{"id":25414,"date":"2021-05-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foodrevolution.org\/?p=25414"},"modified":"2025-03-12T12:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T19:29:13","slug":"are-tomatoes-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foodrevolution.org\/blog\/are-tomatoes-healthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Tomatoes Good for You?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomatoes are popular today, but that wasn\u2019t always the case. Until the mid-1800s, people in the United States and Europe avoided and even feared them. Tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family of plants, which many Europeans historically considered to be toxic. (To be fair, eating the leaves and berries of one of the members of this family, Belladonna, will give you hallucinations and delirium if they don\u2019t kill you first.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Add the strong aroma of the tomato plant itself, and the scandalously red skin and juices, and those not familiar with the tomato\u2019s culinary upsides might be forgiven for thinking that it was not fit for human consumption.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Early tomato marketing in the US didn\u2019t help. A gardener from Massachusetts described them as \u201cdisgusting\u201d sometime in the 1820s. Another chronicler of public opinion estimated that no more than 2% of the population would try that <\/span>\u201csour trash\u201d<\/span><\/a> a second time following initial exposure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just that tomato was an acquired taste that the populace hadn\u2019t acquired. There was downright terror of tomatoes through the middle of the 19th century.<\/span><\/p>\n

One myth, widely believed in Europe, was that the mere touch of the green tomato worm could result in death. Another myth attributed the deaths of wealthy nobility to their love of tomatoes, known as \u201cpoison apples\u201d (actually, the tomato may have played a role in their deaths, as its high acidic content released the lead in their fancy pewter plates and caused lead poisoning. But I doubt a jury of tomato\u2019s peers would convict it of murder given such extenuating circumstances).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though these bad raps were <\/span>inspired by misinformation<\/span><\/a>, that fear around tomatoes and other nightshade plants persisted for a long time, and in fact, still pops up on some alternative nutrition blogs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, tomatoes are the second most widely eaten vegetable in the United States today, losing the crown only to potatoes. However, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, What We Eat in America (2005\u20132010), found that <\/span>most tomatoes<\/span><\/a> were consumed as tomato products \u2014 namely, tomato sauce or ketchup.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the truth about tomatoes? Should we be consuming them in such great quantities? Or instead, are they toxic, sour trash that carries deathly worms? Or is the truth more nuanced? Let\u2019s find out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where Did Tomatoes Originate?<\/h2>\n
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iStock.com\/ZoiaKostina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tomatoes originated in South and Central America. All the tomatoes we eat today are derived from Solanum pimpinellifolium<\/i><\/a> \u2014 nicknamed \u201cpimp\u201d<\/strong> at a time when the word didn\u2019t conjure images of jewel-handed canes and giant sunglasses \u2014 a tiny, wild tomato no bigger than a pea. The pimp still grows wild in northern Peru and southern Ecuador.<\/p>\n

Tomatoes spread globally as seeds were taken from Mexico and South America to Spain and across Europe. The tomatoes grown today, in the United States and elsewhere, are descendants of those European strains.<\/p>\n

Are Tomatoes a Fruit or Vegetable?<\/h2>\n

While most of the more outlandish myths around tomatoes have been cleared up by now, there\u2019s one argument that still remains. Are tomatoes considered a fruit or a vegetable?<\/p>\n

Often, they\u2019re referred to as both. But technically (or botanically), they\u2019re fruits. Tomatoes are ripened flower ovaries and contain seeds, which are characteristics of a fruit. If you\u2019ve ever seen a tomato grow, it emerges from the same spots where the plant\u2019s flowers have bloomed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure why this debate is limited to tomatoes, by the way. Here\u2019s a very non-comprehensive list of vegetables that are, botanically speaking, also fruits: bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, olives, avocados, and okra.<\/p>\n

But to many nutritionists, and in the culinary world, all of the above are treated as vegetables. Tomatoes don\u2019t offer the same sweet flavor as most fruits. Their lack of natural sugar content compared to other \u201cfruit\u201d puts them typically in savory dishes and not desserts. I mean, have you ever had a tomato pie as a sweet treat? I didn\u2019t think so. After all, as journalist Miles Kington<\/a> is quoted as saying, \u201cKnowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.\u201d<\/p>\n

So for now, perhaps we can continue to consider tomatoes to be both a fruit and a vegetable, given the characteristics that allow them to fit into both categories.<\/p>\n

Types of Tomatoes<\/h2>\n
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iStock.com\/fcafotodigital<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you look around your local supermarket, it may appear that there are essentially two types of tomatoes, big ones and small ones. But the truth is that in most retail stores, there are at least 10 fresh tomato varieties<\/a>, ranging from cherry to vine-ripened. And when it comes to the varieties available for your home garden, there are over 400 to choose from.<\/p>\n

All modern domestic tomatoes (known botanically as Solanum lycopersicum<\/i>, which by the way means \u201cnightshade wolf peach\u201d for no reason that I could figure out from an exhaustive 3-minute Google search) are remarkably similar, genetically. Taken together, they possess no more than 5% of the total genetic variation present within the wild species and primitive varieties.<\/p>\n

Some of the types most commonly seen in grocery stores include:<\/p>\n