Source of book: Borrowed from the library.
I have a somewhat long list of friends who are readers (birds of a flock, etc…) and when one of them recommends a book, I definitely at least take a look. If that book happens to be nerdy, well, that’s my vibe, so I usually end up reading it. This is a great way to discover interesting books.
This one was recommended by my friend Sara, who has been the source of a number of books over the years. And really, does anyone seriously think I could resist a book about tomatoes?
(Also, read her post about the book - she highlights some great quotes I left out.)
I have thought about which foods I could (if medically indicated) give up most easily. Sugar is actually not particularly high - I can live without sweet stuff. But a harder sell would be coffee. And the hardest might be tomatoes. I love tomatoes - even the bland supermarket ones.
Alexander’s book tells the history of the tomato, focusing on ten specific varieties (and thus episodes.) So, we start with (in the preface) the original New World tomatoes, and then see how they (rather literally) took over the entire world. The Italian “Pomodoro,” which the Medici family made mainstream. The possibly fictional Robert Johnson who is credited with proving to Americans that tomatoes weren’t poisonous. The San Marzano - the first mainstream canned tomato. The Margarita pizza, another legend that is probably not true. Mr. Heinz and the development of modern ketchup - which involves some fun legal and regulatory shenanigans. That time Mussolini tried to ban pasta (and also the story of how tomatoes finally came to be put on top of pasta - that’s a relatively modern development.) The first hybrid tomato, Big Boy. The development of the tasteless supermarket tomato. The resurgence of heirloom varieties. And finally, the modern trend of greenhouse hydroponic tomatoes.
It’s fun stuff.
Alexander also has a breezy, humorous style of writing. This is less toward the science side of the PopSci spectrum, and more toward the popular side. Don’t expect extensive footnotes or scholarly sources. This is fun stuff, not something you would cite in your school essay.
This is not a bad thing. It’s not like the author is just making stuff up. He does his research, and then interviews sources. But this book isn’t here to carefully lay out facts. Rather, it is to tell stories, and inform along the way. I found it quite fun.
The preface is illustrative of the style. After a quick and dirty history of the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes, he flips the script.
Within fourteen months, this once-thriving civilization would be in ruins, having fallen victim to Spanish aggression, germs, and their insatiable lust for silver and gold. But the true treasure of Mexico, one that in the end would have an impact comparable to that of all the precious metals in the New World, would soon find its way on a ship to Europe, to forever change the course of history.
I’m speaking, of course, of the tomato.
Early in the book, the author visits what is purported to be the scene of the unveiling of a basket of tomatoes at the Palazzo Vecchio. Which is now a government office. He is surprised to see such a historical building in use this way. But, as the secretary who guides him notes: “If we kept all the historic buildings as they were, we would have no place to live and work. This is Italy.”
Speaking of history, the author notes that before the Spanish, Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) was arguably “the largest, cleanest, and most prosperous city in the world.” It is easy to forget that there was an incredible civilization in the Americas, before disease and violence nearly wiped it out.
Also interesting history is the story of Bernardo de Sahagun, a monk who is considered one of the first anthropologists. Included in his periodic reports was clear evidence of the edibility (and deliciousness) of tomatoes. However, these were suppressed by the Catholic Church, presumably, as the author puts it, because Bernardinoo was “a tad too sympathetic toward the heathens whom Bernardino had been sent over to convert to Western religion and culture.”
I found the chapter on pizza to be particularly fascinating. While pizza originated in Italy, the version that has taken over the world is a distinctly American creation - created by Italian immigrants who adapted the food to a new culture and place.
A disconcerting fact in this chapter is that a 1989 study showed that pizza delivery drivers had a death rate on par with coal miners, and twice as high as roofers. Yikes.
Those of us of a certain age likely remember Domino’s 30 minute promise, and also “the Noid.” Anyone remember this?
Well, it turns out that a paranoid schizophrenic named Kenneth Lamar Noid took this personally, and took a franchise hostage. Fortunately, after making the guy a pizza, the employees escaped while he ate it. A very strange episode.
As a lawyer (and one interested in the history of government regulation - which has been an overwhelmingly positive force, by the way) I found the history of ketchup to be noteworthy.
The United States has always had a weird anti-intellectual, anti-science bent, and this is how we ended up in the 1880s with literally zero regulation at the federal regulation over food safety. Even a half century later - before the New Deal - all kinds of shit could (and did) end up in food. Plaster. Formaldehyde. Arsenic. Lead. Cocaine and heroin. Sawdust. And a bunch of other bad stuff.
It is easy to forget this, in our own day when food is generally regulated, inspected, and therefore unlikely to kill you. (At least in the short term.) The American Right, unfortunately, is hell-bent on eliminating these crucial regulations, thus enabling greater corporate profit at the expense of the lives of ordinary citizens.
Also in this chapter: a trivia fact to annoy your friends and family with. Did you know that the reason ketchup is so hard to get out of the bottle is that it is a non-Newtonian fluid? Science!
And that brings us to Mussolini.
Italians had tolerated Mussolini’s thuggish Blackshirts, the violent suppression of labor unions, and the murder of dissidents. But this time the fascists had gone too far. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a founding member of the Fascist Party who’d helped boost Mussolini into power eight years earlier, had published a manifesto in late 1930 that called for “the abolition of pasta, the absurd Italian gastronomic religion,” claiming it left Italians heavy, shapeless, and (lest anyone miss the point) unprepared for war.
At issue was a brew of factors that might sound familiar today. Pasta required wheat, and Italy imported most of its wheat from northern countries. What Italy grew a lot of was rice, and switching to rice would mean eating local.
But there was more to it than that.
Mussolini viewed food as a tool to control the immediate needs of the population and to promote a fascist agenda of self-dependency, austerity, and increased productivity and reproductivity (to replace all the Italians who’d emigrated in the previous decades).
Not only did Italians (particularly those of the south) object to this forced change in diet, attempts to grow wheat in unsuitable places displaced cash crops like tomatoes and caused exports to fall.
Oh, and they ended up with huge labor shortages both because of immigrant labor drying up, but also because of Mussolini’s policy of limiting women in the workplace. Hey, does that sound familiar these days? J.D. Vance, cough, cough…
The book also touches on SpagettiOs. I haven’t eaten those in many many years. (And the ravioli was better. Just saying.) My favorite line is this one, regarding the year-long study that was done that settled on the “O” as the shape of pasta “children could earth without making a mess.” Ha ha, that’s a good one!
(They might’ve saved themselves a lot of time and money had they first sat down to a breakfast of Cheerios with their kids.)
That’s the last of the lines I wrote down, but I should note that there are many other enlightening passages. I found the process of attempting to develop antibiotic-resistant tomato genes (it’s a long story, and less lurid than the press made it out to be) quite interesting, as well as the question of carbon dioxide costs of field tomatoes versus greenhouse tomatoes. (It’s….complicated.)
This book was a great light (but not fluffy) read, both informative and humorous. I note that the author has written another book about tomatoes. Hmm. Maybe he has a thing for them too…
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