Edible Landscapes and Trees that Feed

There are thousands of species of edible fruit trees in the world yet too many people are still food insecure. So, why don’t we do our landscaping with edible fruit trees? I know two people that did exactly that! Mary and Mike McLaughlin, the founders of Trees that Feed, decided to tackle food insecurity by landscaping Caribbean islands with fruit producing trees, such as breadfruit. In the process, Mary and Mike have worked to provide people with the means to sell the fruits from these trees to a growing local market. 

Mike shared some alarming food security statistics: 

“In Jamaica they are spending something of the order of four billion dollars a year. That’s a huge amount of money to spend on imported food when Jamaica has a natural climate, warm weather, a year round growing season, and good rainfall.”

Breadfruit Tree

Trees that Feed is a project designed to cut down peoples’ need to import food on two levels. First, Mike and Mary have dedicated time to promoting cuisine made from locally available fruit trees. In this sense, they are promoting a local market for these fruits. Second, this couple works with famers to help them get more trees and to increase local production to provide fruits for local markets. 

In the long run the benefits of this process are invaluable because, as we all know, the costs of importing foods are on the rise. And, imported food is rarely of the same nutritional as food produced locally, and imported food does not have the same cultural value.

So, why did Mary and Mike choose to start planting breadfruit or other cultural trees, such as Akee, in the Caribbean?  

Mary answered, “both of us are from Jamaica and these are foods from trees that we are used to and we see the value of them”. But these are not just any trees, Mike added, “they are culturally appropriate species that farmers want to have on their land.” 

And Mike further explained, “It is very important to us that these foods are culturally accepted; it takes a very long time for cultural acceptance of a new food.” 

Mike told me that breadfruit is not actually native to the West Indies, it was actually introduced there 200 years ago. That means that although Jamaican breadfruit has become a traditional food, it is a relative newcomer to the region. He also explained that it took a generation for people to start using it and to accept it. Mike and Mary explained they don’t want to wait 25 years before their efforts begin to increase food security. So, instead of supplying or importing new foods for people, they are planting foods that are already well-known.  

Mike and Mary’s efforts to increase food security are unique because trees are different than cash crops.  Cash crops require fertilizers, they can deplete the soil, and they can be hard to harvest. On the other hand, fruit trees do not require fertilizer and they only need a little care.

And, trees can be planted in urban areas. Mary explained that growing fruit-producing trees in urban areas is important because much of the food in cities is imported from rural areas. 

In addition to their potential in supporting the food insecure, fruit trees can have large benefits for the ecosystem. Fruit trees provide shade, habitat for wildlife, they purify the air, and sequester carbon. In Haiti, breadfruit trees prevent erosion and as a result these trees keep the streams and rivers clear. What’s good for the streams and rivers is good for the fish. So, the fishing industry in Haiti has started planting breadfruit too!

There is no doubt in my mind Trees that Feed is a great initiative, but will this idea catch on in the long term? 

Mike and Mary think so and they have planned to make this project last. They have encouraged the local people to start small and build up their capabilities, their resources, and local markets. They have encouraged people to sell locally because it is easier for farmers to make more profit when they avoid paying duty and other external taxes. 

But, farmers that work with Mary and Mike still face challenges. Mary and Mike have an initiative that helps farmers make gluten-free flour from their breadfruit. However, Mary told me that, “…in Haiti where local artisans are making breadfruit flour they can’t compete against heavily subsidized North American wheat they just don’t make it you know a farmer can’t compete against free”. 

I saw this same trend in Costa Rica where indigenous farmers do not stand a chance selling their local organic corn when the United States is flooding the market with extremely cheap, low quality corn. 

Despite the real obstacles farmers experience in our

industrial food era, Trees that Feed gives people options. 

So, here you have it, a new idea on how to make landscapes edible, using culturally-appropriate foods. But, Mary and Mike have much more than food in mind. They have increased the number of jobs, improved livelihoods, and restored degraded lands in the process.  

For more info check out Trees that Feed or follow them @TreesThatFeed

All photographs in this blog are courtesy of Mary and Mike McLaughlin.

New Year's Eve Food Challenge: What Is This Fruit We've Been Eating Over The Holidays?

It's the holiday season and, for many of us, that means sharing food. I'm sure today, New Year's Eve, is no exception. In fact, I'm sure that the majority of readers have shared this mystery food at some point over the holiday. 

