6th April: Fresh Tomato Day

Continuing a salad theme since today is Fresh Tomato Day. Ten facts you didn't know about tomatoes:

1. Tomatoes originated in South and Central America. The Aztecs used them in cooking. The first tomatoes were probably small and Yellow, rather than the red we know today. Hence the word for tomato in some languages, such as the Italian pomodoro, literally means "apple of gold".
2. The word "tomato" comes from the Spanish tomate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl, meaning "fat water" or "fat thing". The Aztecs eventually started producing larger, red tomatoes and they called them xitomatl, meaning "plump thing with navel".
3. The pronunciation of the word "tomato" his been a subject for debate. Is it "tomarto" or "tomayto"? As in Ira and George Gershwin's 1937 song Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. There's also a saying in English, "tomayto/tomarto" when offered two choices, meaning, "it's all the same to me."
4. Tomatoes belong to the nightshade family, which is why, when they were first introduced in Europe, people were suspicious of them, believing them to be poisonous. The Florentine aristocrat Giovanvettorio Soderini wrote that they "were to be sought only for their beauty" and were grown only in gardens or flower beds. The leaves do contain toxins and at least one person has died from drinking tomato leaf tea. The scientific species name for the family is lycopersicum, meaning "wolf peach", from German legends which said that deadly nightshade was used by Witches and sorcerers to transform themselves into Werewolves. Hence the tomato's similar, but much larger, fruit was called the "wolf peach" when it first arrived in Europe.
5. Most people know that a tomato is a botanically a fruit while used in cooking as a vegetable. Hence the saying, "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad". What you may not know is that the confusion over whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable started thanks to the US tax system. In March 1883, Congress passed a new tariff act that put a 10-percent import duty on any whole vegetables brought into the country. People didn't complain too much, until the produce-importing Nix family tried to bring a load of tomatoes from the West Indies into New York. They were charged the tax, despite pointing out to the tax collector that tomatoes were fruit. The Nixes sued him to recover their tariff duties.
6. There is no mention of tomatoes anywhere in either the Bible or in the complete works of Shakespeare.
7. There are actually around 7,500 tomato varieties grown. Cherry tomatoes are not the smallest, either. There is a variety called tomberries, which are about 5 mm in diameter. In contrast, beefsteak tomatoes are 10 cm (4 in) or more in diameter. Most cultivars produce red fruit, but you can also get tomatoes in yellow, Orange, Pink, purple, Green, Black, or white.
8. The town of Buñol, Spain, celebrates La Tomatina every year on the last Wednesday in August. It's basically a massive food fight. It started in 1945 during a parade when a bunch of young people's high jinks caused one participant to fall off a float. He was so angry that he started throwing tomatoes at them, and it soon escalated, thanks to a fruit and vegetable stall conveniently located nearby, and had to be controlled by the police. The following year, the young people brought tomatoes from home to recreate the event. They were again dispersed by the police. This continued annually until the police presumably gave up trying to stop it. By 2007, it had grown huge - 40,000 people gathered in Buñol and 115,000 kg (254,000 lb) of tomatoes were thrown. In 2013, in the name of health and safety (and making Money out of it), the town council made it a ticket only event. There are rules now, too. Only tomatoes can be thrown and they must be squashed before throwing; participants must make way for lorries, and after the signal for the end of the fight (two shots) has sounded, no more tomatoes must be thrown.
9. The heaviest tomato ever, weighing 3.51 kg (7 lb 12 oz), was grown by Gordon Graham of Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986. The largest tomato plant ever grown reached 19.8 m (65 ft) in length, grown in Mawdesley, Lancashire, UK, in 2000.
10. The first commercially available genetically modified food was a variety of tomato named the Flavr Savr, which was engineered to have a longer shelf life.