: local air limb tomatoes. I'm a big fan of box

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Speaker 1: meal kits. I'm a subscriber to one of them right now.

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Speaker 1: But you're just not gonna You're not gonna get a

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Speaker 1: wonderful tomato through the mail like that it's got it's

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Speaker 1: gotta come from your own garden. It's got to come

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Speaker 1: from a local um garden. It and when you get

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Speaker 1: to dig into it, it is like nothing else. It's

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Speaker 1: just miles above uh the sort of mundane canned tomato

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Speaker 1: grocery store tomato experience. Yeah, and I think one reason is,

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Speaker 1: uh just the sheer mechanics of like shipping products. Right

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Speaker 1: if you ever had a really good ripe summer tomato,

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Speaker 1: as soon as you handle it, you know, like this

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Speaker 1: would not survive the like the rough process of getting

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Speaker 1: from a farm to the grocery store to my house.

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Speaker 1: It's a delicate baby bird. It's the thing that that

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Speaker 1: you know, it's it's barely going to survive the trip

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Speaker 1: from the vine to your kitchen counter. Oh yeah, and

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Speaker 1: again speaking is a very amateur tomato grower here. But

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Speaker 1: the ones we bring in from the backyard, like they

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Speaker 1: we have to like knock the bugs off of them,

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Speaker 1: they're already oozing a little bit. Yeah, this is a

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Speaker 1: very delicate balance between the plate and the compost heap.

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Speaker 1: You've got to get there just the right time. But

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, I'm also actually I'm a pretty

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Speaker 1: big fan of canned tomatoes for cooked applications. If if

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Speaker 1: it's a tomato, you know, if you're making tomato sauce

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Speaker 1: or something like that, a decent can of of whole

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Speaker 1: peeled tomatoes that you puree yourself or mash to whatever

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Speaker 1: consistency you want, where it's just fine. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: know that they're picked when they're ideal, and you know

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Speaker 1: they go ahead and canum. It's much better than trying

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Speaker 1: to make a say a tomato sauce from tomatoes that

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Speaker 1: are fresh in the off season. Yeah. Yeah, It ultimately depends,

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Speaker 1: like what is the role of the tomato in the dish?

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Speaker 1: Is Is this a starring vehicle for a fresh tomato.

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Speaker 1: If so, nothing but a really good fresh tomato is

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Speaker 1: going to work. But if it's something where the tomato

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Speaker 1: is more of a supporting player, then perhaps one of

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Speaker 1: these other things will work. And then, of course all

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Speaker 1: there's not just one tomato. Obviously, there's so many different types.

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Speaker 1: For my own purposes, I find that when it's not

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Speaker 1: tomato season, those little like grape tomatoes are pretty good

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Speaker 1: if you have to get some of the store. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: I'm a hundred percent in agreement, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes

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Speaker 1: are the much better option if you need fresh tomatoes

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Speaker 1: in the off season. So listeners, as you can probably tell,

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Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about tomatoes not for one episode,

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Speaker 1: but for two whole episodes. And if you're thinking, well,

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Speaker 1: the tomato is just so mundane, it's so every day.

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Speaker 1: This is gonna be a you know, two episodes of

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Speaker 1: of backyard um like hoakery here that I can just

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Speaker 1: skip on stuff to blow your mind. Nothing could be

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Speaker 1: further from the truth, because there is so much weirdness

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Speaker 1: in these episodes. There's quackery, there's myth making, they're tall tails,

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Speaker 1: and there's all space colonizations, yes, space colonization. It's going

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Speaker 1: to cover really like a broad area of stuff to

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Speaker 1: blow your mind content, even though at the center of

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Speaker 1: it is this fruit that has become just such a

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Speaker 1: staple of most of our diets in one form or another.

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Speaker 1: So maybe we should start off just by looking at

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Speaker 1: the tomato plant as an organism, What what is this organism?

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Speaker 1: And how did we end up with the modern cultivated tomato. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is a great, great place to start, because this

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Speaker 1: is another one of those stories where if you don't

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Speaker 1: think about it too close, if you don't research it yourself,

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Speaker 1: you just might think, oh, well, tomatoes have always been everywhere,

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Speaker 1: they have always been a part of our diet because

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Speaker 1: they're just so ubiquitous now. But this is not the case. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So first of all, you've probably just heard to say

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Speaker 1: the word fruit. This is one of those facts I

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Speaker 1: think most people know at this point. You probably learned

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Speaker 1: this before. But in biological terms, a tomato is a

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Speaker 1: fruit rather than a vegetable. And part of this comes

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Speaker 1: down to the different ways that we use the term

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Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables in a sort of culinary or nutritional

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Speaker 1: sense versus in a botanical sense. Um Like we in

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Speaker 1: a culinary or nutritional sense, we intuitively sort things into

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Speaker 1: categories of fruits and vegetables, I think largely based on

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Speaker 1: sugar content and whether they're primarily used in sweet or

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Speaker 1: savory preparations. So plants that are savory or vegetables plants

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Speaker 1: that are sweet or fruits. However, even this is somewhat

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Speaker 1: arbitrary as a cultural convention, because there are ways in

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Speaker 1: which these these types of groupings can vary widely from

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Speaker 1: culture to culture. One example is avocados. Are avocados a

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Speaker 1: sweet food or a savory food? I think for me

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Speaker 1: and for most of Americans, the answer overwhelmingly would be

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Speaker 1: its savory food. They go in guacamole, you pair them

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Speaker 1: with lime and salt, you put them on toast, you

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Speaker 1: put them in a burrito. But for millions of people

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Speaker 1: in like South America and Asia, avocados are primarily a

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Speaker 1: sweet food, used more often in dessert dishes, which seems

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Speaker 1: very strange to us. But I don't know. If you

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Speaker 1: think of it as kind of basically just a buttery substance,

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Speaker 1: it starts to click in place. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

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Speaker 1: I always grew up thinking of it certainly something you

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Speaker 1: add a little salt and pepper two again some olive

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Speaker 1: oil two, and you have a great dish. But we're

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Speaker 1: big fans of going to local like bubble tea places,

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Speaker 1: uh in Asian dessert places, and you will find like

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Speaker 1: avocado smoothies as as a you know, a standard item

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Speaker 1: you encounter on menus and I've tried it before and

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Speaker 1: it's delicious, But yeah, you wouldn't you wouldn't necessarily think

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Speaker 1: about it from a Western perspective of being the dessert item, right.

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Speaker 1: But either way, these culinary distinctions often just don't have

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Speaker 1: a biological basis. In fact, other alinary vegetables things we

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Speaker 1: think of as vegetables in a cooking sense, are biologically fruits. Cucumbers, chili, peppers, eggplants,

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Speaker 1: all fruits. But to go even better, the tomato is

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Speaker 1: not only fruit, it is technically a berry and one

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Speaker 1: thing that I think you could probably even into it

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Speaker 1: just looking at say, you know, if you're growing a

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Speaker 1: variety of heirloom tomato in your backyard and you see

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Speaker 1: this monstrous fruit hanging off of a vine that you

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Speaker 1: have to prop up on a steak or a cage

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Speaker 1: or otherwise, this gigantic fruit is just going to make

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Speaker 1: it drooped down on the ground. Uh, And it's the

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Speaker 1: you know, it looks like a thing that should not

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Speaker 1: be in a way. Um, so you might be able

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Speaker 1: to into it that tomatoes have not always been this way,

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Speaker 1: like many of the modern fruits and vegetables we eat.

