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That Time the US was Terrified of Tomatoes · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Uh my name is Ben, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, Noel, I am. I am drinking
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: coffee that I bought today, not from home, from like
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  Speaker 1: a store. Moving on up. Oh my goodness, I am dream.
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  Speaker 1: My name is Noel. I'm drinking coffee that I bought
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  Speaker 1: from a store. But I wasn't such a rush. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't even put it in a glass. I'm just drinking
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  Speaker 1: out of the big giant container. Props to stock Cold
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Brew Coffee. Definitely don't sponsor the show, but I surely
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: sponsor them with my money. Uh low and slow ten
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  Speaker 1: hour Brew highly recommend it. Picks them up at your
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  Speaker 1: local convenience store. I'm speaking of things you pick up
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  Speaker 1: at local convenience store. Why why is a tomato of fruit? Ben?
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  Speaker 1: What cruel trick of God is that that tomato is
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  Speaker 1: a fruit? I'm still gonna do my segway anyway. I
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  Speaker 1: will tell you, but first I want to give a
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  Speaker 1: shout out to the coffee I bought. It's called Hawaii
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  Speaker 1: ConA Blend coffee. It's product of Japan. I went to
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  Speaker 1: a Japanese convenience store with the weird name Tomato. I
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  Speaker 1: asked someone who worked there why it's called tomato. Then
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  Speaker 1: they said, that's just the name of the store, which
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  Speaker 1: qualifies as an answer, doesn't it. A tomato is a
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  Speaker 1: fruit because it has a fruit is just a seed
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  Speaker 1: bearing structure, right, And you know if you bite into
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  Speaker 1: a tomato, if you're a madman, or if you slice
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  Speaker 1: the tomato, you'll see all the little seeds in there. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Do people bite into tomatoes? Yeah, but I mean a
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  Speaker 1: squash has seeds. You know, a zucchini's got seeds. Well,
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  Speaker 1: it's weird because they're part of the same thing too.
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  Speaker 1: That's what's misleading. So if we're looking at it from
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  Speaker 1: a botanical perspective, fruits contain seeds and come from the
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  Speaker 1: flower of a plant, but the rest of the plant
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  Speaker 1: is See you finally solved it for me. I get it.
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  Speaker 1: I have a very complicated relationship with tomatoes, band. I
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  Speaker 1: think a lot of kids grew up probably liking tomatoes
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  Speaker 1: in certain forms, like you know, spaghettios and stuff, but
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  Speaker 1: then when it comes to like eating a tomato off
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  Speaker 1: the vine, I've certainly seen little kids that are down
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  Speaker 1: for just chomping on a ripe tomato. But my mom
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  Speaker 1: liked them so much. She resented the fact that I
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  Speaker 1: despised them, and once forced me to eat uh raw
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  Speaker 1: tomato at the dinner table, and I proceeded to vomit
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  Speaker 1: all over the table. Um. And it's cautionary tail for
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  Speaker 1: trying to force your kids to eat things they don't like. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and it's it's a shame that our super producer, Casey
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  Speaker 1: Pegram is here in spirit today, so I'm gonna be
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  Speaker 1: shouting out the future, Casey, Casey, you're on adventures. But
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  Speaker 1: I remember with great fondness our conversations over the years
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  Speaker 1: about what does or does not comprise a picky eater.
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  Speaker 1: And you're right, taste change over time, Noll, there's a
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  Speaker 1: weird I wouldn't see if any fellow ridiculous historians have
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  Speaker 1: noticed this. There seems to be a weird taste shift
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  Speaker 1: as people grow up from catch up toward mustard as
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  Speaker 1: far as like their favorite basic condiment. I never had
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  Speaker 1: a huge issue with tomatoes, but I know that there
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  Speaker 1: are a divisive thing and they're very form sensitive. Like
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  Speaker 1: just like you said, people might love aposta sauce, but
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  Speaker 1: they may hate the actual tomato. And historically this is
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  Speaker 1: an echo of at least in the US, this is
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  Speaker 1: an echo of our huge, weird relationship with tomatoes. It's
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  Speaker 1: crazy that people don't talk about it more often. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I I don't know if anybody else had this misconception,
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  Speaker 1: but when I was quite young, I just kind of
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  Speaker 1: assumed tomatoes were Italian because I associated them with pasta sauce.
