Читать книгу The End of Food - Thomas F. Pawlick - Страница 7

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Red Tennis Balls

THE TOMATO WAS THE LAST STRAW. That’s sort of a mixed metaphor, but how else can you say it?

I wanted to make a salad, a simple thing, just lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, some parsley, add a can of tuna, and toss it in vinegar and oil: a quick meal, so I could get to work on the stuff I’d brought home from the office.

But when I went to slice the tomato, it was too hard.

Red, but too hard for eating. A tomato should be just starting to get soft and juicy for the flavor to be there. Hard tomatoes, unless you’re frying them green southern-style, are bland and tasteless. They shouldn’t crunch when you eat them.

Okay, pick another one out of the batch. I’d bought four at the supermarket the day before and one of the others would be ripe.

I squeezed the second one. It was hard too. So were the third and the fourth. I looked at them. They were all bright red, not green. Yet they seemed nearly as tough and crunchy as so many raw potatoes.

Oh well. Put them back on the counter. In a day or two they’d be ripe enough.

But a day or two later, they weren’t.

A week later, they were still hard.

So I put them on the windowsill, directly in the sun, to ripen. Two, three days went by, then a week.

Still hard.

This isn’t possible, I thought. Tomatoes are supposed to ripen in the sun. They are supposed to get soft and juicy so that when you slice them for your salad they taste yummy.

Not these tomatoes.

I’m a stubborn man. I was determined that no mere vegetables (actually tomatoes are classed as “berry fruits”) would get the best of me. I would outwait them, at least for a little longer.

But it did no good. They were as red as little fire engines when I’d picked them off the supermarket shelf and taken them home. But all these days later they were still not ripe. They looked ripe. No tomato could look riper. But that was all. They were not soft and juicy, rich with flavor as they ought to be after all that sunlight and patience.

One had a tiny dark spot, where some sort of rot may have been starting, and another had mold around the mark where the stem broke off, but it still wasn’t soft.

Frustrated, I took one and went outside, where a wooden board fence separated the back patio of my city condo from my neighbor’s. You hard little devil, I thought. I’m going to do with you what vaudeville audiences used to do with tomatoes. I threw it against the fence, expecting it to splatter like tomatoes used to splatter on singers with off-key voices and stand-up comics who told bad jokes.

It bounced off, undamaged, like a not-very-springy, red tennis ball.

I picked it up and threw it again, this time hard. It hit the fence, cracked—but did not splatter. When I looked inside, I found that some of the seeds inside the tomato had actually sprouted.

And that was the last straw, or tennis ball, or tomato.

My attention was well and truly fixed. As Sherlock Holmes would put it, the game—in this case the berry fruit—was afoot. Mixed metaphor number two.

A SHELTERED LIFE

By way of explanation here, so you won’t think of me as a fanatic: At the time I met these rubbery North American supermarket tomatoes I’d just returned from six years of living in Italy, where the tomato is a kind of dietary deity. Although supermarkets exist in places like Rome or Milano, they—or at least their fresh produce sections— haven’t really caught the average food-worshiping Italian’s fancy. Most people still buy fruit and vegetables in open, neighborhood farmers’ markets, where produce is displayed in mind-boggling variety under colorful awnings, out in the sunny piazza. The quality is . . . mama mia! Who can describe?

Before that our family lived on a small farm in rural Canada, where we raised our own home-garden tomatoes, picked them off the vine, and ate them fresh in the field.

It had been a sheltered life. This episode with the tennis balls was a shock.

On Saturday, I went back to the supermarket and gave the tomato shelf a closer look. There were three bins of tomatoes: one labeled “field grown,” another “greenhouse,” and a third full of elongated pasta tomatoes. The greenhouse tomatoes looked so exactly alike—all the same size, perfectly round and all exactly the same, uniform red color—that it was almost unreal, like maybe they were wax tomatoes cast from the same mold for decorative display.

But they weren’t wax.