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Speaker 1: It had to be adapted from a naturally occurring fruit

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Speaker 1: or vegetable that did not necessarily grow as large in

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Speaker 1: the edible part um. And it appears that modern cultivated tomatoes,

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Speaker 1: which have the scientific name Solanum lycopersicum, are descended from

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Speaker 1: a wild berry that grew in northwestern South America, maybe

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Speaker 1: around the area of Peru or a little farther north.

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Speaker 1: And the research tracing these biological origins has been summarized

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Speaker 1: in a few sources. I looked at, for example, in

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Speaker 1: the Oxford Companion to Food, which was edited by Alan Davidson.

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Speaker 1: They looked at studies by, for example, Sophie co in

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Speaker 1: N and other researchers over the years that found that

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Speaker 1: the wild ancestor of the tomato was very likely. They

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Speaker 1: identify a couple of species, one Lycopersicon seraciform, and then

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Speaker 1: another one so Lantum pimpanellifolium, which is today known as

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Speaker 1: the current tomato. Not current as in timely, but current

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Speaker 1: as in like the fruit a current. And it's called

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Speaker 1: this because in a way, these these wild tomatoes, the

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Speaker 1: Slanum pimpanella folium, sort of resemble currents they're these tiny

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Speaker 1: little berries, almost kind of current or blueberry sized. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: some of the examples I was reading was that if

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Speaker 1: you went back to pre Columbian Peru, you would encounter,

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Speaker 1: if you knew where to look, you would find these

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Speaker 1: wild growing, essentially yellow berries that were the predecessor, the

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Speaker 1: likely predecessor to the modern tomato. Yes, now, exactly how

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Speaker 1: it went from that wild berry to the cultivated varieties

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Speaker 1: that people eat that that's still um, we know some things,

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Speaker 1: but it's still a somewhat open question that there have

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Speaker 1: been some genomic studies that I'll talk about in just

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Speaker 1: a minute, but we know that such a thing as

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Speaker 1: the cultivated tomato existed by the time the Spanish arrived

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Speaker 1: in meso America. By that time, the az Tech people

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Speaker 1: are the no waddle speaking people were eating tomatoes that

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Speaker 1: they grew as crops, and they were eating them in dishes,

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Speaker 1: often prepared in conjunction with chili peppers. But of course

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Speaker 1: we we know that this wild ancestor of the tomato,

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Speaker 1: this berry grew in northwest South America. It was, you know,

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Speaker 1: this wild fine and so there's still a question of

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Speaker 1: how exactly that wild fruit made its way up north

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Speaker 1: to Meso America in order to be cultivated as a

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Speaker 1: food crop by the Aztecs. Yeah, there's already even at

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Speaker 1: this early stage in the history of the global tomato.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of a botanical game of telephone, right. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So I was trying to look up what is some

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Speaker 1: of the most recent scientific work on this, and there

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Speaker 1: was a new study about the domestication history of the

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Speaker 1: tomato that was published just this year, published in the

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Speaker 1: journal Molecular Biology and Evolution by Razafard at All. And

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Speaker 1: so what they present is a little complicated. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to try to do the simplest version I can. So

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Speaker 1: the authors say that before their research, our best guess

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Speaker 1: about the domestication history of the tomato went like this.

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Speaker 1: So you had this wild berry in South America. It's

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Speaker 1: growing up in the Andes, up in the northwest corner

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Speaker 1: of South America. And this is Solanum pimpanella folium here again,

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Speaker 1: this is the one we mentioned earlier. The fruits are

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Speaker 1: going to be about the size of a blueberry. Then

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Speaker 1: in this older understanding, this was transformed into the semi

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Speaker 1: domesticated plant Solanum lycopersicum saraciform or SLC. But if you

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Speaker 1: see SLC and tomato literature, don't confuse that with Salt

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Speaker 1: Lake City. It means this species and this would have

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Speaker 1: happened within South America. These fruits would have been about

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Speaker 1: the size of a cherry, so kind of similar to

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Speaker 1: cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes that you could buy at

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Speaker 1: the store today. Obviously somewhat different, but similar somewhat in

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Speaker 1: in look, in size. And then finally, this middle species,

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Speaker 1: the s l C, was transformed into the larger, fully

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Speaker 1: domesticated clandum Lycopersicum variant Lycopersicum, and this was the Aztec

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Speaker 1: food crop that was developed into the tomatoes that the

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Speaker 1: people eat all around the world today and uh strange

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Speaker 1: fact lyco persicum. I think Robert you might have a

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Speaker 1: note about this later, but it means literally wolf peach. Yes, um, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that it's This is interesting because this was some sort

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Speaker 1: of a fruit that was described by Galen who lived

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Speaker 1: two dred c, which obviously as well before tomatoes actually

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Speaker 1: came to uh To, uh To to Europe, so obviously

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Speaker 1: Galen was not describing a tomato. But this just this

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Speaker 1: description ends up getting wound up in the classification of

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Speaker 1: tomatoes in the West later on. Yeah, but so anyway,

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Speaker 1: the authors of this study from used population genomic methods

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Speaker 1: to try to reconstruct a genomic map of the modern

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Speaker 1: tomatoes domestication history, and they conclude quote A. Results suggests

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Speaker 1: that the origin of SLC may predate domestication, and that

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Speaker 1: many traits considered typical cole of cultivated tomatoes arose in

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Speaker 1: South American SLC, but we're lost or diminished once these

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Speaker 1: partially domesticated forms spread northward. These traits were then likely

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Speaker 1: re selected in a convergent fashion in the common cultivated

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Speaker 1: tomato prior to its expansion around the world. So a

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Speaker 1: little complicated. Basically, they're saying that the semi domesticated breed

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Speaker 1: of tomato that may have been used as a as

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Speaker 1: not not a cultivated crop but a semi domesticated food

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Speaker 1: by some people in South America, it had some traits

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Speaker 1: that arose naturally, and then those traits were re selected

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Speaker 1: and emphasized by growers in Mesoamerica before the tomato finally

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Speaker 1: spread all over the world. Interesting, now we've already touched

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Speaker 1: on the fact that the tomato isn't the only case

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Speaker 1: of this there. There's a whole thing about what you

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Speaker 1: call breeds of plants and how and how to know

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Speaker 1: whether you're talking about the same fruit or plant. When

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Speaker 1: you're using different names throughout history, it can become very confusing. Um.

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Speaker 1: But just about the history of the word tomato itself.

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Speaker 1: The English word tomato, of course comes via the Spanish tomate,

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Speaker 1: which was adapted from the original no Wattle word tomadel.

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Speaker 1: Now I've seen a lot of sources claimed that to

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Speaker 1: model was simply the Noattle word for the fruit for

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Speaker 1: the tomato, but the entry and the Oxford companion actually

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Speaker 1: goes a little deeper. And this is kind of interesting

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Speaker 1: again about linguistic confusion. So apparently in the now Wattle language,

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Speaker 1: tom model simply meant plump fruit. So to indicate the

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Speaker 1: ancestor of our tomato you had to add the prefix z.

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Speaker 1: So the word was z to model that was the

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Speaker 1: ancestor of the tomato we have today, and this distinguished

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Speaker 1: it from the husked ancestor to modern tomatios, which the

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Speaker 1: Aztecs called meal to model, and then the Spanish ended

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Speaker 1: up using the word tomate for both tomatio in Spanish

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Speaker 1: that just means little tomato, though they are not actually

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Speaker 1: large and small versions of the same fruit. They're totally

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Speaker 1: different species. Yeah, but that but they are related. These

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Speaker 1: are all in the night shade family, and we'll get

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Speaker 1: into to that, um into that in a bit. But

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Speaker 1: the authors of the Oxford Companion point out this led

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Speaker 1: to a bunch of confusion for Spanish chroniclers, who just

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Speaker 1: didn't always seem to understand which fruit was being talked about. Uh.

