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A Not-So-Deadly Dinner
by Jodi Wheeler-Toppen

Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson strode up the courthouse steps, stood in front of an anxious crowd, and started to do the unthinkable. The people of Salem, New Jersey had gathered because Colonel Johnson had promised that he was going to eat something that no one in Salem had ever eaten before. The crowd knew that this man must be crazy. Surely he wasn't going to consume the deadly poison of the—tomato!

A woman in the audience screamed and fainted. Colonel Johnson's doctor rushed to his side so that he would be able to help if the Colonel foamed at the mouth or passed out. But just as the drama came to a climax, the radio broadcast shifted to a commercial.

In January of 1949, CBS aired a radio broadcast that shared with the nation this legend from the town of Salem, New Jersey. According to the legend, Colonel Johnson was the first person in America to eat a tomato and live, proving once and for all that tomatoes were not poisonous. Although the CBS broadcast was mostly fiction, it is true that the tomato was once considered poisonous. It has taken hundreds of years for people around the world to accept the tomato as food.

The tomato was first cultivated in Mexico in the time before written records, and it was not brought to Europe until after the discovery of the Americas. The first mention of the tomato in Europe was in Italy by Petrus Matthiolus, who published a book on plants in 1544. Because of the tomato's bright red color, and because the plant looked similar to a poisonous plant called Deadly Nightshade, people did not want to eat the new fruit.

However, they found other uses for the tomato. In some countries like England, people grew tomatoes in their flower gardens because they were rare and pretty. Some people believed the fruit was so beautiful that just looking at it could make you fall in love! Doctors of that time suggested rubbing the juice on aching muscles and joints to relieve pain, kind of like an old-fashioned athletic cream.

Eventually, people started using tomatoes for food. The Italians were the first tomato eaters in Europe. Many common foods like spaghetti and pizza were created only after tomatoes became popular in Italy during the late eighteenth century.

It took longer for the tomato to become popular in other parts of Europe, England, and in the United States. But by the middle of the nineteenth century, people all over Europe and the Americas were eating tomatoes. Around that time, some people decided that tomatoes were not only edible, but were actually a marvelous cure-all for every type of disease. Advertisements claimed that pills made from tomatoes could cure indigestion, liver disease, fever, coughs, injuries, arthritis, and any other complaint that a person could have.

Although tomatoes can not really cure any illnesses, the "tomato-eating craze" that followed the advertisements probably did improve people's health. Tomatoes contain Vitamin C and Vitamin A, both of which are needed by the body to stay healthy. Many Americans who lived during the 1800s did not eat enough vitamins, so eating tomatoes would have made them less likely to get sick.

Tomato eating has come a long way since the legendary day that Colonel Johnson chomped into a bright, juicy tomato on the courthouse steps. We eat them on sandwiches and salads, in pizza sauce and ketchup, and with our spaghetti and soups. These days, Americans eat 2.8 billion pounds of tomatoes every year. That's enough tomatoes to circle the earth over 18 times, and it's quite an achievement for a plant that was once considered poisonous.

Resources
Jenkins, J.A. "The Origin of the Cultivated Tomato." Economic Botany 2 (1948): p379-392.

Sauer, Jonathan. Historical Geography of Crop Plants: A Selected Roster. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1993.

Sokolov, Raymond. "The Well-Traveled Tomato." Natural History 98, i.6 (June 1989): p84-88.

Wolf, Thomas. "How the Lowly 'Love Apple' Rose in the World." Smithsonian 21, i.5 (August 1990): p110-117.

Photos: Courtesy of USDA, Wikipedia

Jodi Wheeler-Toppen is a former high school biology teacher. She now works in teacher education, writes, and cares for her adorable daughter.

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