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  Speaker 1: But they're not. They're they're Mezzo American. We have proof
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  Speaker 1: that the tomato was eaten in the Aztec culture as
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  Speaker 1: early as seven hundred a d. When it was called
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  Speaker 1: the tomat, not to be confused with cats aquadal, which
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  Speaker 1: I believe was also an Azteca god I forget um. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's name in the nut nut language, which I guess
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  Speaker 1: maybe they had a lot of suffixes that were autle. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But it wasn't until nearly sixteen hundred that they began
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  Speaker 1: to be grown in Britain. Um. And in the early
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  Speaker 1: sixteenth century you had the Spanish conquistores that were coming
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  Speaker 1: back from expeditions to Mezzo America where they were seeing
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  Speaker 1: this fruit. I'm gonna say, I have to say it.
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  Speaker 1: It's official, but it doesn't make any sense to me.
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  Speaker 1: But here we are. Uh. And they brought it back,
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  Speaker 1: you know as conquistas wars are wont to do. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And some folks credit Cortez for bringing the tomato seeds
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  Speaker 1: back to Europe in fifteen nineteen. Uh. It's really funny
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  Speaker 1: too because it wasn't even considered like a food stuff.
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  Speaker 1: It was grown for exclusively like aesthetic purposes, um, ornamental
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  Speaker 1: purposes um. And there's a really great line from John Parkinson,
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  Speaker 1: who is the apothecary uh to James the first, King
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  Speaker 1: James the First, and he was also a botanist for
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  Speaker 1: King Charles the First and he Uh. This is also
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  Speaker 1: kind of I don't know this term to me to
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  Speaker 1: gross to me after reason, but it's referred to sometimes
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  Speaker 1: as a love apple. It's tomato, which kind of makes
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  Speaker 1: me a little squeamish. I don't know why. But here's
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  Speaker 1: here's from our boy, John Parkinson proclaiming that while the
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  Speaker 1: love apples were eaten by the people in the hot
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  Speaker 1: countries to cool and quench the heat and thirst of
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  Speaker 1: the hot stomachs, uh, Brits really only grew them kind
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  Speaker 1: of as like a novelty, right, and because they're you know,
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  Speaker 1: they're pretty, they're they're nice and round and shiny, and
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  Speaker 1: they do look nice. Yeah. It's similar to how kudzu,
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  Speaker 1: when it first came to the US, was grown entirely
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  Speaker 1: as like a porch decoration. It was ornamental as well.
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  Speaker 1: People didn't put as much emphasis on eating it, though
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  Speaker 1: you can find a couple of recipes, but one of
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  Speaker 1: the earliest European references to this, ever, two tomatoes of food,
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  Speaker 1: was made by an Italian herbalist named Pietro Andre Mattoli,
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  Speaker 1: who said he called it a golden apple. So people
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  Speaker 1: were comparing tomatoes to the closest visual analog they had,
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  Speaker 1: which was the apple. So you call them golden apples
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  Speaker 1: or love apples, which I agree is kind of gross.
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  Speaker 1: And Pietro made a huge misstep that would have consequences
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  Speaker 1: and ripple effects for centuries to come. Uh. He classified
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  Speaker 1: the tomato as a kind of nightshade or and drake. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: the man drake has a long, long history. You can
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  Speaker 1: find references to it in the Old Testament, and that
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  Speaker 1: that translation is where we get the phrase love apple from,
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  Speaker 1: because the Hebrew word is do dame du d a
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  Speaker 1: I M. And that translates kind of roughly to love apple.
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  Speaker 1: And so when Pietro classified the tomato as a man drake,
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  Speaker 1: he did character assassination. He may seem super sketchy. It
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  Speaker 1: was poisonous. Then it was also somehow associated with temptation.
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  Speaker 1: There were probably a couple of Europeans who genuinely believe
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  Speaker 1: that just maybe the apple that Eve offered to Adam
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  Speaker 1: was something very much like a tomato. And then the
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  Speaker 1: hits of inaccuracies and plagiarization keep coming. There's a guy
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  Speaker 1: named John Gerald who publishes a book in f called
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  Speaker 1: air Ball. Uh. It's pronounced herbal, but I like air ball.
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  Speaker 1: It sounds fancy. Uh. And this spread stuff like here's
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  Speaker 1: a quote Gerard considered the whole plant to be of
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  Speaker 1: rank and stinking savor. The fruit was corrupt, which he
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  Speaker 1: left to every man's censure. While the leaves and stalk
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  Speaker 1: of the tomato plants are toxic, the fruit is not.