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Speaker 1: THEO and I have mentioned this before, but they also

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Speaker 1: point out that in as Tech cuisine, tomatoes were consistently

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Speaker 1: linked with chili peppers, and I gotta say it's a

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Speaker 1: good combination. Tomatoes and chili peppers are are two fruits

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Speaker 1: that go well together. Absolutely, But here, once we have

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Speaker 1: contact between the hemispheres, this opens up the doors of

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Speaker 1: of of spread of this plant all over the world,

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Speaker 1: and eventually it does spread. Now I have to say

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Speaker 1: that the way that the tomato spreads uh through and

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Speaker 1: around the world is it both is it was it

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Speaker 1: once alarming, like it's really it's really a success story.

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Speaker 1: But it's also not one of these situations where you

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Speaker 1: can say, oh, well, this individual brought the tomato to

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Speaker 1: Europe and then it was an enormous success. And here

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Speaker 1: we are like, it's not that simple and uh and

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Speaker 1: and we we certainly encourage people are interested in this

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Speaker 1: to seek out some of the books we're going to

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Speaker 1: mention here in a bit because they'll get into a

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Speaker 1: lot more detail about this. It is, um, I guess

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Speaker 1: you would say it is. There's a lot of touch

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Speaker 1: and go uh, false starts. Um. And as we'll discuss

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Speaker 1: a little bit too, there's some myth making involved in

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Speaker 1: some some legend regarding just how the tomato takes off

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Speaker 1: and what is standing in its way. I would also

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Speaker 1: say that the tomato has a somewhat complicated and murky Uh.

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Speaker 1: If it were a text, we would call it the

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Speaker 1: reception history. Yeah. Absolutely, So we're gonna take a quick break,

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Speaker 1: but when we come back, we are going to dive

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Speaker 1: into some of the issues of its spread through Europe

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Speaker 1: and then paradoxically, like back into North America. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So. Uh. We may have talked in the past,

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Speaker 1: you and I about doing a tomato episode, uh, doing

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Speaker 1: something about the tomatoes. Tomatoes have definitely come up on

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Speaker 1: the show before, but my wife this summer had had

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Speaker 1: specifically mentioned she said, you guys should do Tomato episode.

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Speaker 1: You should do it. You should, you should really dive

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Speaker 1: in there. And I think something that helped encourage this

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Speaker 1: is that we encountered a sign at a botanical garden

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Speaker 1: that was describing tomatoes and it mentioned that in the

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Speaker 1: past people thought they were poisonous. So I have to

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Speaker 1: admit that that was like, that was a real key

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Speaker 1: area of interest for me going into this episode, getting

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Speaker 1: into you know, just just discussing whether people ever actually

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Speaker 1: considered the tomato to be poisonous and what does that mean,

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Speaker 1: because it just seems ridiculous on the face of it, right,

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Speaker 1: but the tomato has conquered the planet. We know the

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Speaker 1: tomato is not poisonous, and the idea of people being

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Speaker 1: afraid to eat it because they think it is poisonous, Uh,

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Speaker 1: it just seems completely looney. Well, in this money, because

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Speaker 1: even once you investigate it, I would say that this

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Speaker 1: irony remains, because the irony remains because we are going

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Speaker 1: to encounter people who are saying the tomato is poisonous,

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Speaker 1: but they're not saying it at a time when nobody

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Speaker 1: was eating tomatoes because everybody thought they were poisonous. They'd

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Speaker 1: be like, well, some people eat them but they're poisonous. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you didn't have like single voices with a global reach

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Speaker 1: saying we do not eat tomatoes or no one should

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Speaker 1: eat tomatoes, because you have a lot of um, you know,

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00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:34,560
Speaker 1: a lot of division based on like who's talking about it,

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Speaker 1: what country they're in, what you know, what levels of

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Speaker 1: society they're at, etcetera. And then on top of additional

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Speaker 1: legends that pop up. But but this basic idea that

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Speaker 1: people specifically, you'll see like Europeans or Americans used to

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Speaker 1: be afraid to eat tomatoes because they thought they were poisonous.

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Speaker 1: You see this everywhere. You see this again at botanical gardens,

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Speaker 1: you see this popping up in news stories about the

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Speaker 1: tomato and it is often just and it is just

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Speaker 1: a straight up fact. Uh. But again, when I started

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Speaker 1: looking into it, I became increasingly less sure because on

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Speaker 1: one hand, yeah, it sounds too good to be true,

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Speaker 1: and then you do encounter these um these are these

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Speaker 1: these wrinkles in the description that really um drive home

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Speaker 1: that Okay, not everybody thought this at the same time.

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Speaker 1: So again we're not going to cover the entire history

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Speaker 1: of the tomatoes um influx into Europe. And then it's

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Speaker 1: um it's acceptance by European societies. But the first known

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Speaker 1: European reference to tomatoes comes in four from Italian herbalist

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Speaker 1: Pito Andre Matthioli, and he wrote of the mala aria

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Speaker 1: the golden apples we described as ripening from green to yellow.

380
00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:52,600
Speaker 1: Now he classified the tomato with the man drake, which

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00:21:52,680 --> 00:21:56,080
Speaker 1: was of course part of this big nightshade family. And

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00:21:56,119 --> 00:21:58,920
Speaker 1: this is, of course this is accurate. I mean they

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Speaker 1: are in this family. We consider the tomato to be

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Speaker 1: a nightshade, along with things like the eggplant um But

385
00:22:05,680 --> 00:22:08,280
Speaker 1: this is often held up is one aspect of the

386
00:22:08,359 --> 00:22:14,159
Speaker 1: poisonous reputation that tomatoes gathered in European society, with botanists

387
00:22:14,200 --> 00:22:16,600
Speaker 1: signifying that they were a part of this family that

388
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:21,159
Speaker 1: contained things um uh like deadly nightshade or like like

389
00:22:21,240 --> 00:22:23,840
Speaker 1: the man drake root, which of course has all these

390
00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:28,439
Speaker 1: connotations with various medicinal and sort of magical practices. But

391
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:30,680
Speaker 1: at the same time at the only discussed how tomatoes

392
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:33,240
Speaker 1: were cooked and eaten at the time much in the

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00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:36,840
Speaker 1: same way as eggplants, which were another imported food. Only

394
00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:41,119
Speaker 1: this this eggplants came from Asia um and and they

395
00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:44,199
Speaker 1: were again part of the night shade family, and this

396
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 1: has to be This seems to be a major sticking

397
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Speaker 1: point for a large portion of of the tomatoes European

398
00:22:51,160 --> 00:22:54,800
Speaker 1: tradition UH, with it and the related egg plant not

399
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:58,119
Speaker 1: traveling all that well into New European cuisines, or not

400
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:01,359
Speaker 1: all of them anyway, because of their or association with

401
00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:04,600
Speaker 1: man drakes and poisons as well as I would imagine

402
00:23:04,600 --> 00:23:07,800
Speaker 1: just sort of a general hesitation to take up new

403
00:23:07,840 --> 00:23:13,120
Speaker 1: plants into a into a pre existing culinary tradition. One

404
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:15,600
Speaker 1: one really interesting example of this um I was reading

