Have you ever wondered if there are things about tomatoes that you never knew of? It is very popular in salads and yet I am pretty sure, you don’t know a few things about it. So in this article, we’ve listed seven things you might not know about tomatoes.
Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) are an indigenous South American fruit of the nightshade family. Tomatoes, in their many varieties, are grown in many parts of the world with mild winters and warm summers. Tomatoes come in many shapes and sizes, with plum, tomberry, cherry, beefsteak, and grape tomatoes among the most well-known.
Table of Contents
Tomatoes are a great source of vitamin C and potassium, and they have few calories. They have a lot of healthy antioxidants, including lycopene, which gives tomatoes their red color. While it is botanically classified as a fruit, it is more commonly used and prepared as a vegetable. A vegetable, fruit, or both to you?
What Are The Things About Tomatoes That You Think You Don’t Know Yet?
1. Tomatoes are botanically classified as a fruit
Tomatoes are classified as fruits according to botany because they develop from flowers and produce edible seeds. The Supreme Court of the United States, however, decided in 1893 that, because of its culinary applications, it should be classified as a vegetable. Furthermore, nutritionists classify it as a vegetable. To sum up, it’s a fruit that’s treated like a vegetable.
2. Tomatoes Come in a Variety of Colors
Tomatoes come in a variety of colors besides red, you know. Rather, they can be any color, from yellow to pink to purple to black to white. Due to quality standards, supermarkets typically only stock red tomatoes, but if you visit a farm shop or greengrocer, you may be able to find a wider variety of colors.
3. Tomatoes were once considered poisonous
Pewter plates used by European nobility in the 1800s contained lead. Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous because their acidity drew out the poison and made them taste bad when eaten from these plates. This is also why audience members in ancient theaters threw tomatoes at underperforming actors.
4. Every year, more than 40,000 people participate in the tomato fight.
Every year on the last Wednesday of August, the town of Buol, located in the province of Valencia in Spain, hosts La Tomatina, a festival known for its food fights. La Tomatina is an annual festival that began as a street brawl and has since become an international phenomenon, resulting in the destruction of over 150,000 tomatoes and the staining of the street in red.
5. The Tomato Space Program
Tomatoes have actually been to space. In the “Tomatosphere I,” “Tomatosphere II,” “Tomatosphere III,” and “Tomatosphere IV” experiments, 600,000 tomato seeds were sent to the International Space Station and subsequently grown in classrooms across Canada. These studies were conducted because scientists were curious about how spaceflight might affect the development of seeds on Earth.
6. Tomatoes didn’t come from Italy
The small-fruited wild tomato, which originated in Peru, was selectively bred by the Aztecs for larger fruits around 700 AD. The tomato’s scientific name, Lycopersicon lycopersicum, translates to “wolf peach,” while its Aztec name means “plump thing with a navel.”
7. Tomatoes are good for your heart
Tomatoes are associated with improved cardiovascular and cognitive health due to their anti-inflammatory properties. Potassium, which is abundant in tomatoes, has been linked to bringing down hypertension. As a result, this is counterproductive in terms of avoiding heart problems.
What you knew about tomatoes before is likely to have been greatly expanded upon now. Please share your thoughts on this with me.
Do you think they’re fruit? Or a vegetable? Culinary practices frequently stretch the boundaries of what we know to be fruits and vegetables according to scientific definitions.
As it turns out, many plants we eat as vegetables are in fact fruits. There is, however, one point on which we could all agree: a good tomato has the flavor of a tomato that has basked in the sun all day.
Did you find this helpful? Let us know in the comments below.
You can also visit our Facebook and YouTube pages to know more about plants and their health benefits.
You might also like:
4 thoughts on “7 Incredible Things About Tomatoes You Never Knew”