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  Speaker 1: I want to point something out really quickly. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: let's cut a tomato in half and let's take a
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  Speaker 1: look inside it. There is something somewhat dare I say
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  Speaker 1: titillating about it, and I could see how in the
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  Speaker 1: mind of like, you know, the time, maybe it was
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  Speaker 1: looked at as being somewhat corrupt because it has the
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  Speaker 1: appearance of something of a sex organ. Maybe I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 1: I'm I'm not trying to be gross. I'm really just
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  Speaker 1: conjecturing here, because you know, so many other like it
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  Speaker 1: really is a much more squishy and kind of succulent
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  Speaker 1: kind of you know. I think that's a texture of
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  Speaker 1: it is what weirds a lot of people out. But
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  Speaker 1: I'm wondering if that was literally just in people's heads,
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  Speaker 1: where oh my gosh, this is a corrupt and wicked
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  Speaker 1: fruit because it's too like moist and squishy. M Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it's a good question, because, you know, the
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  Speaker 1: the idea of eroticism of plant matter is surprisingly common. T. S.
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  Speaker 1: Eliot said, do it dare to eat a peach? And
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  Speaker 1: that was that whole poem is a reference to other works, uh,
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  Speaker 1: and then Georgia O'Keefe, you don't have to look very
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  Speaker 1: far for eroticism of plant matter, so that may have
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  Speaker 1: something to do with it. There's something else here. People
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  Speaker 1: thought tomatoes were dirty, especially fancy people in Europe because
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  Speaker 1: even though Spanish cooks in the fifteenth century started adopting
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  Speaker 1: it after they saw it used in meso America, as
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  Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, Uh, and Italian Italians didn't pick it
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  Speaker 1: up immediately, especially the Aristocrats, because tomatoes hung low to
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  Speaker 1: the ground and so this made them seem dirty. British
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  Speaker 1: people knew this, but they also knew that people in
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  Speaker 1: Spain and Italy who had you know, bit the bullet
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  Speaker 1: or I guess, bit the tomato and tried it out,
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  Speaker 1: they knew they weren't dying, so it's made of wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: automatically kill you. But still there were a lot of rumors.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, in the late seventeen hundreds, a ton of
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  Speaker 1: Europeans feared the tomato. It had a third apple nickname.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned this first. We said golden apple,
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  Speaker 1: we said love apple. Was also called the poison apple. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: the poison apple. That's right, because it was somewhat because
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  Speaker 1: you know, maybe connected to this, uh, fear of it
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  Speaker 1: being unclean. It was rumored to be poisonous. It was
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  Speaker 1: feared across Europe in the late seventeen hundreds because of
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  Speaker 1: that very nickname, and it was connected to this notion
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  Speaker 1: that there was a spate of sickness around eating tomatoes
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  Speaker 1: that struck the aristocratic class, that many of them fell
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  Speaker 1: ill and died after eating the dreaded poison apples. But
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  Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with the the fruit at all.
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  Speaker 1: It had to do with the flatwear. Um. These fancy
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  Speaker 1: Europeans were using pewter plates which were super high in
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  Speaker 1: lead content. And we know what that does. It did
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  Speaker 1: will kill you dead lead. That's how you remember because
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  Speaker 1: it rhymes um. Because tomatoes are so high in acid
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  Speaker 1: um that when they are placed onto this particular type
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  Speaker 1: of material, the fruit would actually suck up lead content
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  Speaker 1: from the plate into the actual fruit itself because of
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  Speaker 1: the nature of you know, the very porous nature of
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  Speaker 1: the tomatoes. So that was death due to lead poisoning.
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  Speaker 1: So there was a conduit with the tomato, but it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't the tomato itself that was causing people to get sick. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: So you know, it was an easy kind of fall guy, uh,
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  Speaker 1: fall fruit. But there are other researchers, some of whom
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  Speaker 1: are credited in a fabulous Atlas Obscure article when tomatoes
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  Speaker 1: were blamed for witchcraft and werewolves, who said that tomatoes
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  Speaker 1: don't have a high enough acidity to leach uh the
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  Speaker 1: materials from pewter plates, and that that also the idea
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  Speaker 1: that lead poisoning isn't something that kills you right on
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  Speaker 1: the spot, is something that sort of builds up in
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  Speaker 1: your system, sort of like slowly feeding somebody ground up
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  Speaker 1: glass in a prison type situation. Does that something people do? Yep,
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  Speaker 1: I've never seen oz. That's the thing. Oh Uh, you're
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  Speaker 1: you're right, though, you're right. The science shows that the
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  Speaker 1: way tomatoes work and the way lead poisoning works, don't
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  Speaker 1: they make it unlikely that that would be the case.
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  Speaker 1: But of course, now if you go into any major
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  Speaker 1: European city, you'll be hard pressed to not see a tomato. Right,
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  Speaker 1: they're super popular. Why is that? Well, all comes down
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  Speaker 1: to the creation of one of diculous histories culinary super heroes.