405
00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:21,159
Speaker 1: about UH regards the seventeenth century German garden. Uh I

406
00:23:21,240 --> 00:23:24,640
Speaker 1: was reading when the tomato was purely ornamental considering New

407
00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:28,280
Speaker 1: World foods in seventeenth century Berlin. And this was by

408
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 1: Millie Taylor Pulaski, published in Transatlantic Trade and Global Cultural

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Speaker 1: Transfer since fourteen nine two. This was published in twenty nineteen,

410
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Speaker 1: so the author mentions that tomatoes were purely ornamental summer

411
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Speaker 1: plants in most Berlin gardens in sixteen fifty six, and

412
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Speaker 1: this was due in large part to a German naturalist

413
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Speaker 1: by the name of Johann uh citismund El schotz Um

414
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Speaker 1: who highlighted its connections, first of all, to the vile

415
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Speaker 1: eggplant which UH, which was also present in the gardens

416
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Speaker 1: of Berlin, but not consumed, just growns so you could

417
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: look at it. But Taylor at Polinsky also points out

418
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: that el Schultz didn't argue that either of these plants

419
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Speaker 1: was poisonous, only that they were unhealthy U. And he

420
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Speaker 1: also seems to mention with some disdain that Italians eat

421
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:24,760
Speaker 1: them and Spaniards did too at the time. So um,

422
00:24:24,920 --> 00:24:27,440
Speaker 1: the idea is that there was likely um a large

423
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Speaker 1: amount of anti Catholic sentiment here as well, Like this

424
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Speaker 1: is this is a plant. Yes you can eat it,

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Speaker 1: the Italians eat it, the Catholics eat it, but Protestant

426
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:40,120
Speaker 1: Germans should not eat it because it's bad for you. Yeah.

427
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Speaker 1: That seems to go along with some of the things

428
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:44,159
Speaker 1: I was reading. And this is interesting to because we

429
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 1: see a similar trend actually if you look at potatoes,

430
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: which are also part of the large night shade family. Again,

431
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 1: where a new food is destined just destined for widespread

432
00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:58,920
Speaker 1: popularity and ultimately is going to have a life sustaining success. Um.

433
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:02,440
Speaker 1: You know, with the particularly it ends up being embraced

434
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 1: by um lower levels of the socio economic um uh

435
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 1: ladder first and those communities that take up the potato

436
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:15,960
Speaker 1: benefit from them like nutritionally uh and and dietarially um.

437
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:18,160
Speaker 1: And then of course ultimately it it just takes over.

438
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: But initially something like the potato as well, is grown

439
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: only for decoration before it is ultimately embraced by everybody

440
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:29,840
Speaker 1: for decoration. Potato for decoration. Yeah, I mean, you know,

441
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: I could I guess I could see it. I see

442
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,200
Speaker 1: it less with the two with with the potato, but

443
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:37,440
Speaker 1: certainly to tomato is a bright plant. It is pleasing

444
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:40,240
Speaker 1: to look at. But it's impossible for for me to

445
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:42,880
Speaker 1: really imagine like a garden, walking into a garden where

446
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,040
Speaker 1: you have ripe tomatoes and eggplants and you're just gonna

447
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:48,320
Speaker 1: stand back and say, oh, look at that. Isn't that

448
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:52,280
Speaker 1: Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that nice? No, you need to

449
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:55,800
Speaker 1: harvest that stuff and make a ratatui. Yeah. Now. One

450
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,960
Speaker 1: of the really wonderful text that we're both looking at

451
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:02,639
Speaker 1: for for this a pair of episodes, UH is a

452
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: book by Andrew F. Smith titled The Tomato in America, which, again,

453
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: if you if you're tantalized by our discussions in these episodes,

454
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 1: and you want more about the tomato, this is the

455
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:18,119
Speaker 1: book for you. Highly recommended. But Smith points out that

456
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:22,679
Speaker 1: some Renaissance herbalist when they were considering the the tomato,

457
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 1: they looked at these other sources, one of which is

458
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: galen and the idea of the wolf peach. And that's

459
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:30,959
Speaker 1: again when we have the scientific name that we have

460
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: for the tomato. But also there were descriptions of of

461
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:41,120
Speaker 1: of Glossium by Pedanius Dioscorides who lived forty through nineties,

462
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:44,399
Speaker 1: and this was a Syrian herb that was so named

463
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:48,200
Speaker 1: because it was recommended as a treatment for eye ailments. Um.

464
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 1: So that was another sort of pre existing classification that

465
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:55,199
Speaker 1: helped inform how we thought about tomatoes, or certainly how

466
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:58,560
Speaker 1: naturalists and botanists thought about them at the time. But

467
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: neither of these uh is the tomato, just to be clear,

468
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: But they do tie into some of the they frequently

469
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,680
Speaker 1: mentioned associations that were made at the time with tomatoes.

470
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: Now to get into some of the myth making a

471
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 1: little bit, here's another frequently mentioned tail that I imagine

472
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: a number of you have heard, and this is how

473
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: it goes, um. This is the story. I'm not saying

474
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: this is this correct. We'll get into that in a second.

475
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:27,119
Speaker 1: But the story goes that when the tomato originally found

476
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:31,719
Speaker 1: its way onto European plates, you had aristocrats who were like, oh,

477
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:33,399
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try out this. This sounds great, and they

478
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 1: started eating these tomatoes. But then they started becoming very sick,

479
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:39,719
Speaker 1: and they end up pronouncing the fruit to be poisonous.

480
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: But it would turn out that the acid in the

481
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: tomatoes was leaching lead out of the plates they were

482
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,240
Speaker 1: served on, which incidentally made poorer members of society um

483
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: less susceptible to the poison because they would be eating

484
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 1: off of the wooden plates or earthenware plates. Now, whether

485
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:59,120
Speaker 1: or not this claim is true, it is actually true,

486
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: of course, that that acidic fruits and vegetables, when cooked

487
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:06,639
Speaker 1: in or eaten on certain types of pots or pans

488
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: or plates, can actually react with the material. One example

489
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: is if you cook overly acidic foods, including tomato based foods,

490
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: and for example, aluminum cookware. Sometimes this isn't great, Like

491
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 1: they can react with each other. The food can pick

492
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:24,960
Speaker 1: up a kind of nasty metallic taste from the aluminum.

493
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,399
Speaker 1: The acid can sort of damage the surface of the aluminum.

494
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 1: So so there are reactions like that that can't happen, right,

495
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:34,920
Speaker 1: And we have discussed lead making its way into food

496
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 1: and lead poisoning in at least a couple of episodes

497
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,360
Speaker 1: in the past. I know we did Cupids leaden Arrow,

498
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 1: which discussed lead quite a bit, and then we also

499
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: did one of one of our three or four Dangerous

500
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:48,719
Speaker 1: Foods episodes touched on lead poisoning. But anyway, this idea

501
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: of tomatoes sucking the lead out of your your your

502
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: plate where uh. This ended up being circulated in the

503
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 1: United States as well, um, with commentators highlighting the lead issue,

504
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: and they were also conser turns over the general effect

505
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: of the acidity of the tomato on the stomach, with

506
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: some saying oh, well, the you know, the the acidity

507
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: and the tomatoes dangerous to the stomach, others saying no, no,

508
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: it's really beneficial. Another thing I've read, Actually, I don't

509
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: know if this overlaps with the lead issue or not,

510
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: but the specific substance I saw mentioned was pewter plates.