Readers, can you tell us the name of this fruit? 

If you're stuck, here are some clues:

How do you eat this fruit? This fruit is unique in we eat its pulp as well as its seeds. The pulp can be eaten raw but the seeds need to be roasted or at least dried in the sun before eating.

Where is this fruit from? It is native to Central America although it is grown all over the world in tropical areas. And, Ghana is one of the world's largest producers of this fruit.

Please share your answers in the comments section below!

Solving The Spice Mystery: Where Do Pepper, Turmeric, and Vanilla Come From?

Our global food system does a good job hiding how and where our food is grown. Despite these tricks, we live in an era where we can find out food origins using tools such as smart phone food labels. Still some foods slip through the cracks. Spices are examples of those foods.

A few years ago at a dinner party, we got to chatting about where certain spices are produced. We made a bunch of pizzas from local ingredients (tomato sauce and cheese included) but we did not manage to source our salt and pepper locally. We read that our sea salt was from Israel but we couldn’t find out where our pepper came from (despite asking later at the shop we bought it from). As we chatted further, most of us didn’t know what geographic region black pepper was grown in or, for that mater, what a pepper plant looked like.

To give spices the attention they deserve, I’m going to share some of their interesting facts. I chose to talk about three spices that are not particularly well labeled in the super markets I frequent: pepper, turmeric, and vanilla; if you want me to talk about any others, just shoot me an email. 

Black Pepper (Piper nigrum)

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Black pepper is a fruit that grows on a small shrub in bunches and it comes from a family of plants called Piperaceae. Green peppercorns are unripe fruits from the same black pepper plants. This species is native to South India and it is commonly grown in the Kerala state. Major producers of pepper include: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. But, this plant grows in other regions too, such as Costa Rica.

Turmeric (Curcuma longa)

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Turmeric is a root or rhizome that grows underneath the ground. And, it looks a lot like ginger root. Many of us living outside of the tropics don’t’ realize the edible part of turmeric grows under soil because we buy it in powdered form. I was first introduced to turmeric root while living on the south Caribbean of Costa Rica and I had a fresh source of this spice growing in my backyard. Turmeric is not native to Costa Rica however, it is native to the Southeast Asia region. Although turmeric’s place of origin of is not identified in my botanical references, some botanists suggest it is native to south India.

Like many spices, turmeric is both a food and a medicine. Most of us know turmeric because it is a staple ingredient in Indian curry. But, turmeric has been used as a medicine since at least 250 B.C. Powder from this root can be mixed with honey to soothe a dry cough, which is a remedy from Ayurvedic medicine. In my family, we boil the fresh turmeric root with other medicinals such as ginger and garlic and take it as medicine for colds. I learned this recipe from a healer in Peru and my dad tweaked it by adding fresh turmeric root to the mix.

Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia)

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Vanilla is an orchid. I first saw this orchid while wading in a palm swamp in the Peruvian Amazon. These are the same palm swamps where you can spot Anaconda snakes, if you are lucky! Vanilla plants are stunning, especially the one I saw flowering. 

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

We don’t eat the flower, however; we eat extracts from vanilla seeds or pods (pictured on right).

Vanilla is native to Mexico and was used by Indigenous people such as the Aztec people to flavour a drink made from chocolate (cacao) beans. The website of Kew, a famous botanical garden, reported that vanilla is also a medicine with anti-microbial and antioxidant properties. Because of the spice trade, vanilla has become a staple in kitchens all over the world. Spanish people took vanilla to Europe in the 1500s. Much later in the 1800s vanilla was taken to Madagascar. Today, most of the vanilla we buy is from Madagascar, Indonesia, or Mexico.

If you have spice queries, feel free to ask them here in comments section of this blog post and I’ll try my best to find the answers. 

Do you know where your bananas come from?

Although this blog post has been on my mind for months, I did not write it in fear of doing the topic an injustice. How can words on a page possibly bring you to the root of the banana industry where women, men, and children engage in risky and consistently hard labour to bring the perfect unblemished banana to our tables? The longer I sit on this story, the more important I realize it is. So here is my story, based on eight months working with bananas.

When we want a banana the furthest most of us have to travel is to the grocery store. But, this convenience is not without costs. Save for a small label that identifies the country of origin, we have no idea about the farms our bananas come from. We also have no idea what farmers have sacrificed to produce a bushel of bananas. Buying organic satisfies many consumers and frees them of any guilt about unsustainable eating. Until 2012, I was one of those consumers who thought I was doing my best for farmers and the environment when buying organic.