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  Speaker 1: That's right, the pizza. The pizza. This is what Eric
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Andre would call a brave yet controversial claim. Uh. Pizza
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  Speaker 1: is commonly thought to have began the modern version of
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  Speaker 1: it in Naples in Campania in eighteen eighty nine. So
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  Speaker 1: when the pizza hit the scene, the tomato wrote its
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  Speaker 1: coat tails to widespread populary wrote its crust tails will
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  Speaker 1: work it up. I can't help it, Ben, I'm every
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  Speaker 1: time we're talking about like the thing that the tomato does,
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  Speaker 1: I'm just picturing a little anthropomorphized tomato with a face.
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  Speaker 1: With the poison apple situation, I'm picturing a really mean
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  Speaker 1: looking tomato, you know, with like little diagonal eyebrows, you know,
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  Speaker 1: and maybe some fangs or something. And now with this one,
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  Speaker 1: I'm picturing a very happy, plump tomato riding a pizza's
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  Speaker 1: coat tails. Have you watched many Japanese pizza commercials. I
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  Speaker 1: think I sent a bunch of you guys one time.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Okay, we still have
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  Speaker 1: to do this show. But Japan has amazing pizza. Technology
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't always work out, but it's bold, innovative, and the
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: commercials are astonishing. Tomatoes were thriving across the pond once
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  Speaker 1: the pizza revolution began. But let's go back to North
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  Speaker 1: and South America. The first reference to the tomato in
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  Speaker 1: North American colonies that were British and origin was published
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  Speaker 1: in a book called Botana Loggia, printed in seventeen ten,
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  Speaker 1: and it places the tomato and the Carolinas. The tomato
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  Speaker 1: was like acceptable, kind of thought of as a as
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  Speaker 1: a regional food stuff, but the US wasn't super united.
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  Speaker 1: The word of the tomato would spread the places, or
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't common, but those myths about it would also spread.
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  Speaker 1: Like for weird period of time, a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: knew how to grow tomatoes, but they didn't know what
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  Speaker 1: to do with them once they were grown. They didn't
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  Speaker 1: have like recipes because they thought it was poisonous. There
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: was this really weird incident that many people haven't heard of,
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  Speaker 1: where in addition to thinking tomatoes were poisoned, there was
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  Speaker 1: a a like massive outbreak of hysteria about the danger
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  Speaker 1: of what was called the green tomato worm, the dreaded
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: green tomato worm. Again, I don't know what's going on
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  Speaker 1: with me this morning or afternoon, I guess, but now
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  Speaker 1: I'm anthropomorphizing the dreaded green tomato worm. I'm picturing him
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  Speaker 1: just kind of living inside the happy tomato and turning
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  Speaker 1: and corrupting it from within. And the evil green tomato
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: worm also has slanty eyebrows. He sort of looks like
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  Speaker 1: plankton from SpongeBob maybe a little bit, but he definitely
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  Speaker 1: means us harm. That is, at least according to UH.
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  Speaker 1: A doctor Fuller Um in New York City, who was
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  Speaker 1: quoted in the Syracuse Standard, is saying he found a
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  Speaker 1: five inch tomato worm in his garden, captured it in
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  Speaker 1: a bottle, and did some tests. I would assume because
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  Speaker 1: he described it as being poisonous as a rattlesnake. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And it would throw spittle at its prey like one
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  Speaker 1: of those delafosaurs in Jurassic Park. Uh. This is terrified.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, apparently once your skin would come in contact
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  Speaker 1: with this spittle, it would swell up immediately, um, and
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: then the victim would seize up and die. My goodness,
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  Speaker 1: so much hate for the tomato and so much fear
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  Speaker 1: and trepidation surrounding it, and all that, all that it encompasses.
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  Speaker 1: And for my cryptic fans in the audience, you'll recognize
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  Speaker 1: this has Uh. This has some commonalities with the crypted
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  Speaker 1: known as the Mongolian death worm. Just touching this bad
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  Speaker 1: boy is a death sentence, scary story, captivating, also entirely fictional.
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  Speaker 1: The tomato worm is mainly dangerous to leaves on tomato plants.
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  Speaker 1: That's that's it's primary target more of a hungry little
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  Speaker 1: caterpillar esque figure than deadly venom spitting you know, helld beast.