511
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: Was that like that they would discolor When you put

512
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: tomatoes on a pewter plate, it would allegedly discolor the plate,

513
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:30,600
Speaker 1: and this led to concerns. Yeah, now, Andrew F. Smith

514
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: does right that the acid content of tomatoes was a

515
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 1: topic of concern in Europe and the United States for

516
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: a while. The Paris Society for Horticulture published a paper

517
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 1: warning about the possibility of leaching with metal plates uh,

518
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: including copper, recommending that you should use wooden and earthenware

519
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 1: plates instead. But but I looked into this a bit more,

520
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:54,479
Speaker 1: reading from a book titled Death by petticoat American History

521
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: Myths Debunked by Mary Miley Theobald, and the author points

522
00:29:58,600 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 1: out that in Brittish barber surgeon published a botanical book

523
00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 1: that claimed tomatoes were actually poisonous, while also noting that

524
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:10,520
Speaker 1: the French and Italians did eat them. So I guess

525
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 1: it was like, these are dangerous to humans unless you're

526
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:16,239
Speaker 1: French or Italians. Somehow, I don't know. Apparently this uh

527
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: that this was this was no expert um, this particular

528
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: barber surgeon. I guess it would be like the modern

529
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: equivalent of say a a like a YouTube based dietary expert.

530
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 1: I'm not positive, but I think that's referring to somebody

531
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: who's cited in another paper by Andrew F. Smith. Not

532
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:35,280
Speaker 1: that book we're looking at, but a paper I'm going

533
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 1: to sit in a bit. I think that is John Girard,

534
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: a barber surgeon and the superintendent of the gardens of

535
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: the College of Physicians in Holborn. And Smith says of

536
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: of of this barber surgeon guy, that in addition to

537
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:53,760
Speaker 1: repeating the claims of others that the tomatoes poisonous, he

538
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: also made strange comments such as quote the temperature of

539
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:02,840
Speaker 1: the tomato was in the highest degree of coldness, which

540
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 1: he said was left quote to every man's censure. What

541
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 1: does that mean. I don't know. Well, I know about

542
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: the censure. It just seems like, okay, yes, disdain in

543
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:19,080
Speaker 1: the tomato alright, Well, at any rate, Um theobald of

544
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: contends that quote this book set the state for the

545
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:24,800
Speaker 1: negative view of tomatoes among the English that lasted more

546
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: than a century. However, by the end of the seventeen hundreds,

547
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: tomatoes had overcome this bad press. Yeah. That seems in

548
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: line with a lot of what I was reading as well,

549
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:37,640
Speaker 1: that it's not that everybody thought that tomatoes were poisonous,

550
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 1: but that there were some prominent writers that had made

551
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:44,800
Speaker 1: or repeated these allegations that the tomato was in some

552
00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: way potentially poisonous or unhealthy, and that these misimpressions trickled

553
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: down to some people in society but not everybody. So

554
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: some people were reading tomatoes, other people were saying, no,

555
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 1: that's dangerous, don't do that, And over time the non

556
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: dangerous faction grew in numbers. Yeah, I think, you know,

557
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 1: it's easy to look back at history and assume that

558
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:08,920
Speaker 1: there would be sort of weirdly to think there would

559
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: be some sort of consensus at the time about whether

560
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: you know wrong or correct about particular foods. But obviously

561
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: we just look around the world today and we see

562
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 1: how um are our understanding of the nutritional values of

563
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 1: various foods shifts with our understanding, and also just sort

564
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: of the popular idea of what we should be eating,

565
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: what is good, what is tasty, what is stylish, and

566
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 1: even what is healthy shifts as well. Yeah, you're exactly right,

567
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 1: and and there is a grain of truth here, at

568
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:40,480
Speaker 1: least in the fact that that plants in the soul

569
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: and a c family, including you know, say potatoes, for instance,

570
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 1: to do sometimes in some parts of the plant have

571
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,240
Speaker 1: do accumulate toxins that can be dangerous. For example, if

572
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: you consume the leaves or something, or even um, we've

573
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 1: talked before about there there are ways that talk sins

574
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: can accumulate in potatoes if they say, left out for

575
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:06,720
Speaker 1: a long time, if you have a really old potato,

576
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: it can get a lot of soulanine in it, which

577
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 1: can lead to potato poisoning. Yeah, it turns green on

578
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 1: the sunlit countertop, that sort of thing. Um. Yes. Smith

579
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: points out that well, first of all, as far as

580
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: um acidity goes, it's gonna very quite a bit across

581
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,000
Speaker 1: the varieties of tomato. But then in terms of um

582
00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous alkaloids, those are going to be mostly in

583
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,239
Speaker 1: the leaves and stem. That's where the highest concentrations are

584
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 1: going to be in a tomato plant. And there have

585
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: been cases where, say, a child consumed a key made

586
00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: from those leaves, and it has resulted in severe reactions.

587
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:47,600
Speaker 1: But as you can guess from the like billions of

588
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: pounds or whatever of catchup and other tomato products that

589
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: people eat around the world every day, the tomato itself

590
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 1: is overwhelmingly safety. There's just yeah, there's nothing to this, right,

591
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 1: and and certainly any of these case is we we're

592
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: discussing a place or a people or a community that

593
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:07,560
Speaker 1: was afraid of the tomato, or did not eat the tomato,

594
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:10,719
Speaker 1: or only grew it ornamentally, there was an all likelihood

595
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:14,320
Speaker 1: um people or a place not too far away where

596
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: it was just a part of the It had already

597
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:18,919
Speaker 1: become part of the culinary tradition. So yeah, you would

598
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: have English people or Germans that were not eating the tomato.

599
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, in Italy and Spain and France and Portugal

600
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 1: they were already all in. I mean, it was already

601
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 1: a food crop when Europeans first encountered it. Yeah. Absolutely.

602
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: Now there's a really interesting paper I mentioned a minute

603
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: ago by also by Andrew F. Smith, from from the

604
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties that was about the history of how perceptions

605
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 1: of the tomato changed in the United States during the

606
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: first half of the nineteenth century, and there are some

607
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: some interesting reasons involved in that transition that the Smith

608
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: gets into. I think we're probably gonna explore that paper

609
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:58,759
Speaker 1: in the second episode here, but it's got a lot

610
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:01,319
Speaker 1: of fun quackery in it, so so pulled on for

611
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: that one. I'd say one of the stumbling blocks to

612
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:09,839
Speaker 1: understanding The idea of the tomato as being is being

613
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:14,800
Speaker 1: received as poisonous or beneficial is that sometimes the best

614
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 1: seeming examples, the best stories about about this are actually

615
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:23,720
Speaker 1: just legends, so you know, are completely apocryphal, Uh, such

616
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: as the this famous story that I imagined a lot

617
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 1: of people have heard, uh, the apocryphal legend of Robert

618
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:33,279
Speaker 1: Gibbon Johnson. Uh. So they're multiple versions of this, and

619
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,840
Speaker 1: they concern a real life individual named Robert Gibbon Johnson

620
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: who have seventeen seventy one through eighteen fifty, and he

621
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:43,920
Speaker 1: was a notable farmer and horticulturist in Salem, New Jersey.