The pasta tomatoes also looked exactly like each other: same size, same shape, precisely the same color, like tiny Italian soldiers in red uniforms.

Only the field tomatoes had any differences. They were the same size and shape, but some had a slight hint of yellow or green around the stem scar, where others were totally red. I bought some of the greenhouse and some of the field tomatoes, and took them home.

Both types were hard, and by now I knew better than to hope for any changes. I cut them up for salad, the knife crunching through their tough outer walls (what botanists call the pericarp wall). I was surprised by how thick these were, and went for a ruler: more than three-eighths of an inch. In a later trip, to a different supermarket, I found one with walls just short of half an inch thick. The greenhouse tomatoes tended to be thinner.

When I ate them … well, let’s just say they tasted vaguely like tomatoes.

But comparing them to what the Romans eat, or to what our garden used to produce every summer, was like comparing carbonated cat pee to a rich, foaming Guinness stout. They were from a different planet. A hard, red, rather bleak planet.

Why? What had happened to these tomatoes?

It took some searching—through libraries, the Internet and the horticulture faculties of several universities—but eventually a story came together: the story of the slow ruination not only of the North American tomato, but of most of the good, tasty, nourishing food of all kinds that Americans and Canadians once ate, and took for granted.

But more on that later. Let’s stick with tomatoes for now.

FOOD TABLES

Periodically, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) publishes a set of tables, generally referred to as “food tables,” although different versions have had different formal titles. These list a wide variety of foods, from meat, fish, and grain to fruits and vegetables, giving measures of their actual content in terms of vitamins, minerals, protein, and other substances that can play a part in the human diet. Researchers and specialists in nutrition refer to them frequently as a base measure for making general comparisons.

The first of these was put out by the USDA’s Dr. W. O. Atwater, a pioneering food researcher assisted by fellow scientist Charles D. Woods, under the title The Chemical Composition of American Food Materials (1896)¹. This early work, completely superseded by later research, looked at a relatively small number of foods, and tested for an even smaller number of ingredients. Only six measures in it compare roughly with later, much more detailed tables for untreated (namely, not peeled, canned, or otherwise processed) tomatoes. As Atwater’s sample sizes may have been different than those used today, accurate comparison is actually impossible.

Later USDA publications, however, generally give figures for either “100 grams of edible portion” of the food in question, or for the nutrients in one pound of a given food item. Thus, they can be compared. And comparisons–even between fairly recent tables–are more than enlightening. They are shocking.

The most recent set of tables, posted on the USDA website for 2002, is titled USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 15.² Comparing the figures in it with those given in USDA Agriculture Handbook No. 8: Composition of Foods, published in 1963,³ shows that 100 grams of today’s average red, ripe whole tomato contain 22.7 percent less protein than a tomato would have if purchased by American shoppers in the year President John Kennedy was murdered in Dallas.

The main reason for including tomatoes in our diets, of course, is not for their raw protein value, but because they are normally supposed to be rich in vitamins A and C, in potassium, phosphorus, iron, and calcium, as well as in the possibly cancer-suppressing lycopene. Lycopene is a “carotenoid,” the group of yellow, orange, and red plant pigments that give carrots, watermelons, and tomatoes their colors. Some carotenoids are “precursors” of vitamin A, which is to say they help produce it as a result of chemical reactions in human organs like the liver. While lycopene isn’t an actual vitamin A precursor, it is a powerful antioxidant that “seems to inhibit the reproduction of cancer cells.”⁴ Unfortunately, the USDA food tables don’t measure lycopene.

They do measure vitamin A, however, a nutrient which is needed by the human body to maintain good eyesight as well as normal sexual reproductive health and body growth. And they measure vitamin C, required to prevent a variety of diseases, from scurvy to the common cold, to control stress, to maintain normal arteries, and to help heal cuts and wounds.