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  Speaker 1: And unless you are some sort of anthropomorphized leaf on
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  Speaker 1: a tomato plant, you're probably going to be safe. We
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  Speaker 1: owe that discovery to an entomologist by the name of
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Benjamin Walsh. However, the pendulum swings right, so the pendulum
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: of fear corrected, and it swung in the opposite direction
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: way too far, like they tended to. That's how pendulum's
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: gotta work, aren't they. Yeah. So one of the strange
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  Speaker 1: things that happened was that, first off, people had these
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: pretty rigid ideas about the quote unquot right color of food,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and according to Andrew F. Smith, the author of the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Tomato in America, Early History, Culture and Cookery, red was
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  Speaker 1: not not considered the right color for any kind of food.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And people grew them because it was a striking cool color.
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  Speaker 1: But they grew them the way you would grow flowers.
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  Speaker 1: They weren't planning to eat them most of the time.
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  Speaker 1: Until that is, eighteen thirty four, a guy named Dr
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  Speaker 1: John Cook Bennett, who was a physician and amateur botanists,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: went public with his claim that tomatoes had medicinal properties.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: He said that he visited European hospitals and colleges and
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: seeing doctors recommending tomatoes to patients. Eat tomatoes. He said,
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  Speaker 1: they can prevent cholera, they can treat your diarrhea, they
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: can help you with headaches and dyspepsia. People love this
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: good news. People are always interested in health news. Problem
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  Speaker 1: is Dr Bennett is what we would um candidly describe
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: as a quack. Oh yeah, he's like the original kind
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: of like bone broth salesman, you know what I mean,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: or like a lot of those products that you see
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: pedaled by Alex Jones types, you know, or prosperity gospel
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: weirdos that are like doomsday prep kind of buckets of
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: like you know, neutral goo or what have you. But
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  Speaker 1: it does turn out that there, you know, there are
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  Speaker 1: some health benefits to tomatoes, right Ben, I mean they're
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  Speaker 1: high and you know certain vitamins, right, And I think
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: like a pine is something that I think even today,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I saw a study that like apene can increase your
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: sperm count. And so there's like new studies going into
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in the modern day tomato based remedies. It can also
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: help prevent certain types of cancer to like eating tomatoes
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: is not going to kill you. The problem is that
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  Speaker 1: Bennett took it too far. He was one of those
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: folks from the wild age of medical expertise. Like sometimes
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: you'll see tele evangelists who just start calling themselves bishop
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: or something. You can kind of do that same thing
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: if you're very unethical by calling yourself a doctor in
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  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Bennett earned a medical degree in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: but he also started selling medical degrees for ten dollars.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: So he's not he We're just saying he's not the
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: most trustworthy sort. He became a tomato evangelist. This guy
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: was Mr Tomato. He was circulating this transcript of his
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: lecture on how great tomatoes are across Ohio where he
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: resided and throughout the United States. And he also wasn't
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the first he He was a heck of a plagiarist.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: There was another physician, Thomas Sewell, who gave a lecture
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: in eighteen about Virginia farmers growing tomatoes, and the writer
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Horatio Gates Spafford also wrote about how great the tomato
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: was in eighteen thirty one. I picture this guy riding
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: around and one of those kind of caravans like in
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: The Wizard of Oz, you know the dude like with
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the Miracle Juice who ends up being the wizard spoiler
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: alert for for a movie from the thirties, um, you
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: know where it's like what's his name, Mr Fantastics, Magical
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Wizard Juice or whatever it was that his picture that
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: being kind of a similar deal because this dude was
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: clearly you know, pedling this stuff in person um and
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: he sort of marketed it as like a remedy but
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: then it was a condiment though too write like it
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: was a sauce, but then he hired someone to make
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: it into like pillform if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: so check this out. This guy is a flam flam
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: man and no ding on the tomato. He cited his
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: thorough study of ancient text and he said that the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: tomato had always been present in all parts of the world.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: I guess this is for him reading ancient Meso American languages.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: He published recipes for tomatoes and he also you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: he he was a proponent of making tomatoes from Ketchup.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Ketchup could be its own episode because at the time
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Ketchup was still much more I guess closely descended from
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: its ancient ancestor garum. It was maybe fish or mushrooms.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: But this is just an echo and just an iteration
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: of a theme. People have said the same thing about sassaparilla, mustard, dandelions,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and rhubarb. But Benet doubled down. He said, you have
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: to eat tomatoes. You have to America. You have to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: eat tomatoes, like every day. You have to eat a
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: ton of them. And soon, at some point another luminary
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: will come along and take all the beautiful chemical properties
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of this plant, of this fruit and put them to use.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: And that is how the tomato pill craze begins in
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven. Yeah, I sorry, I jumped the gun
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: on out on a little bit then, but I appreciate