622
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: He was an actual tomato grower uh, and is sometimes

623
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 1: credited with having introduced the crop into the area in

624
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty, and certainly they become a major crop around

625
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 1: that time in southern New Jersey. But this is was

626
00:35:58,560 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: discussing a second like this doesn't seem to be the

627
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,120
Speaker 1: case either. He didn't didn't actually introduce the crop. But

628
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: in this particular story, um, the idea is that he

629
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: said he was defending the tomato and he announced I

630
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: will publicly eat a basket of tomatoes on the old

631
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: Salem County courthouse steps uh, that this is the twenty

632
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:20,759
Speaker 1: in order to demonstrate that they are not poisonous. And

633
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: then and then the town's folk burned him as a witch.

634
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: Wrong Salem. But but you know, the idea is that

635
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: people were like, oh, he's gonna eat a basket and

636
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,200
Speaker 1: tomatoes and die publicly. I've got to see that. So

637
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: people gather to watch the spectacle. They come from far

638
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:38,839
Speaker 1: and wide, and then he eats the tomatoes and does

639
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 1: not die. That's the story, and it makes for a

640
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:44,719
Speaker 1: great story. But everyone seems to agree that this is

641
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:48,359
Speaker 1: just not true as uh. And Andrew F. Smith actually

642
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:50,760
Speaker 1: gets into this in the first few pages of the book,

643
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:54,319
Speaker 1: um pointing out that there's some pretty good records from

644
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 1: the time in Salem, and Johnson being a prominent citizen,

645
00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:01,360
Speaker 1: was mentioned quite a bit for his their activities and exploits,

646
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: like he was also in the military and so forth,

647
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 1: like he was a major deal at the time. But

648
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,720
Speaker 1: there's nothing about him introducing the tomato. There's nothing about

649
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:13,759
Speaker 1: him um uh, you know, eating tomatoes and as a

650
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 1: matter of public spectacle to to to prove that they're

651
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: not poisonous. And it just seems like that would be

652
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:22,240
Speaker 1: written up if he had done that, Like the papers

653
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 1: were not shy about writing about about this guy at

654
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 1: the time. Anyway. Smith goes on to note that as

655
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: far as the idea of him introducing the tomato, this

656
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 1: is just one of some five hundred different myths about

657
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: tomato introduction in America, and that they often end end

658
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: up involving the great Man trope, in which someone such

659
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 1: as Thomas Jefferson, He's another individual that sometimes is erroneously

660
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 1: cited as being the introducer of tomatoes is responsible. But

661
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: in reality we don't know who is responsible, you know,

662
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: specifically for introducing the tomato. There is no actual American

663
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: King Tomato to credit. I do love the idea, though,

664
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:03,600
Speaker 1: that if this story were true, I mean, so, imagine

665
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: this guy sits out in front of the courthouse and

666
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 1: eats a bushel basket of tomatoes. Like I don't think

667
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,480
Speaker 1: that would kill him because they're not poisonous, but surely

668
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: that would give him just like horrible diarrhea. What you

669
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:23,239
Speaker 1: eat a basket of tomatoes with nothing else? Yeah? Maybe so,

670
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 1: I don't know. Supposedly, this whole incident has even been

671
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:32,839
Speaker 1: um recreated in various past documentaries. But I didn't get

672
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:34,319
Speaker 1: a chance to look them up and see how they

673
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: presented it if because there are different versions of it.

674
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:40,319
Speaker 1: So maybe in some versions it's just like one tomato, uh,

675
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:42,359
Speaker 1: and in others it's a whole bushel. I don't know.

676
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 1: So I've got another story like this about the supposed

677
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: reputation of tomatoes as poisonous, and this is the rumor

678
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: about the George Washington assassination attempt. Okay, so one version

679
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: of the story, as collected in the Snopes article on

680
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:02,760
Speaker 1: this rumor quote. I remember one of my junior high

681
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:07,240
Speaker 1: history teachers reading us a suicide note by George Washington's cook.

682
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 1: The author of the note said that he could not

683
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 1: forgive Washington's treason against the British and had therefore decided

684
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 1: to poison him then kill himself. The poison he used

685
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 1: on Washington was a tomato. That's great story, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,

686
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 1: it's it's comedic, It generates laughter, and it ties into

687
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: this this ridiculous idea that people once thought that the

688
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: tomato was harmful and and exaggerated to the point where

689
00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: it could be used as a lethal weapon. Yeah. Unfortunately,

690
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 1: as great of a story as this is, this one

691
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: is fiction in a literal sense. It comes from a story,

692
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: a short story called the Murder of George Washington by

693
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: Richard im Gordon, which was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery

694
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: magazine in April nineteen fifty nine. I think the author

695
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 1: is this guy, Richard Gordon, who was also a surgeon

696
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:04,280
Speaker 1: and an an enthusiologist, who who wrote historical fiction underpen names.

697
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the story, uh this, this cook wants

698
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:11,759
Speaker 1: to kill Washington because he's a British loyalist, and so

699
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:15,720
Speaker 1: he waits until Washington is quote afflicted with a cold

700
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:20,360
Speaker 1: in his head which has seriously impaired his sense of taste. Okay,

701
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 1: so perfect opportunity, right, He's not going to be able

702
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:26,320
Speaker 1: to taste the poison that the cook adds to his stew,

703
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 1: which comes in the form of quote, the scarlet flesh

704
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: of a fruit of a variety of the deadly nightshade.

705
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 1: And then, after serving what he assumes to be the

706
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: deadly poison, the cook writes a ps to his suicide

707
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 1: note quote, as a cook, I have a prejudice against

708
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 1: dying by poison. I am too corpulent to hang. But

709
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: by reason of my calling, I am expert with a

710
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 1: carving knife. So it is alleged that he takes his

711
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:56,320
Speaker 1: own life somehow with the aid of a carving knife.

712
00:40:56,800 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: And then, of course, I think the reader is just

713
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:01,760
Speaker 1: left to assume that this guy's scheme does not work

714
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: because the poison does not work, because it is a tomato.

715
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 1: That's great, but no basis in history whatsoever. It sounds

716
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:12,200
Speaker 1: like the author was merely having fun with some of

717
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: these very these very topics that we've been discussing here.

718
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're going to take one

719
00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:19,320
Speaker 1: more break, but when we come back, we will discuss

720
00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 1: the killer tomato worm. Thank alright, we're back now, Robert.

721
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: Before we went to the break, did you say something

722
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: about a killer tomato worm? Yes, killer tomato worms, which

723
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 1: is another interesting area that combines like actual um actual

724
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:43,680
Speaker 1: in this case, entomological fact with a fair amount of

725
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 1: myth making here. Uh and and just uh, you know, superstition.

726
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:51,319
Speaker 1: I guess. So it is a fact of life that

727
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 1: if you're going to raise some crops, uh, you're going

728
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: to have to deal with other organisms that also want

729
00:41:57,280 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 1: to eat said crops. And uh, again, we've been growing

730
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: some tomatoes in our own backyard here. So so we've

731
00:42:03,719 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: gotten used to this. As again we're growing tomatoes. We

732
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 1: also have some volunteer summertime pumpkins from our compost. We

733
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 1: didn't know what they were gonna be. It turns out

734
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:18,840
Speaker 1: they're useless pumpkins, but they're still fun. Are pumpkins useless? Well,

735
00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: most of these are those little ornamental pumpkins, uh, you

736
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:25,720
Speaker 1: know the kind uh that you you buy around um

737
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 1: Halloween and you set out for decoration and you put

738
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:31,919
Speaker 1: on the basket on the down dining room table. Um.