Tomatoes were once among the best sources of these vitamins. But 100 grams of today’s fresh tomato contain 30.7 percent less Vitamin A and 16.9 percent less Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) than its 1963 counterpart. It also has fully 61.5 percent less calcium (required to maintain strong 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.

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 to think, then concluded: “no, you’ve got quite a bit of it.”

Processing tomato experts had a somewhat different list. In California, the top characteristics were:

1. yield (in pounds per acre)

2. viscosity or thickness (which governs how much of a product can be made from a pound of the given tomato’s paste)

3. amount of soluble and insoluble solids in the fruit

4. firmness (ability to withstand rough handling during mechanical harvesting)

5. uniformity of color

6. disease resistance

7. heat and cold tolerance (so as to continue producing at the early and late ends of the season)

I also asked these experts if any other characteristics were important, if we’d left any out. “No,” said one. “It does get to be end product-driven.”

No one mentioned the two characteristics that any ordinary consumer would likely put at the top of his or her list, namely: flavor and nutritional content. These were simply not there, not important, not even worth mentioning.

For the modern, corporate food industry—whose needs these university horticulturists’ research serves—how a food item tastes and whether or not it is nourishing for human beings appear not to be issues. They aren’t even discussed.

A quick survey of various websites where university horticultural researchers report the results of field trials of plant varieties gave the same result. There were reports of trials at a number of universities, mostly in the south and midwest. The typical list of qualities tested for in fresh market tomatoes included “yield, earliness, fruit size, fruit resistance to cracking, firmness, acidity, and plant tolerance/resistance to diseases.”¹⁸ Flavor and nutritional value were almost never mentioned.

From every indication, if a tomato variety were developed that was perfectly uniform in shape and size, that grew fast in both heat and cold, that ripened at exactly the same moment every season, that had an outer layer as tough as brake lining, and that yielded massive amounts per acre–but which had no flavor whatsoever, and absolutely no nutritional value–the industry would likely welcome it like the Second Coming of Christ. And consumers, you and I, would be expected to buy the things or just bloody well go hungry.

Of course, even if we bought them and ate them, we would still be “going hungry,” because we’d have received very little nutrition.

But hey, that’s capitalism, eh?

As for flavor, I wasn’t just imagining that the fresh market supermarket tomatoes I’d bought were less tasty than those I’d eaten in Italy, or taken from my home garden years ago. According to the textbook Economic Botany: Plants in Our World:

Tomatoes to be sold as fresh grocery store produce are picked before they are mature or when they are only beginning to turn colorful and then are ripened at the time of selling. Fruits that have been picked green are tough because of a lack of the proper ethylene-generated maturation, or they are mushy because the intercellular matrix deteriorates. They also lack the sugar that accumulates very rapidly at the peak of ripening when tomatoes are left on the vine....Ethylene [is] a plant hormone that is responsible for the series of events that lead to the final color change, softening, and flavor production characteristic of natural ripening. ¹⁹

So, not only were my store tomatoes deliberately bred to be tough to withstand the bouncing of long range transport, they were rendered still tougher by picking them when green. Tough and tasteless.

By “ripened at the time of selling,” the textbook was referring to the practice of artificially gassing the green tomatoes with ethylene during or just after transport in special “ripening rooms.” This gives them a suddenly red color, making them look good on the shelf, but doesn’t appear to have the same effect as natural ripening in terms of producing flavor and texture.

Refrigeration during transport has an even more negative effect. According to a USDA Agricultural Research Service study of the effects of refrigeration on tomato flavor, “chilling the fruit reduced ripe aroma, sweetness, and general tomato flavor, while increasing sourness and reducing sweetness. This was supported by measured changes in aroma compounds, sugars, and acids.”²⁰

Those little red tennis balls had begun to educate me. They had also begun to really annoy me. I wanted to know more about the system that was doing this. I wasn’t about to take it lying down.

Neither should you. And you don’t have to. There are alternatives, which we will discuss in later chapters, after some of the other aspects of our modern, corporate North American food system have been described.