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: you talking about how you know, he he would put
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: forth even like these recipes right or he was saying,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: like if you you can know, it's okay to fry
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: them up with butter, or like you know, eat them
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: raw or whatever however you're gonna take in these tomatoes,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: do it. And it really was more of like a
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: health craze and then taking to the next level when
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you are in a situation where it was he didn't
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: really have an f d A like you would today
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: or and certainly not with the same level of rigor.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: And so anyone could just kind of pill something up
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: and then just start slinging those two the masses. And
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: what better way to get the direct and immediate effects
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: of the thing than taking it in pill form. That's like,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that's like a wave of the future too, right, yeah, absolutely,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I mean think about how futuristic this feels. It's sort
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of like our earlier episode on uh watching Children and Incubators. Right,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I can just take a pill. I don't have to
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: grow my own tomatoes. This is where Bennett's motivations come
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: into play, because he doesn't just believe a genius will
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: come mark at this. He looks for one and he
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: targets another cod artist, a man named Archibald Miles, which
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: is definitely like a a sleazy con artist name in
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: something like Oklahoma or whatever. He he approaches this guy
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and he says, look, I want you to be the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: face of these tomato pills. So they make Dr Miles
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: is compound extract of tomato, and they're on a pr blitz. Uh.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Miles claims that his pills have been scientifically tested and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: developed through years of R and D to treat everything
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: from like a stomach ache to STDs like syphilis. None
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of this is true, by the way, but people love
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: it and they see the ads and they want to
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: buy them. And then someone else, a guy named Dr
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: oh a eye named guy Dr Guy Are Phelps, who
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: is actually a physician who did go to Yale, he
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: starts selling his own version. He calls them compound tomato pills,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and he promises the same largely bs results. Miles loses
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: his mind and there's like this like tomato pill war begins,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: that's the best thing to call it. There's an anonymous
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: diet tribe that's released in a New York paper that
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: is denouncing Guy Phelps his pills and saying they're a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: baseless imitation. You know, all true medical minds know that
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: the only real tomato pill is Dr Miles his compound
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: extract of tomato. That's no wonder we needed the FDA
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: so desperately, which didn't come around until nineteen o six.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: So it was absolutely the wild West of these kind
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: of like bold claims, and it was really just like
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: almost like a war of marketing right of, like pr
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: That's literally all it was, because okay, again, sure there's
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: probably some medicinal value to tomatoes in the same way
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: like taking a vitamin supplement might you know, give you
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: some beneficial results, but it's certainly not going to cure
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: all that ails you in the way that this uh
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: marketing blitz would have you think. And it was massive.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Miles had like really good contacts and connections in retail
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: that went from like the Gulf Coast all the way
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: to Canada, and he didn't really appreciate some of these
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: little kind of startups that were coming and trying to
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: eat his lunch. And so he had an editorial sent
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: into the New York Journal of Commerce that he kind
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: of you know, behind the scenes, wrote basically that claimed
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that Phelps was an absolute quack and a charlatan and
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: not to be trusted. Um. And then Phelps countered in
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: this like pr war, saying that Miles quote had about
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: as much claimed the title of doctor as my horse
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: and no more are very smart horse for the very
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: smart horse, and essentially accused him of stealing his brilliant,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you know, tomato pill formula. M hmmm. And then of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: course Miles continues the war. He issues endorsements purporting to
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: be from other people that say his pills are the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: original and all the other tomato pills are frauds, which
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: is funny because even if his pills the original to
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: his fraudulent uh, he publishes another article saying that, Okay, yeah, Phelps,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: his pills are a little cheaper, but that's evidence that
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: they don't even contain tomatoes. Friends and neighbors, ladies and gentlemen,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: do not let this con artist leave you a straight Phelps,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: replied by Colling Miles. Unjust and unmanly, and for two years,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the reading public of the United States, and surely the
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: newspaper editors love this, and they're just like doubling down
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: there doing the opposite of what you're supposed to do
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: with journalism. They're probably wishly, increasingly fanciful and crazy claims
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: about the power of the one true tomato pill, whichever
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: it may be. But that's when the news brokenell. That's
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: when people learned that neither pill actually contained any tomatoes.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny to see that now, because obviously
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: tomatoes are like at every corner store, they're ubiquitous. But
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Ben the whole point of this is that, like tomatoes
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: were kind of a novelty at the time, so they
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: were there was a lot of mystery behind them. You know,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: people weren't eating tomatoes. It was not a staple food
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: in the country. So that's why this became such a
