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I like to think I’m immune to the bullshit. That the hype doesn’t get to me like the rest of you animals. I don’t believe sharks are hunting people for that week every year when there’s no news so they report some ungodly number of shark attacks. I don’t live my life in fear of what plastics ‘might’ be doing to my brain chemistry. And I’ve never once been shocked or disgusted to find out the bacteria counts on a dollar bill. I don’t fall for the media spin.

And yet when I read that 300 people had gotten sick from salmonella infected tomatoes I thought “Oh shit, no salsa tonight.” I mean, 300 is a lot right? And salmonella is most likely caused by human fecal matter. I guess someone hated to waste fertilizer.

So I thought that I should help everyone out during this epidemic. In order to prevent mass riots I would create a map showing who was living in the danger zone. That way those people could evacuate to tomato safe houses where councilors would be available.

So here’s the map I came up with:

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Blue areas are clean, red is suspect and orange means that certain counties are OK(damn google maps won’t show county lines so I couldn’t break Florida down any further). Notice anything? 50% of the country is clean as a whistle, 49% haven’t been cleared but that’s because the FDA is so unworried about tomatoes from Michigan and  whatnot they’re not even bothering to check them and in the one state that may have  been a source for infected tomatoes over 30% of  the counties have been cleared. And it’s entirely possible Mexico is really clean as well, it’s just convenient to blame them.

Quite frankly there’s more salmonella swirling  in my toilette bowl on a daily basis then there is in our tomato supply, why no news story about that? I’ll tell you why, nobody’s scared of my toilette(they should be). But they’re terrified of the food supply. Mostly because they’re so separated from it they have no idea how it works.

The media can create tomatophobia in most people because they have no idea where their tomatoes come from. As I’ve discussed previously, most tomatoes are gassed into a false ripeness and shipped across country to the highest bidder. Not to be all uppity, but those of us who buy from farmers markets or local produce stores know exactly where our food is coming from and don’t have a reason to get caught up in the fear cycle(even though I did).

Sure, food born illness is important but let’s not let the media tie our panites in a wad for us. 300 people have gotten sick from tomatoes, but in the time how many millions of people have eaten tomatoes? 10 million? 30 million?  One in a few hundred thousand doesn’t sound like scary odds to me, let’s not let the hype of a tomato recal ruin our perspective

For the record, I’m not a dirty hippy who believes organic food is healthier. There isn’t much healthier about smearing your food with poop and keeping insects away from it with nothing stronger than bad language. I’m also not some second generation yuppy who thinks paying more means it’s better. Paying more means it costs more, that’s it. But I am someone who likes a good tasting tomato, and the regular ones you’re going to find in the grocery store just ain’t.

photo credit: fuzzyslowmo

You see, tomatoes are naturally soft. Soft and velvety. This is awesome when you’re eating them, but terrible if you want to truck them somewhere. By the time you load them up, drive them 500 miles and drop them off all you have left is bruises, mush and stems. So transporters and grocery stores came up with a solution.

They pick a tomato while it’s still green and hard, then gas it with ethelene. Ethelene is a “ripening agent” doesn’t actually ripen the tomatoes. It just makes them turn red so they look ripe. So you essentially have a bright red softball that’s perfect for shipping and terrible for eating. You can actually set a dictionary on top of a store bought tomato and leave it for a day, come back and find the same tomato. If you do that with an organic tomato all you’ll have is a wet spot.

So knowing what grocery stores do to tomatoes, there are 3 ways you can still get a good one. Firstly, if you live in the right climate(and have a yard) you can grow your own. If you live in the wrong climate you can plant a little AeroGarden . Second you can go to farmers markets. This is my favorite actually, you can talk to the guy who grew the damn things. People won’t look you in the eyes and then sell you crap.

But this is a blog about eating better, easy. And if you were the kind of guy who went to farmers markets you’d already be buying your tomatoes there. So the third option is to buy organic tomatoes. They won’t be gassed like the regular ones, so if they’re red that means they’re actually ripe. Now you will pay more for these. They have to be bought locally(that means the store can’t buy them in bulk) and they will lose more during their short transport. But for convenience and flavor, they give regular store tomatoes a smackdown.

In fact, I’m issuing you a challenge. Go buy an organic tomato and a regular one and make a BLT with each. If you honestly can’t tell the difference I will personally come to your house and apologize.

photo credit: hiroohi

And I never apologize.