Movements and Makings of Tomato

Abstract

Most of the time, when I cook and when I eat, there it is: tomato. I hold it, I cut it, I open up cans of it, I shake it out of bottles; I slice it, spear it, scoop it, suck up its juice, swallow down its flavours. I reckon I probably eat tomatoes every single day: It is in the salads, soups, sauces, and sandwiches that comprise the cornerstones of my diet. 1 The everydayness of the tomato is, for me, given.Tomato is also very strange: a fruit -that is, a berry -eaten as vegetable; 2 a selfpollinating plant cultivated over decades of human interaction, or desire; 3 a plant transplanted from the Americas and yet (still, today) entangled in (neo-)imperial relations of slavery. When I eat tomato, I am embodying all these relations in my practices of the everyday.Thinking tomato in this way also entails thinking about tomato as ingredient. The term 'ingredient' denotes foods or substances that are combined to make a particular dish, or is used to mean a component or part of something. As a substance or food that can be combined, tomato thus circumvents issues of cultural appropriation: Whilst particular dishes might be subject to appropriation, as such it is the practicesembodied doings -that are appropriated, rather than 'raw' substances. Further, coming to terms with tomato as a component or part of something -the second meaning of ingredient -means grappling with tomato through its various historical, social, material, agricultural, imperial, and environmental relations. As Wiebke Beushausen et al. succinctly note, "[f]ood is at once a material good and a means of symbolic representation" (2014, 11).The tomato, in the form we know it today, is the product of over 500 years of domestication. As Adam Wickberg observes, following Alfred W. Crosby, "it is hard 1 I am not alone in my consumption of tomatoes -consumption of tomatoes in Germany, where I live and write this piece, is currently at just over 27 kg/person/annum, with an increase of around 5 kg/person/annum over the last 10 years (statista.de). 2 As Eugene N. Anderson points out, they are "berries to the botanist but not to the diner" (2005, 117). Botanically, tomatoes should be with the pears, pineapples, and pomegranates, not with the potatoes, pumpkins, and parsnips. Whilst a law case in the US in 1893 ruled that they should be considered vegetables, this was a tariff concern and not a biological breakthrough (CDPH 2007, 3). 3 This has not always been the case, as the designation "devil's fruit" would suggest. Perhaps due to people eating the stems or leaves (which are often considered slightly toxic due to presences of tomatine and solanine [but see McGee 2009]), tomatoes took a while to enter the diets of the West (Smith 2001, x; and below). The tomato's various names attest to various fascinations. In South Tyrol and Austria, Paradeiser or Paradiesapfel: "Paradise" or "apple of paradise;" and in France, pomme d'amour, "the apple of love." Assumptions and attributionsthe meanings carried by Solanum lycopersicum are many, and often contradictory.