The authors also note that a high sodium intake can be linked to the amount of calcium in the human body—a factor that may be crucial in the development of osteoporosis, the so-called “brittle bones” disease of the elderly. Sodium appears to have a negative influence on how much calcium is retained by the human body. “Dietary advice to prevent osteoporosis might suggest eating more calcium-rich foods while eating fewer high-sodium foods,” warn the nutrition textbook’s authors.7
And what have tomatoes lost since 1963? Fully 61.5 percent of their calcium. What have they gained? Two hundred percent sodium.
The picture becomes still more interesting when one looks at the 7.97 percent loss in potassium. “Low potassium may be as significant as high sodium when it comes to blood pressure regulation,” says the nutrition textbook.8 And it adds: “Even when potassium isn’t lost, the addition of sodium still lowers the potassium-to-sodium ratio. Limiting sodium intake may help in two ways then—by lowering blood pressure in salt-sensitive individuals and by indirectly raising potassium intakes in all individuals.”9
The modern fresh market tomato appears to be aimed at doing exactly the opposite.
Higher in fat, higher in sodium, lower in calcium, potassium, Vitamin A, and Vitamin C, losing iron, phosphorus, niacin and thiamin, today’s tomato looks as if it is almost calculated to lack whatever nutritionists recommend.
Processed tomato products have suffered a similar fate. Since 1963, for example, canned tomato juice has lost 35.5 percent of its iron and 30.5 percent of its vitamin A. Since 1950, the amount of vitamin A in tomato juice has dropped 47 percent–almost by half. As for tomato catsup, it has lost 13.6 percent of its calcium, 12.5 percent of its iron and 27.4 percent of its vitamin A since 1963.
At the same time, sodium has increased 13.8 percent, and fiber (perhaps reflecting plant breeders’ desire for those tough outer walls) has jumped upward by an amazing 1,200 percent.
Not only is the tomato losing beneficial nutrients, but its supermarket version is also losing in another key category: variety.
DIMINISHING CHOICES
It’s not certain precisely how many varieties there are of Solanum esculentum, the Latin name of the common tomato (it used to be called Lycopersicon esculentum, which means “wolf peach,” but has been renamed). Native to Latin America, and cultivated for centuries by the Indians of Mexico and Peru, it was adopted as early as 1554 by the Italians and by Americans (who were slow cluing into the delights of pasta sauce) in the early 1800s. Over the years, plant breeders have developed literally thousands of varieties, ranging from plants with big, fat yellow and orange fruit to tiny little red cherry tomatoes. Some have thin walls, some thick, some are sweeter, some less sweet, some ripen early, some late, some are more frost- or disease-tolerant, some less.
But the key word is choice. According to the Decorah, Iowa-based Seed Savers Exchange,10 which caters to home gardeners, there are more than 5,500 varieties of tomato in its collection alone.11
How many of all those thousands of possible varieties show up in our supermarkets, either as so-called “fresh market” tomatoes or processed into tomato products ranging from pasta sauce to tomato paste, salsa, or catsup?
Not many. The North American supermarket system gets most of its tomatoes from only four locations. According to extensionist Dr. Tim Hartz, of the University of California at Davis, more than 85 percent of the tomatoes shipped for processing into canned or other products come from California.12 The California Tomato Growers Association likes to boast that “nine out of every 10 tomatoes processed in the U.S.” come from that one state alone.13
As for fresh-market tomatoes, sold unprocessed as harvested from the field, the Florida Tomato Committee reports that more than 50 percent come from Florida.14 During the December through May winter season, when states like Ohio or Virginia can’t grow anything, Florida and California are the only states shipping tomatoes. Recently, due to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Florida has had to compete with Mexico during the winter months, but it still has the lion’s share of the fresh market. In Canada, Florida also dominates the winter fresh market, although recently it has had some competition from Mexico and from such European Union countries as Spain and Portugal, both of which have major greenhouse tomato growing industries. In summer, Canada supplies some of its own tomatoes, mostly field- or greenhouse-grown in southern Ontario, especially near Leamington.
How many choices are available to the consumer, in terms of variety?
According to the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service, during the 1999-2000 growing season, 11 varieties dominated the fresh market, with only five accounting for more than 80 percent of all Florida tomatoes grown. The favorite, by far, was Florida 47, which accounted for 35.9 percent of all varieties grown.15 In the EU, which exports to Canada in winter, the story is much the same. In Portugal in 1999, for example, more than 80 percent of the tomato crop was accounted for by only six varieties.16
In California in the year 2002, according to the Department of Vegetable Crops of the University of California at Davis, only 10 varieties accounted for more than 60 percent of the entire processing tomato market.17 Five of these (nearly 26 percent) were proprietary varieties, developed by major multinational food processing companies that require their contract suppliers to grow only their in-house varieties.
If we take 6,000 or more as a very rough benchmark figure for the total number of North American tomato varieties known–and this is an almost ridiculously conservative number—the math is revealing. The 15 American-grown varieties that dominate both process and fresh market tomatoes available in our supermarkets today represent only 0.25 percent of the possibilities that could be out there. One quarter of one percent.
Some choice.
So, we have a minuscule number of tomato varieties available to shoppers, and a diminishing amount of nutrients in fresh tomatoes (with the exception of the rising amount of fat and sodium). These tomatoes look wonderful–big, bright red, perfectly round, unblemished, as uniform as if they’d been turned out with cookie-cutters. Yet they are tough and rubbery, and at least to my own purely subjective taste, comparatively flavorless.
How did this come to pass?
The answer is, by deliberate selection. The huge, multinational corporations that dominate the continental food industry, from seed to supermarket shelf, prefer it this way.
After days of searching and phone calls, I located several industry spokesmen and scientific experts on tomato breeding, including specialists in fresh market varieties and others focused on the process market. I spoke to some of them for a half hour or more, while the tape cassette turned, asking for detailed descriptions of the characteristics that made the top 15 tomato varieties such a success in their respective markets.
As one scientist said, “the first characteristic is yield, the second is yield, and the third is yield.” He was, of course, being facetious.
According to the scientists, the characteristics that make a tomato variety a hit in the fresh market category include, in order of importance:
1. yield (in pounds per acre)
2. large size (200-250 grams)
3. firmness, in terms of thickness and hardness of the outer pericarp wall (which provides the ability to withstand pressure and between 25,000 and 50,000 pounds of weight when bouncing along in a truck during shipment)
4. resistance to disease
5. heat tolerance (in setting fruit during Florida’s warm weather)
6. uniformity of shape
7. uniformity in time of ripening (color)
I asked one expert if any other characteristics were desirable. He paused for a moment