Last year I realized the real danger of this assumption. I realized that the label organic tells us nothing about how banana companies treat banana farmers. I realized that organic bananas are bought and marketed mainly by Transnational Corporations and human rights aren’t necessarily one of their priorities, getting you to buy their organic banana is.

Traveling into these Talamanca Mountains, I did not expect to find the heart of Costa Rica's banana industry

In my experience I was farming organic bananas in a Southern Caribbean region of Costa Rica called Talamanca. I was working with Bribri Indigenous people who have lived in the country since time immemorial. In addition to being an Indigenous Territory this is arguably the most biodiverse region of Costa Rica and where you can find Costa Rica’s largest national park. This region is also hard to access, requiring boat, bus, and foot travel to arrive. Needless to say, when I moved to this remote and lush tropical forest, I did not expect to see large-scale banana farming.

 

Soils in Talamanca that have been organic since time immemorial

The first two questions I asked, when I unexpectedly found myself amidst a lot of bananas were: 1) With all the agricultural land in Costa Rica, why did organic banana companies choose to buy bananas from Talamanca? And 2) How was it cost-effective to export bananas through unpredictable rivers and hard to access roads?

On export day, twice a month, this rocky shore is buried under bananas to be transported to the capital city

As I recalled my research on organic farming, it dawned upon me. For organic bananas you need organic land, land that has not been exposed to chemical pesticides for at least three years. Unbeknownst to many, organic land is something that is hard to find in Costa Rica (because of widespread pesticide use). So, the fastest and cheapest way for companies to find organic land was likely to travel to Indigenous communities, deep into the forest where chemicals have never been used.

You don’t see anything wrong with the picture yet? Let’s dig a little deeper.

Do transnational banana companies pay Indigenous people fair wages?

No. An average farmer receives from 20-160 USD a month, far less than the Costa Rican minimum wage of 502 USD. A kg of bananas is bought for less than one-cent USD and sold – at my store – for about 20 times more.

Do banana companies recognize and respect traditional farming practices?

No. Although Bribri bananas are cropped alongside many other food and timber species, companies do not see this biocultural diversity as beneficial, they see it as getting in the way of profits. Consequently, company representatives have tried to coerce people to increase production (and decrease crop diversity) through training as well as with economic threats.

Fresh peach palm fruits, just one part of the rich crop diversity common on Bribri farms

Do companies have any liability if people get hurt or harmed on the job or do they compensate people if their bananas get lost during unpredictable river transport?

No and No.

As you can imagine, corporations are different and may not have the same modus operandi as the one I experienced in Costa Rica. However, other people’s experiences suggest that transnational corporations elsewhere are similarly concerned with profit increase and similarly disinterested in human rights. My experiences demonstrate that buying organic is not enough to free us of our social and environmental eating responsibilities.

After moving home from Talamanca, it is safe to say that I do not necessarily support large banana companies that simply label their products as organic . When I do buy bananas – and other exotic foods like coffee or chocolate - I look for equal exchange or other fairly traded products. 

The faces behind a can of ravioli

Tomatoes from the Yauco Cooperative in Puerto Rico, 1942 (courtesy of Jack Delano) 

In the Canadian winter months farmers markets can be bare. If I am lucky I can usually find a few varieties of squash and a selection of canned jams. Fresh vegetables, on the other hand, are no where to be found. What I miss most in the winter is a selection of fresh tomatoes. My tomato cravings often bring me to a large grocery store where I succumb to selecting fresh fruits from Mexico. Satisfying all my cravings in winter would be hard if I only shopped locally.

Sometimes I also eat canned tomatoes. I have pondered whether canned may be a better choice than eating fruit from the South. I've found a company that produces cans of organic tomatoes a little closer to home, in California to be exact. Canned tomatoes however, bring another concern and that concern is the can. I have often wondered where the cans come from and if the aluminium used to make the can is sustainably mined. I have found it hard to answer these questions. Recently however, I found a lead when I stumbled upon a video called Canned Dreams. 

Canned Dreams, made by Finnish filmmaker Katja Gauriloff, is a beautifully done documentary about where a can of European ravioli comes from. Katja starts her documentary with the origin of the aluminium can. The aluminum is mined - and the can itself is produced - in a barren Brazilian landscape, which is quite a distance away from Europe. 

