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Lessons from the Tomato
Adapted from This Organic Life, by Joan Dye Gussow.
The item accompanying iceberg lettuce in the standard winter salad is the sliced or sectioned orange golf ball deceptively called a tomato.
Everyone over 50 knows that the tomato used to be a soft, juicy, sweet-sour fruit. It has been designated a vegetable because, unlike other fruits, it is not normally eaten for dessert. Grown in home gardens more frequently than any other food, it used to be eaten only in season, through the hot summer and until the first fall frost. During the other seasons, they could be consumed canned and frozen, sauced and relished, dried and pickled, and otherwise preserved.
Science has converted this succulent summer treat into a hard, orange, bland, starchy ball that can be sliced or sectioned and served “fresh” any time of year. It is served, insistently as I said, combined with iceberg lettuce in a distinctly American salad that derives its only taste from its heavy lather of dressing. Tomatoes have been bred to tennis-ball texture because the authentic ripe tomato is a tender and vulnerable object that resents being shipped.
Several years ago, someone wrote to the Washington Post saying that the soft and juicy backyard tomato was an act of subversion, because it’s a reminder of what a tomato ought to taste like. Actually, the effort to recapture for commerce the taste and seductiveness of the old-fashioned tomato has engaged some good scientific minds over the past half-century, which probably helps explain why the tomato was one of the earliest and most publicized of the foods subjected to biotechnological “improvements.” The FlavrSavr tomato, called the McGregor when it briefly hit the market, came from Calgene Inc. of Davis, Calif. It’s entirely appropriate that this community was a leader in the new effort to make tomatoes “ripen” without softening, since the University of California at Davis is the home of the hard, square, tasteless tomato, bred for efficient packing.
Using the magic of genetic engineering, the Calgene company took the gene for the enzyme PG out of the tomato chromosome turned it around so it didn’t work normally, and replaced it. While the fruit went on developing the acids and sugars that contribute to ripe tomato taste, the tomato’s pectin would remain mostly intact, although enough functioning enzyme was supposed to be left that the tomato would eventually soften.
The FlavrSavr was a commercial failure, since consumers apparently agreed that it didn’t taste like much. It was, however, the last biotech product to be voluntarily identified in the marketplace, and the technology has moved on so fast that you are regularly eating foods that have been genetically engineered without knowing it.
Meanwhile, I continue to produce glorious and varied fresh tomatoes all summer and fall, and to find interesting ways of storing them for the rest of the year. (See Oven-roasted Fresh Tomato Glut Sauce.) Those of us who live where it’s colder need to teach ourselves to put up tomato products for the winter while we encourage our farmers to experiment with season extension. Only then will we be heading for the goal a colleague of mine suggested we should be working toward, a sign next to the road leading into every community carrying a picture of that familiar hard orange globe, and across it, a red slash and the words, “this is a winter-tomato-free community.”
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add your comment »Like Rose, we had home grown tomatoes until well after Christmas. Immediate;y after the first frost, we would pick all of the green tomatoes,wrap them in newspaper, then store them in bushel baskets in the basement. As we always had a bumper crop of tomatoes in our large country garden, we would also use these green tomatoes to make and preserve "piccalilli", a relish similar to the pickle relish popular today.
The best tasting tomatoes I have found in today's supermarkets are the very small Campari tomatoes, greenhouse grown in Mexico; expensive, but delicious and both pesticide and herbacide free. Nancy M.
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You might try this to have tomatoes longer in the year...My mother would pick all of the very last green ones and put them on shelves lined with newspaper in a closet that was hardly ever used, and was totally dark, they would gradually ripen and we would have tomatoes sometimes till Dec or Jan. depending on when the green ones were picked..And that was living in Indiana..
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Try a search on the internet for " heirloom tomatoes ". Guess what, there are great sources for open air pollenated tomatoes. Over 400 varieties. Many years ago I got tired of the tastless tough skinned junk they called tomatoes and found them growing in the California Central Valley, They still have great beefsteak tomatoes :O)
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Thank you for this article. I love tomatoes and all other vegetables fresh from the garden. I was raised, from a little youngin, eating all kinds of vegetables fresh from my parents garden and appreciated everything about it, except for being made to pull the weeds. LOL :o) Just like a young person would, huh?! :o)
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I used to grow them when I had my gardens... The local growers have awesome tomatoes, too.
The recipe mentioned, I am going to use. Roasted tomatoes are awesome!
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Home grown is best, never trust supermarkets, profit is there home grown.
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Tomatoes have always been my favorite veggies. It is the one food that reminds me of my childhood. My mother grew them in our backyard, and I would steal them with my brother. When my mother would go out to get one, most would be gone. A little salt and it was better than a chocolate bar or ice cream. Kids now days wouldn't touch a tomatoe. They'd rather eat paper, and why not? Paper tastes better these days. Thanks for this wonderful article. It brought back fantastic memories.
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Ahhhh, the taste of a 'good' tomato! My dad always used to grow 'Big Boy's' and my bro-in-law, buys fresh farm grown...or plants his own when he's able, and cans enough to last him all year and HIS spaghetti is the best!
Bless the scientist who can duplicate God's artwork. LOL
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You can't beat homegrown produce if you can do it. I am growing my own tomatoes this year thank goodness and will be saving lots for the winter too..
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