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: craze because they weren't getting it in the other way.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So I'm wondering too, if like we're tomatoes maybe more
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: expensive because because they weren't, you know, they were a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: little more of a niche kind of crop. Or I'm
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: just wondering, like why, why, why not why not include
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: any tomato in the pill? I just that doesn't understand
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: like the benefit there if they're really trying to preach
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the gospel of the tomato. But as they knew, it
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: was malarkey. It was bananas, I should say bananas, but
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: they knew. They knew these pills were a bad tomato
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: from the beginning. So every single tomato pill that was
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: analyzed included not a trace of the plant. And they
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: were still effective in one way because they were placebos,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: but they weren't harmful placebos. It's not like they included
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: ingredients that could really hurt you. But they did have
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: some medicinal effect as laxatives. So the claim, the way
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: they would frame this claim is that taking these pills
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: would purify the patient's blood because it would have you
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: doing the two steps all the way the restroom multiple
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: times to day, and of course having an excess of
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: laxatives can all so have delatorious effects. You know, did
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: we ever do a show on Louis Armstrong's other career
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: as a laxative salesman? Did we mention that? No? We
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: we did talk about when he got busted at the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: airport for smuggling weed in his tropic case. That was cool.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: And I believe we've talked about yogurt enemas and that
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: whole crazy uh kind of Kellogg, right, whether it was
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: the guy that the movie Roade Dwellville was based on,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and he really was into all of these holistic kind
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: of healing, which seems to have roots in a lot
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of this kind of thinking, I think he believed it. Uh.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: These folks definitely seem like they were just trying to
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: make a quick buck, whereas Kellogg, I believe John Harvey
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: did believe in the snake oil that he was peddling. Yeah,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and and uh, Louis Armstrong. You just go to your
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: search browser of choice and check out Louis Armstrong laxatives.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: It's nuts. He was a spokesperson for some laxative companies. Anyhow,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: you're probably wondering why don't I have tomato pills now? Well,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the answer is that the battle ended seemingly out of
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the blue in eighteen thirty nine. We still don't know
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: what happened, but behind the scenes, historians think that Phelps
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: and Miles either came to an agreement or they realized
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: that the jig was up and they wouldn't you know,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: maybe they made enough money. Tomato pills were still sold,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: but the national advertising campaigns ended in spring for Phelps
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: and in summer for Miles, and Miles went on to
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: become a real estate investor, but he still described himself
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: as a physician. Phelps founded a life insurance company in
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Connecticut and continued selling his pills, but without national networking
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: right or infrastructure into the early eighteen fifties, and although
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the buzz about tomato pills started to die down, the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: tomato was now solidified in the zeitgeist of the US. Yeah,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I mean we could, I could. There's so many you know,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Italian cuisine for example, the uh okay, let's let me
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: back up a step just I think the popularization of
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: more um, let's just say universal cuisine is a relatively
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: new thing because it required ability to communicate in the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: ability to kind of share ideas from around the world,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and so much amazing cuisine that I think, you know,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: people love and depend on, um that have obviously been
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: commodified and turned into chain restaurants like Olive Garden and such.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Uh so much tomato involved in all of these things,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: from pasta sauces to you know, pizza bases, to Mexican food,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: I mean salsa for example. There's so many incredible cuisine
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: that really depend on tomato. And even beyond that, just
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: things like that are very American, like stews and fried
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: green tomatoes and like Southern cooking, lots of that, like
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: suck a tash, you know, tomatoes and corn and black
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: eyed peas and all of that really became a very
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: American tradition. So yeah, it absolutely caught on in the zeitgeist.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Um it became a side dish people like them, just
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: raw with a little salt and pepper on it, with
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: eggs and meat and fish as a side. Um, tomato
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: pie is a thing who Josh Faine, one of our colleagues,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: who's an amazing editor and producer. UM with our our
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: compatriot Matt Frederick's team, UM always posted this amazing tomato
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: pie that he makes or tarts. Obviously an important base
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: for soups. Yeah, that's right. And people started praising the
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: adaptability and versatility of the tomato. You can have it
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: as a part of any given meal, and by the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: early eighteen fifties, millions of bushels of tomatoes were grown
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: in New England alone. And it reminds me of one
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: story we haven't mentioned today because it's somewhat apocryphal. There's
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: there's this old tale that a guy named Colonel Robert
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Gibbon Johnson of Salem, New Jersey, brought the tomato home
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: from abroad in eighteen o eight and people still considered
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: back at that time, people still considered it ornamental rather
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: than a food stuff. And so on September, so the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: story goes, he said, I'm going to prove that the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: tomato is not poisonous and it can be safely eaten.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So he stood on the steps of the Salem courthouse