Katja then examined each ingredient that goes into a can of meat ravioli; her findings are quite surprising. First, we travel to pick tomatoes with women in Portugal. Then in Denmark we are crammed into pig pens, and in Romania into cow cells, to meet the animals behind this pasta. Next, we venture to Ukraine to work long hours with women in a flour mill. Canned Dreams shows us the real people behind our globalized food chains. 

For those readers interested in learning what is behind their food choices, this is the documentary to watch. Although this documentary is specific to European ravioli, I suspect similar stories are behind other canned foods. I tried to map the distance my pizza ingredients traveled from their farm to my plate, but I left out a major part, the people behind the ingredients. This documentary puts a new spin on what it means to talk about global food systems; it reminds us there is a face and a family behind each and every ingredient we eat. 

I would love to hear your comments regarding Canned Dreams; you can watch it free on Al Jazeera's program Witness. 

Red Palm Oil: Biodiesel, Food, and Orangutans

Oil palm fruits, courtesy of Mark's Fruit Crops

Yesterday a red oil caught my eye at the health food store. Red Palm Oil. 

I had never seen anything like it, unless...could it be the same oil I saw being refined on the pacific coast of Costa Rica? After a little research, I learned this red oil was the same oil. It comes from the African Oil Palm. If you have taken a trip around Costa Rica's Manuel Antonio beach you will have seen these palms.

Before yesterday, I didn't know this red oil was used for cooking. I was only familiar with its use as a biodiesel (diesel made from animal or vegetable oils). Biodiesel is one of the reasons Costa Rica is growing these palms. In the Costa Rican countryside I've been intrigued by rickety trucks whose beds are filled with the oil palms' bright red fruits. These oily fruits are hauled to mills to be refined into oil that can substitute diesel. 

On one occasion I passed an oil palm plantation with a few friends who were on vacation in Costa Rica. My friends commented on how they knew they were in the tropics because of all the palms decorating the landscape. My friends were right, these palms are from the tropics, but not tropical America. These are native to West Africa and commonly called African oil palms (Elaeis guineesis). 

I'm still curious why these palms' fruits are used for fuel. The fruits don't look that big, they are only slightly larger than an acorn. It seems it would take a lot of fruits to make enough oil to fuel anything. But, to my surprise it appears these fruits do produce large oil yields, this is because they produce a lot of fruits all year round. So if you have palms you have oil. Another reason this red oil was suggested as a popular fuel is that the economic cost of producing palm oil is less than that of crude oil. Although palm oil has promise as a greener alternative to crude oil, it looks like it is not green-enough to make it full-swing on the oil market. 

There has been no problem however, selling red oil on the food market. It appears red palm oil - not to be confused with coconut oil -  is the world's most consumed vegetable oil. This was news to me.

Oil palm plantation, courtesy of WikiSabah News

Is palm-oil an environmentally-friendly diesel or food crop? Environmental advocates say no to either. Palm oil plantations use a lot of pesticides. And, like I saw in Costa Rica, they require a lot of land. I remember driving for more than an hour with nothing but oil palms in sight. Growing oil palms as a cash crop for export is no different than growing other plants such as sugarcane, soy beans, or bananas; the more you can fit in an acre the better. But, the more plants you pack into an acre and the more pesticides you apply, the faster the soils lose nutrients and the faster the lands will degrade. 

Poor land-use practices are characteristic of growing cash-crops to sell on the international market. But, these poor-land use practices did not catch people's attention on a large scale until the orangutan got involved. An outcry went global when people realized rain forests were being cleared to make room to plant oil palms in Borneo and Sumatra, and these lowland forests are the only place you'll find the orangutan. 

If oil palm plantations are not environmentally or orangutan friendly, why haven't people stopped farming oil palms?

Researchers from the School of Economics at the University of Queensland say it all comes down to money and this palm is making a lot of it. So, we shouldn't expect to see its plantations disappear anytime soon. Fortunately, researchers have been thinking about alternatives to ease the orangutan-oil palm conflict. For example, there has been recommendations that governments only allow people to grow palms on lands previously used for agriculture, not in orangutan-inhabited forests. But, as I see it, the future for orangutans does not look too bright.

Is there any red palm oil worth eating?

