bones and teeth), 11.1 percent less phosphorus, 9 percent less potassium, 7.97 percent less niacin, 10 percent less iron and 1 percent less thiamin.
And those are only the losses since 1963, about half a person’s lifetime. If today’s values are compared with those for earlier years, the story is often worse. The amount of iron in 100 grams of raw red tomato today is 10 percent less than in 1963, but fully 25 percent less than in 1950, when the real-life counterparts of the characters in television’s M*A*S*H were busy fighting the Korean War.5 The amount of vitamin A, measured in International Units (IUs), is 43.3 percent less than in 1950. How much has been lost since 1930, or earlier? No one can say. But a trend in losses of key nutrients is obvious.
Of course, not every substance found in fresh tomatoes has diminished. Two, in particular, have posted spectacular increases since 1963. The amount of fat (lipids) has climbed by 65 percent, while sodium–the basis of common table salt (sodium chloride, or NaCl) –has leaped upward by an astounding 200 percent.
These increases and decreases are not isolated, but can have a kind of domino effect, mutually reinforcing each other. For example, sodium (as sodium chloride), has for years been considered the primary factor responsible for high blood pressure. As the authors of Understanding Nutrition, a basic college textbook for the health sciences, put it:
Some individuals respond sensitively to excesses in salt intake and experience high blood pressure. People most likely to have a salt sensitivity include those with chronic renal disease, diabetes, or hypertension, African-Americans, and people over 50 years of age. Overweight people also appear to be particularly sensitive to the effect of salt on blood pressure. For them, a high salt intake correlates strongly with heart disease and death. 6
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.