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and ate an entire basket of tomatoes while people gathered
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: to watch him get sick and die. When he didn't die,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: apparently I've sold the tomato again. That's not you know
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: that that's not solidly proven, but it's a great story,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I guess. For our epilogue, we can say, you know,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of the things that we brought up as
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: far as health benefits are true. Tomatoes can decrease your
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: risk of osteoporosis of several types of cancer, and as
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: you said and old, they're rich in lecopine. Yeah, And
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: like I said, I did see a study just in
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the news today, um where it's being tested for improving
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: sperm count and and there are some potential real benefits there,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: so it's not all bs. And also, you know, I
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: get why people were a little distrustful of the tomato
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: in its raw form. I certainly was. I didn't like
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: raw tomatoes until I was well into my like twenties, honestly,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: and I still not something I would just eat a
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: slice of on its own, But I'm getting there. I
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: really do like it on a salad now, I like
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: you obviously on burgers and stuff. And I'm just a
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: huge fan of like cooking them down to make you know,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: really really good ragou and and all that. And I
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: know that you you're fond of that too, Ben, You're
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: a you're a cooking man. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: also just a nice heirloom tomato with a little bit
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: of salt and pepper, you know, when they're in season.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing I always try to explain to people,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: if a food seems acceptable to you now. And it
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: feels ridiculous to imagine people being scared of tomatoes in
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the past. Remember they've never seen one before, you know,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: they this was their first time, so of course it's weird,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and you've heard all these myths about it. Uh. I
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: always like the cheese comparison. I was talking to some
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of my friends who were from Southeast Asia recently, and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: just imagine this. If you've never seen cheese before and
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: someone describes it to you and then and then ask
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: if you want to try it, bear with me, bear
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: with you there was the mold is the good part
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: what you want? So so it's weird, you know, we
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: have to we have to have an open mind. Um,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: you know. The last thing I have to say about
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: this is we mentioned astute listeners. All our listeners are astute.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: We mentioned something about witchcraft and werewolves from that Atlas
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Obscura article. Uh, this goes back to the man drake
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: confusion because man drake, nightshade, henbane and so on are
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: pretty close botanical relatives of the tomato. There was this
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: whole thing about about some of these night shade like
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: things is being used in which is brew for their broomsticks,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: which we covered it in earlier episode, or being used
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: to transform people into wolves. So it's possible that there
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: were Europeans who were like, try a tomato, Uh, I
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: might get branded a which so luckily, luckily, we have
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: proven that eating a tomato does not make you a
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: we're a wolf. Well, let's not forget the place that
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the tomato holds in terms of pillory ing folks that
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: are like in the stocks or whatever, either like a
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: crime or just bad stand up comedy or like, you know,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: rotten tomatoes because they squish. There's a whole website called
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Rotten Tomatoes that devoted to talking trash about movies. So
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: it's definitely got an interesting role in that side of
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: pop culture as well. But don't take our word for it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You can read up more about tomatoes on this fantastic
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: mental fluss article when tomatoes were marketed as medicine, or
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the ass forementioned Atlas Obscure article about that. It goes
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: a lot more into tomatoes roles in Witchcraft and and
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: were Wolfrey In the meantime, huge thanks to producer Casey
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Pegraham joining Christopher Hasciotas in the Clouds in Spirit this time.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Hopefully he's back very soon. Um he he is on
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: adventures as you would say, Ben, Big thanks to Christopher
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Hasciotas hopefully keeping good watch on top producer Casey Pegraham
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: in the spirit realm Um Alex Williams who composed our theme,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and as always, huge thanks to our own rotten Tomato
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland a k a. The Quister. I really enjoying this.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I've got this new habit where I'm just trying to
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: make topical references to him in the thank you. We'll
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: see if it works out. Also big big thanks to
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: our own main man research wise Gabe l who is
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: hopefully snacking on a tomato sandwich right now. Weird story no,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: I have a close friend person named Diana Brown who
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: might be listening to this episode today. Who introduced me
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: to tomato sandwich is there's just tomatoes and mayonnaise. I
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: think it's like the weirdest thing ever. I'm just not
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: on board with it. What why not just add the
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: bacon and make it a b l T I would
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: just see it? Why stop? Like, why stop halfway? Anyway,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this episode. We want to hear
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: your weird food history stories. Also shout out to for
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: anyone who loves reading about the history of food. Mark
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Kurlansky wrote a great book called Salt, who wrote another
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: great book called cod Let's see if we can get
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: them to write some books about vegetables in the future.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.