As with many foods, there are different ways to make them, some more sustainable than others. Although the large-scale oil palm plantations don't seem to be environmentally friendly in Costa Rica or in Borneo, the oil palm has been cultivated sustainably elsewhere. As I mentioned earlier, this plant is native to West Africa and people there have harvested its oil for centuries in non-contaminating and traditional ways. 

The red oil I found was produced organically in Brazil and the company's website states it was done in a sustainable manner. Palm oil is reported to be rich in vitamin E, carotenoids, and healthy fats. For me, the health benefits don't outweigh the carbon footprint incurred by importing this oil to North America, although I do look forward to tasting it somewhere where it is produced locally. 

For more info:

Swarna Nantha, H., & Tisdell, C. (2008). The orangutan–oil palm conflict: economic constraints and opportunities for conservation Biodiversity and Conservation, 18 (2), 487-502 DOI: 10.1007/s10531-008-9512-3

Yerba Mate, Mate de Coca, what are they?

Yerba Mate, a tea made from the tree Ilex paraguariensis, met my palate this afternoon when I was searching for an alternative to my bottomless coffee cup. I found Yerba Mate on a list of loose teas offered at my local coffee shop. The name Mate brought me back to the year 2000. That year, I was also sitting in a coffee shop sipping Mate, albeit at a much higher altitude. I was in La Paz, Bolivia and there Mate is referred to as Mate de Coca. Mate de Coca is a refreshing and energizing tea made from steeping the leaves of a different plant, the infamous Coca plant (Erythroxylum coca). I'm indebted to the Bolivian Coca plant and one Bolivia lady who helped me cure an allergy with Coca leaves. The Bolivian lady taught me to bite the Coca leaves to release medicinal components and place them on my face where I suffered from this allergy, the picture below shows the severity. I was allergic to alpaca fur but I mistook my allergy symptoms for those of a common cold. As my allergies became worse, ironically, I kept warm by hiding in layers and layers of alpaca-fur coats and blankets. If I'm ever near Alpaca again, I'll carry Coca leaves with me!

I expected these two similar sounding teas to taste alike. To my surprise Yerba Mate tasted nothing like Mate de Coca. Unlike Coca's mild flavour, I found Yerba Mate to be bitter with a hard to describe aftertaste. For lack of a better comparison, the Yerba Mate aftertaste vaguely resembled the flavour of tobacco. 

Because I am fascinated by where plants come from I couldn't pass up the opportunity to find out what plant I was drinking. With the help of wikipedia's invisible scholars, I learned that Ilex paraguaiensis (Yerba Mate) is a forest plant found in the southern parts of South America, in Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. When you order a Yerba Mate, you are likely savouring leaves from tea plantations or from trees planted in their native forest habitats. Like the popular green tea, Yerba Mate leaves are processed before they hit your teapot. The main difference between Mate and green tea is the drying method. Mate is dried slowly using wood smoke and green tea is dried fast at high temperatures. 

Content to know what I was drinking, my curiosity turned to the human beings who first found this plant and decided it was good to drink. I'm rarely successful finding this type of information online, and this time was no exception. I'm convinced we rarely read about the people behind plants because those writing about ethnobotany are mostly  pharmaceutical researchers. As an ethnobotanist, I am often associated with pharmaceutical work too. For example, just in the last week a few people have assumed I work for a pharmaceutical company when I mentioned I'm an ethnobotanist. 

From the little information available, I read that Yerba Mate tea was first used by the Guaraní people of South America. I can't be sure of my sources, but it appears that when this tea was discovered by Jesuit priests, these priests tried to stop Indigenous peoples from drinking it (maybe because of its perceived demonic properties). However, the Jesuits that came in contact with Yerba Mate must have liked something about it because this tea made it all over Europe, quick. The desire for Yerba Mate is a story waiting to be told; I think it would make a good project for Michael Pollan and his work on the Botany of Desire. 

Although its medicinal properties were no doubt clearly known by the Guarani people, western science has found Yerba Mate to be good to treat parasites, high cholesterol, and inflammation; it also has caffeine in it so I guess this wasn't my best choice for a coffee substitute.

A Bit of Arsenic in Rice Can’t be that Bad, Can it?

BBC Interviewer: If you are accustomed to eating maybe one or two servings [of rice] a week, it’s not going to make that much difference?

