Fun Facts About Tomatoes

It’s believed that tomatoes originally came from Peru.  Their name "xitomatl" is Aztec and means “plump thing with a navel.”

The French originally called tomatoes the "apple of love.” 

The scientific term for ordinary tomatoes is lycopersicon lycopersicum, which means “wolf peach.”

Americans spend more on salsa than on tomato ketchup.

93% of American gardeners grow tomatoes in their yards.

Tomato leaves and stems are actually toxic.

94.5% of the weight of a tomato is water.

The heaviest tomato was grown by Gordon Graham of Edmond, Oklahoma, in 1986.  It weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces.

Green tomatoes ripen if stored with apples.

If tomatoes are refrigerated, it lessens their quality and flavor.

If sunlight shines on stored tomatoes, they lose their Vitamin C.

Tomatoes are often picked green and treated with ethylene gas on their way to market.  When they arrive, they’re red.

Vegetable or fruit?  Technically they’re fruit because the tomato is the ripened ovary of a seed plant.  But in 1893 the U.S. Supreme Court case of NIX v. HEDDEN ruled that they were considered vegetables.

The tomato is the official state vegetable and fruit of the State of Arkansas.

At least 19 states hold tomato festivals.

Spain holds a tomato festival (La Tomatina) on the last Wednesday in August every year.  The festival includes a giant tomato fight, where 30,000+ people throw approximately 150,000 overripe tomatoes at each other.

A tomato juice mixture is the best cure for skunk odor because the acid in tomatoes neutralizes the odor.

Tomatoes are used to clean toilet bowls, as an ingredient in beauty products, and to polish brass and copper.

To rid the body of toxins (including help for hang-overs, it’s said), squeeze the juice out of a tomato and drink it. 

Other health benefits include heart protection with high levels of lycopene. Tomatoes are good for the eyes as lycopene is one of the major carotenoids, which help in preventing age-related macular degeneration and blindness.  The potassium in tomatoes lowers the risk of heart disease and heart attacks and also lowers blood pressure and cholesterol.  Tomatoes are also rich in vitamins C, A, and K.

And after all this talk about tomatoes, I’m off to make a BLT sandwich!!

Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS