10 Fun Facts About Tomatoes! — I like produce. I like to grow it. And I like to eat it. I also like to create recipes with it. I’m also kind of a nerd and like to get to know my produce. I like learning new or fun tidbits of info about the produce I’m growing/eating/baking. If you’re a weirdo like me then buckle up for this new series as I dive into a plethora of produce facts and share them with you.
10 Fun Facts About Tomatoes!
From a botanical perspective, a tomato is a fruit. In the 1800s it was classified as a vegetable by the government so it could be taxed under custom regulations.
The Guinness Book of World Records holder for world’s most actively producing tomato tree was actually grown at Walt Disney World in their experimental greenhouse. It produced over 32,000 tomatoes in the first 16 months after it was planted. Holy tomatoes, batman!
93% of gardens in America contain tomatoes.
That means that pretty much every gardener dabbles in tomato growing!
The La Tomatina Festival is a festival in Spain that is basically just one big tomato fight. 150,000 tomatoes are thrown each year in August during the World’s Largest Tomato Fight that includes a week long festival, fireworks and a paella cooking contest as well!
The name tomato comes from Lycopersicon lycopersicum, which translates to “wolf peach.” I’m totally calling them wolf peaches now.
Until 1820, North Americans believed that tomatoes were poisonous and would therefore not eat them, perhaps because the plants resembled deadly nightshade. Can you imagine?
The USDA says Americans eat about 23 pounds of tomatoes per person every year. About half of that comes in the form of ketchup and tomato sauce! I’m not surprised about that at all! We love our ketchup!
Tomato juice is the official state drink and the tomato is the official state fruit of Ohio. New Jersey calls the tomato its state vegetable. Arkansas calls tomatoes both their state fruit and the state vegetable. Clearly they are tomato obsessed, which you’d think those honors would be reserved for Florida, since they grown more tomatoes than any other state!
There are over here are 10,000 varieties of tomatoes. What’s your favorite? {Mine are Sun Gold and Purple Cherokee}
With 60 million tons produced per year, tomatoes are the world’s most popular fruit, followed by bananas, apples, oranges and watermelons respectively.
Had you heard any of those fun facts before? Do you have any of your own to add? Is there a particular produce item you want to know more about? I take requests!
Grow on,
~Mavis
P.S. In case you were wondering, my favorite thing to do with tomatoes is to make my copy cat verison of Costco’s salsa!
samantha says
Love your photos! Love tomatoes! Here’s a recipe I used yesterday to use up some corn and tomatoes from our garden and friends garden:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/pesto-corn-salad-with-shrimp/
Melinda W says
Tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, as are white (not yam/sweet) potatoes, peppers, and eggplant. If you’ve got a nightshade allergy, they can cause some pretty bad reactions. Luckily I’m not allergic since I think I’ve eaten my body weight in tomatoes this summer, and put ketchup on everything. My plants didn’t do great this year, so luckily I found a local Mennonite farm selling beautiful ones for $10 per 25 pound box.
E in Upstate NY says
My SIL follows the philosophy that your blood type dictates which foods you should and shouldn’t eat. For her, the nightshade family is not her group.
Mary Ann says
I love ketchup and a good pasta/pizza sauce, but I really don’t like raw tomatoes. I will put a few cherry tomatoes on a salad during the summer when I’m growing tomatoes for my husband, but I have to make myself eat them.
I also hate the smell of tomato plants and itch like crazy after reaching into the plants to harvest. But my husband loves tomatoes so much that I grow them for him (and friends & family) every year.
Margaret Hudgins says
I think you are a wonderful selfless person to do all that for your husband when you don’t like or eat much of tomatoes yourself. You must love him very much. I applaud you Mary Ann.
Linda says
I like grape tomatoes because they make such an easy snack. They would be good on one of your pickety platters.
Cheri Holbert says
Cooking tomatoes will give you the most of the powerful antioxidant lycopene found in tomaatoes
Mel says
Our favorite larger tomato is Summer Cider, but White Currant tomatoes are my new favorite cherry variety. The plant must be 10 feet long in all directions by now, and they’re super sweet and absolutely prolific. They are delicate, so you have to cut their stems rather than simply pick them, but they are worth it. One plant has supplied us and several friends for weeks now.
Joyce Derhousoff Tucker says
I grow red currant tomatoes (2 varieties this year Candyland and Tess’s Land Race). I just made a tomato sauce from them.. Such a naturally sweet sauce! Incredible! They’re extremely prolific. the plants are absolutely huge with long tresses of tiny tomatoes… I took 4 colanders out to the garden, and my currant tomato plants filled all the containers. My cherry tomatoes are doing well also.. I grow Jelly Bean, Sun Cherry Extra Sweet, and Sugar Rush.. Time to share the cherries with my neighbors!
I also grow Celebrity, and Original Goliath (a Beefsteak type) for fresh eating and canning. I started picking ripe tomatoes from these plants just over two weeks ago.. I’m also testing two varieties of Roma tomato. Both are hybrids. One is Big Mama, the other is Gladiator. Both plants are exceeding my expectations.. Even though the Big Mama’s leaves started curling early in the season, it’s loaded with crazy big Roma type tomatoes.. I’ve started picking the ripe Romas. I’m going to get a much larger crop than expected. I don’t know how they taste yet.. The Romas will be canned as sauce…Here in Eastern Washington, my tomatoes are ripening early this year…
Shari Harniss says
Hello Mavis,
I have a request for fun facts veggie. Rutabagas. I adore them. They taste so buttery and slightly sweet. Do you cook them?
Diane says
I’ve read that tomatoes were thought to be poisonous because they commonly used pewter plates back then and the acidity of the tomatoes would leach out lead. They thought the tomatoes made them sick but it was actually lead poisoning.
E in Upstate NY says
It was George Washington Carver who through his research convinced people that tomatoes were not poisonous. Until that, they were grown as pretty plants.