Tomatoes: Fruit or Vegetable?
Native to Central and South America, are tomatoes a fruit or a vegetable? For those who love to eat tomato scrambled eggs, tomatoes are a vegetable; for those who love to eat cherry tomatoes, tomatoes are fruit! The first person to cook tomatoes for eating should be the Aztecs of Central America. At that time, the tomatoes were about the same size as the cherry tomatoes. When they were ripe, the skin turned yellow, much like the “golden tomatoes” on the market today!
Who brought the tomatoes back to Europe? At present, it is believed that Hernan Cortez (1485–1547) , the person who also destroyed the Aztec Empire, is the one. The first person in Europe to leave a written record on tomatoes was the doctor and naturalist Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli (1501–1577), who wrote the book “Golden Apple” in 1544 (yes! At that time tomatoes were called golden apples!) This book describes the types of tomatoes and how they are cooked : Add pepper, salt, oil, just like eggplant. The Spaniards not only brought tomatoes back to Europe, but also planted tomatoes in the Caribbean islands and the Philippine archipelago. Afterwards the tomatoes arrived in Asia and were brought to Taiwan by the Dutch in 1622. Although the tomatoes from Asia are brought over by Europeans, the country with the largest tomato planting area and the largest production in the world now is China.
What’s interesting is that although Mattioli’s book says that tomatoes can be cooked and eaten, many people in Europe at that time were afraid to eat tomatoes and planted them just to watch the beautiful fruits. Later, even many people think tomatoes are poisonous! Therefore, it is said that in September 1820, when Robert Gibbon Johnson, a colonel from New Jersey in the United States, declared that he was going to eat a tomato he grew, he attracted a lot of people to his house to watch, and there were even others who came here from Massachusetts! Why did people think that tomatoes could not be eaten? Perhaps it is because the stems and leaves of tomatoes have glands that give a special smell, or perhaps because the smell reminds Europeans of the poisonous plant they are familiar with: Belladonna! Coincidentally, although the Dutch brought tomatoes to Taiwan in 1622, everyone at that time had been “watching” tomatoes for a long time. It was not until the Japanese occupation period when the Japanese introduced more different varieties. In fact, Solanaceae plants all contain natural alkaloids. Immature tomatoes have tomatine and dehydrotomatine, but they are not toxic to humans and will gradually disappear during maturation.
From knowing that tomatoes can be eaten to the point that they are poisonous, when did people start to eat tomatoes again? In fact, even when many people think tomatoes are poisonous, some people in the world are still eating it. Slowly, people who didn’t dare to eat tomatoes in the first place may also start to eat tomatoes because they saw that other people were all right after eating tomatoes. As for the ketchup that can be seen everywhere, it did not appear until the beginning of the 19th century; however, the English word ketchup was not originally dedicated to ketchup, but was widely used to blend sauces, and the earliest ketchup didn’t even have tomatoes at all! The flavor of tomato sauce we are familiar now, which did not appear until 1906. In order to preserve the ketchup, coal tar or benzoic acid was added first; in 1906, Heinz improved the ketchup formula, increased the content of vinegar, and used whole tomatoes to make ketchup. At that time, other manufacturers used crushed tomatoes. Heinz used whole tomatoes in response to people’s concerns about food safety. Unexpectedly, whole tomatoes have a higher pectin content, and pectin is also a natural food preservative. With the addition of vinegar, Heinz tomato sauce can be stored for a whole year without the addition of preservatives! Since then Heinz tomato ketchup has become a fixed landscape on the table!
Tomato ketchup or tomato-based sauce is common in Western food, but the most favorite form of tomato on the table in Taiwan is probably tomato scrambled eggs. In addition, in Taiwan, tomatoes are mainly eaten as fruits, and cherry tomatoes are the main ones; the famous “Cherry Tomatoes” were introduced to Taiwan in 1985 and immediately became popular; after many improvements, they are now yellow , orange, red, pink, etc., they look good and delicious! Tomatoes, which are subtropical crops, are actually quite intolerant to summer heat. In order to make tomatoes grow well in Taiwan, the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg, previously known as the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center) in Shanhua, Taiwan has collected a lot of varieties and bred and selected for tropical tomatoes with high heat resistance, and hence the “AsVeg №6,” and “AsVeg №22”.
Because the pectin will be decomposed during the ripening of tomatoes, although this will make the tomato fruit soft, the soft tomato will cause difficulties in transportation; therefore, Calgene Inc. (later become part of Monsanto Co.) uses biotechnology to reduce the specific genes related to the after-ripening effect. This can delay the softening of tomatoes. This genetically modified tomato went on the market in 1994 and is also the world’s first genetically-modified crop: the Flavr Savr(R) tomato!