739
00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: That's what's been growing in our backyard. But can you

740
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 1: can can you imagine a future culture that looks back

741
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 1: on us with the same disdain that we had for

742
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:45,240
Speaker 1: people who would have grown tomatoes and eggplants only as decorations,

743
00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:48,879
Speaker 1: and they think that about us about pumpkins. It's true,

744
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: I may be completely off on this. I could be

745
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 1: wasting these um like. It does remind me of a

746
00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: time when I was helping deliver for a c. S

747
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 1: A here in in our area. And you know, so

748
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:03,879
Speaker 1: I would we would volunteer and we would would get

749
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:07,360
Speaker 1: like a free basket of vegetables in return for our service,

750
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 1: but we would deliver baskets of fresh vegetables to various households,

751
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of good stuff in there. There's

752
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:15,239
Speaker 1: stuff like sun chokes that I don't think I've ever

753
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:18,560
Speaker 1: had before. Um. But then we would also have a

754
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: lot of squash, and one of them I particularly remember.

755
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:24,879
Speaker 1: They were acorn squash, which can be quite delicious. And

756
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 1: I delivered one week to this household, and then the

757
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:32,319
Speaker 1: next week when I came back, there were the acorn squash, uh,

758
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: not served up inside in a dish, but on the

759
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:38,320
Speaker 1: porch as decorations. And I was thinking, oh my god,

760
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 1: those are so delicious and you're just gonna use them

761
00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: as porch decorations. Did they carve a jackal interface into

762
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: them at least? No, No, just they just set them

763
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:50,279
Speaker 1: out there. But it's possible I'm doing the same thing

764
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:53,319
Speaker 1: with my summertime pumpkins. UM. So I do I do

765
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: not know, um, But at any rate, growing all this

766
00:43:56,680 --> 00:44:00,480
Speaker 1: stuff in the backyard, um, other organisms are interested. Various

767
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:02,839
Speaker 1: bugs make a go at it. The squirrels, I think,

768
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: get a little bit bored and we'll eat like part

769
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 1: of something here and there. And we've also even had

770
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:10,359
Speaker 1: a rabbit shown up, show up which has been a

771
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: lot of fun because you get anytime you get to

772
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: watch a rabbit in your own yard. Uh, that's kind

773
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:16,839
Speaker 1: of magical, at least for me. Yeah, they'll they'll gnaw

774
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: on your fruits, but they bring bunny magic with them

775
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:23,399
Speaker 1: in return. They're they're fun to watch, they're cute. Um.

776
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:25,879
Speaker 1: But but then there's there's a different pest we're gonna

777
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 1: be talking about here and um, and it's it's quite interesting.

778
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 1: According to Smith, there's no beating the large green tomato worm,

779
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:37,320
Speaker 1: an alarming pest that is three to four inches long

780
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:39,440
Speaker 1: or can grow the three to four inches long. And

781
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,960
Speaker 1: it has this weird horn sticking out of its back,

782
00:44:43,160 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 1: kind of out of the final portion of its body.

783
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:48,759
Speaker 1: And uh, I've included a picture here for you to

784
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 1: look at, Joe. It's it's really quite impressive, right. It

785
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:56,439
Speaker 1: is generally not spiky. It just has one giant buttthorn. Yeah,

786
00:44:56,480 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 1: that has kind of a crimson or scarlet color to it,

787
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: as if it has already like stabbed a muppet or something. Anyway,

788
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:08,880
Speaker 1: it is, so it's pretty impressive. It's closely related to

789
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,439
Speaker 1: the tobacco worms, So if you've seen one or the other,

790
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: you may have an idea where I'm talking about here.

791
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,799
Speaker 1: Smith points out that Ralph Waldo Emerson even bemoaned these

792
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:22,720
Speaker 1: quote young entomologies that we're eating up his tomato plants.

793
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: So this particular, these particular worms, they are the larval

794
00:45:27,600 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 1: stage of the five spotted hawk moth, and it is

795
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 1: in fact a different species from the tobacco hornworm. But

796
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: they're closely related. And the confusing thing is that both

797
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: organisms feed on a variety of species that include both

798
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:45,880
Speaker 1: tomato and tobacco leaves. Oh interesting, but they got what

799
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 1: different kind of specialties? Uh? Yeah? Or just one is

800
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: in one is more associated with tomatoes and one is

801
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:55,160
Speaker 1: more associated with tobacco. But they'll, you know, either one

802
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 1: will eat the leaves of both plants. Now, will will

803
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 1: strip your nerve screamingly raw? Yes? Apparently so, or at

804
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:04,880
Speaker 1: least that seems to have been the panic around them

805
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 1: back in the uh certainly the mid nineteenth century. Apparently

806
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty five New York Farmers Club report described

807
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: them as quote positively shocking to weak nerves. Well, I

808
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:20,920
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of weak nerves back then.

809
00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:24,600
Speaker 1: Smith has a bit more on this. You just have

810
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:27,840
Speaker 1: to read in in the book. But but he includes

811
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:30,759
Speaker 1: these quotations where people were talking about how like the

812
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:34,880
Speaker 1: worm just ruins tomatoes for them forever, Like they're just

813
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 1: like they're just too gross. I'm not even going into

814
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 1: my tomato garden ever again. Oh I see you like

815
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,319
Speaker 1: you see the worm once, it like turns you off

816
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:45,799
Speaker 1: of the entire fruit. Right. But on top of that,

817
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: some even considered it to be poisonous as well, including

818
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:53,440
Speaker 1: such claims that the bite could cause instant death, or

819
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:56,240
Speaker 1: that the spittle, the mere spittle from one of these

820
00:46:56,320 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: creatures could kill a small child dead. Um, so it's

821
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: it's like, it's not only is is it like a

822
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 1: foul creature to behold? Buddy? It befouls the entire tomato

823
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: garden and makes it a dangerous place in which to venture.

824
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:14,760
Speaker 1: So is there any truth to this? Where's this coming from? Uh?

825
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: The thing is apparently not. The idea ran rampant through

826
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century until you had an Illinois based

827
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 1: intomologist by the name of Benjamin Walsh who pointed out

828
00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 1: and apparently this made the papers and all saying like, look,

829
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: this is hard, this is harmless to humans. This is

830
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 1: not going to kill you. This is. It's a past. Yes,

831
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: it's maybe a little big, it's a little maybe alarming

832
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:38,600
Speaker 1: to look at, but it's not going to poison you. Uh. Though,

833
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,879
Speaker 1: as Smith points out, you still you had publications uh

834
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: in um Illinois based papers pointing out Walsh's um uh

835
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: facts here. But then you had other columns where people

836
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: were saying, oh, there was a girl that was killed

837
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:55,239
Speaker 1: by one of these tomato worms. So it took a

838
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: while for this idea to really go away. Yeah, my

839
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: roommates cousin's friend died from tomato hornworm. Yeah, now I've

840
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 1: got another poison tomato rabbit hole to run down here,

841
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: Because I was trying to think, okay, well, what if

842
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:12,680
Speaker 1: you do want to poison somebody with a tomato allah

843
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 1: the you know, the early European misunderstandings, or or the

844
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,719
Speaker 1: fictional account of George Washington's cook. I do have a

845
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:24,080
Speaker 1: possible candidate for you. It's not confirmed how lethal this

846
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:27,960
Speaker 1: tomato would be, but it's at least suspected with good reason,

847
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 1: and that candidate is the tomaco now. Weirdly, whereas the

848
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: George Washington story takes a historically factual misunderstanding as the

849
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: inspiration for fiction. This story takes a modern fiction as

850
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: the inspiration for a fact. So there's an episode of

851
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:52,760
Speaker 1: The Simpsons that aired in called Ei Ei Annoyed Grunt

852
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:56,279
Speaker 1: as an e I E I dough uh. And in

853
00:48:56,440 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 1: this episode, Homer I guess he's trying his hand at arming,

854
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 1: and he attempts to farm tomatoes and tobacco plants, but

855
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:08,600
Speaker 1: he fertilizes his crops with plutonium from the nuclear power plant,

856
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:11,800
Speaker 1: and this produces a hybrid plant that is basically a

857
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: tomato stuffed with tobacco, which tastes bad but is highly addictive.

