Instead of staying focused on writing my mother’s memoir, I’ve been distracted by the plight of the tomato. 
This may seem odd, when there’s so much going on in the world – ongoing fighting in Libya, unrest in Egypt over Mubarek’s trial, starvation of unfathomable proportions in Somalia- and yet, the tomato’s downfall says a lot about where we are heading as a human race.
When I read \”How we ruined the tomato\” in Maclean’s magazine, a review of Barry Estabrook’s tell-all book, Tomatoland I was stunned. I learned that producers of this lovely fruit are altering it by blasting the unripened green balls with ethylene, turning them red before their time. No wonder we consumers end up with a bland, no tasteless addition to our meals.
It wasn’t that long ago, that a tomato tasted like a tomato. My mother’s garden, which occupied half a city lot, produced tomatoes you could eat like an apple. All you needed was a little bit of salt to enhance its already delicious flavor. The taste of tomato, along with running barefoot in the grass, was that slice of summer I miss today.
How did we allow this to happen? I feel like I’ve been a partner to some crime, even though it’s all been done behind my back in the name of greed. When I look at the big picture, I feel responsible. And yet, I love buying those uniformly red and round globes. They promise so much. When I buy them, I don’t see the migrant workers who toil for wages that haven’t changed in 30 years. I overlook the fact that 100 pesticides used to grow these perfect specimens pollute our soil and air. Oh yeah, and then there’s the other fact that a large percentage of the nutrients nature endowed this fruit with has been stripped away. It doesn’t matter, does it? I can always buy vitamins over the counter to make up for it. Drug companies need our business, too.
I tell myself, I’m not buying my tomatoes from some traveling snake oil salesmen who promised a lot but left his customers cheated. Or am I?