858
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:20,840
Speaker 1: I think Bart says it's so refreshingly addictive, and he

859
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 1: sells it as tomacco and everybody gets addicted to it.

860
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 1: And then I think there's some calamity where where all

861
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 1: his crops are destroyed. Okay, I'd forgotten about this episode,

862
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 1: but now that you summarize it, I do remember it.

863
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 1: But apparently reality caught up because I was reading a

864
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 1: report in Wired from November of two thousand three by

865
00:49:40,719 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: Kristen Philip Cooski, and it was about a man named

866
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:49,600
Speaker 1: Rob Bauer of Lake Oswego, Oregon. Now Bauer I believe

867
00:49:49,680 --> 00:49:53,799
Speaker 1: he worked in wastewater management, and he had some scientific training, uh,

868
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:59,360
Speaker 1: and he remembered reading about a similar procedure when he

869
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:02,320
Speaker 1: had been in college, when I think when he was

870
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: in graduate school, and he decided to try to create

871
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:10,239
Speaker 1: such a plant in reality, which he did by grafting

872
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:14,320
Speaker 1: together a tomato plant and a tobacco plant. Apparently he

873
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 1: initially experimented with with grafting in in one direction, which

874
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:22,160
Speaker 1: was putting a tobacco plant on a tomato root, but

875
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:24,760
Speaker 1: the graft didn't take and when he removed the wrapping

876
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 1: that held them together, the plant kind of fell apart

877
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: and died. But the inverst grafting procedure did work. He

878
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:34,720
Speaker 1: put a tomato plant on a tobacco root, and Bauer

879
00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: claims that this process was successful and the tomato plant

880
00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 1: with the tobacco roots actually bore fruit, though nobody ate

881
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:46,240
Speaker 1: the fruit because he suspected it was at least possible

882
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 1: that one of these tomatoes could contain a lethal amount

883
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:53,800
Speaker 1: of nicotine. Oh wow, Well, on one hand, it's alarming,

884
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:55,719
Speaker 1: but on the other hand it's I guess it's not

885
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 1: completely surprising because tobacco is a part of this large

886
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:02,319
Speaker 1: night shade fan point. Yeah, exactly, and that's probably why, yeah,

887
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:05,759
Speaker 1: why the grafting worked out. Uh. So, to be clear,

888
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:08,000
Speaker 1: I don't I couldn't find any evidence that it was

889
00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 1: ever confirmed that the tomato itself would have been poisonous

890
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: with the lethal amount of nicotine. But it seems like

891
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: a reasonable thing to worry about, at least good reason

892
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:20,080
Speaker 1: enough not to eat the tomato. Uh And Bower, speaking

893
00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: to Wire, had said, quote, I've got this one plant

894
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:26,840
Speaker 1: growing and it's blooming again. I accidentally left the tomacco

895
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: on the kitchen table, and my wife yelled at me,

896
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,359
Speaker 1: get that thing out of the kitchen, you knuckle head,

897
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:37,680
Speaker 1: because it looks like a regular tomato. Yeah, don't leave

898
00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 1: your secret poison tomatoes just laying around. But but as

899
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, Bauer was apparently not the first person

900
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 1: to try this plant hybridization. He he mentioned that he

901
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:50,280
Speaker 1: had actually read about this when he was in college,

902
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: I think, in an article that was published in Scientific

903
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 1: American in nineteen fifty nine that described a similar procedure

904
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: to what end. I'm not exactly sure. I don't know

905
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:04,520
Speaker 1: what what you really gain by creating a tomato that

906
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 1: possibly has nicotine in it, I mean, and that's probably

907
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:10,440
Speaker 1: ultimately the reason you don't see a tremendous amount of

908
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: effort going to this, right, I mean, like, what is

909
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 1: the payoff? What's the incentive? Perhaps there's some I just

910
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:17,839
Speaker 1: don't know. I couldn't find anything else about that. But hey,

911
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:20,120
Speaker 1: if you know of a good reason to create a

912
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: tomato tobacco hybrid right in, let us know. All right,

913
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: well we've reached the point we're gonna have to stop

914
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:29,840
Speaker 1: and uh and come back in another episode to continue

915
00:52:29,920 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 1: our exploration of the tomato. But but real quick, Joe, Uh,

916
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:36,560
Speaker 1: fresh tomatoes are in your kitchen. What's what's one of

917
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 1: the first dishes you think you'll you would try to make?

918
00:52:39,680 --> 00:52:41,840
Speaker 1: Like what something is popular right now in your household

919
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,879
Speaker 1: with tomatoes? Oh? Answer to that is extremely easy. Um

920
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:48,439
Speaker 1: toast with a little bit of mayonnaise with tomato on top,

921
00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:52,720
Speaker 1: salt and pepper, I mean, unbeatable, Like just tomato sandwich

922
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 1: with mayonnaise is the most delicious thing if it's a

923
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:58,720
Speaker 1: good ripe summer tomato. Also just a good ripe summer

924
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:02,279
Speaker 1: tomatoes sliced with like olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe

925
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:04,920
Speaker 1: a bit of torn basil leaves. I mean, keep it simple,

926
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:08,360
Speaker 1: a good ripe summer tomato is it's like a steak.

927
00:53:08,600 --> 00:53:12,200
Speaker 1: It's a dish unto itself. Yeah, that sounds great. I mean,

928
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 1: it reminds me that one of the things we like

929
00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 1: to do here at our house is make a sort

930
00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: of b LT. We don't we don't eat bacon anymore,

931
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: but we will will use um like store bought soysage

932
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:26,000
Speaker 1: like you get from like Morning Star or t J's

933
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:28,200
Speaker 1: put that on there instead of bacon, and with a

934
00:53:28,280 --> 00:53:31,760
Speaker 1: really good tomato. It's fabulous. I've actually been wondering about

935
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: trying to create a vegetarian version of a b LT

936
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 1: and some of the ideas that came across for the

937
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:40,960
Speaker 1: bacon substitute, where like um uh sort of dried out

938
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: charred strips of eggplant or smoked strips of eggplant, but

939
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:47,600
Speaker 1: then also just the idea of using like smoked tempe.

940
00:53:48,160 --> 00:53:51,000
Speaker 1: That sounds good. It sounds good. All right, we're gonna

941
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 1: We're gonna close out then, but obviously we want you

942
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 1: to come back for the next episode on Tomatoes, and

943
00:53:57,239 --> 00:54:00,480
Speaker 1: in the meantime you can certainly right in and give

944
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 1: some feedback on the journey thus far, share some insight

945
00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: based on your own experience with tomato growing with tomato consumption.

946
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. If you want to

947
00:54:11,960 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind?

948
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:16,320
Speaker 1: Do you know where to find us? Absolutely anywhere you

949
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. Make

950
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 1: sure you rate, review and subscribe huge thanks as always

951
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

952
00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

953
00:54:28,200 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

954
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,120
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email

955
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:36,279
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.

956
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:46,520
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

957
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:49,240
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958
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959
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