Scientist: No, no that’s absolutely the facts

This morning I listened to this interview with a toxicologist about arsenic in rice. I don’t question scientific studies that report that people seem unaffected by trace amounts of heavy metals in food, in the short term. However, I do question the above BBC interview where a scientist claims it’s, “…absolutely the facts” that one or two servings of rice a week is fine for human consumption, no matter where the rice comes from and no matter how long you are exposed to it. For one thing, this scientist doesn’t address the issue of prolonged exposure to arsenic, found linked to bladder cancer in Taiwan. Most importantly, this scientist doesn’t support his claim with any evidence at all.  

In the journal Nature, scientists recently reported that the arsenic-laden rice in the news likely comes from rice crops cultivated on land used in the past to grow cotton in the United States. In the past, U.S. cotton fields were treated with arsenic-based chemicals to kill pests and to make cotton harvest easier.

The current arsenic scare comes from a study on 200 samples of rice and rice products found in the U.S. Scientists from the FDA say this sample is not big enough to recommend changes in people’s diet. So, these scientists have advised the general public to wait on the results of a study based on 1000 rice samples.

After reading the news and science blogs I asked myself a few questions.

Do we need more evidence to find out exactly where arsenic-contaminated rice is coming from and to clean those lands up?

I think so.

But, do we need more evidence to change our eating habits?

Most definitely not.

The interview I quote at the beginning of this blog scares me. I’m envisioning a reoccurring scenario, when scientists from food organizations say its okay to eat a little bit of heavy metals, just not too much. Take tuna for example, many of these fish have methlymercury levels so high, pregnant woman are warned not to eat them at all. This tuna scare has not been enough to stop many of us from eating tuna. Maybe we have limited the amount of methylmercury-contaminated tuna and maybe will eat arsenic-enriched rice in moderation, but, let’s use our common sense, when was even a little bit of these heavy metals ever good for us?

If cotton-farmers 100 years ago knew the chemicals they put on their crops would be absorbed by the rice their great-granddaughters would be eating, would they still use it? I don’t have that answer. I can say that farmers and consumers today should be well aware of how pesticides, and other chemicals, persist in our ecosystem for generations. Today we are talking about arsenic used a century ago. What will it be tomorrow? For one example, my guess is that our descendants will slap their forehead when they think of all the glyphosate we use today to remove weeds (really any other plant) from our soy, wheat, and cereal crops.

So will a little arsenic in our stir-fry harm us today? Will a little glyphosate in our toast harm us tomorrow? I guess it all depends on what we are thinking when we make our eating choices. Are you simply eating to get by? Or, are you are eating to protect your health and that of generations to come?

You say tomato, I say Banana Leg

This is a guest post by David Steen; David researches the ecology and conservation biology of wildlife and blogs about his work at www.LivingAlongsideWildlife.com.

Kellogg’s Breakfast

The giant orange tomato dwarfed my hand and its bulbous sides overflowed my palm. As I manhandled the giant fruit out of the back of the farmer’s pickup, I gave the man, leaning on the back of the truck, an inquisitive look.

            He replied, “Now that’s an heirloom tomato.”

            Perhaps he wasn’t used to people wanting to know more, but I did. As I checked out the orange orb, I asked,

            “What’s it called?”

            “Kellogg’s Breakfast.”

            The farmer and I collectively chuckled at the ridiculous name for this variety of tomato before he added,

            “Sometimes I look through seed catalogs and order ones that look interesting.”

            His response brought to my mind a stereotype I have of the American farmer, that of the man in the straw hat forever toiling on a tractor in a homogenous and monotonous field of wheat. Of course, that isn’t necessarily the reality. Farmers, both men and women, can be creative people that are enthusiastic about their work and always interested in trying to grow new things and with different strategies. I wondered if part of the reason this particular farmer raised peculiar varieties of tomatoes was to see the reaction on people’s faces when they strolled through the farmers market. I hope mine didn’t disappoint.

            I later learned that these tomatoes earned their name because of their color, which brings to mind orange juice, often served during breakfast, as well as the fact that someone in Michigan named Kellogg is credited for introducing the variety. Okay, I thought, I can go along with that. However, I did note to myself the irony of giving an heirloom (i.e., not mass produced) tomato a name that brings to mind a mega-corporation that facilitates industrial agriculture and produces what they call food on an assembly line (at least, that’s how they do it in my imagination).

Banana Leg

            Another tomato he was selling included a yellow and elongated variety known as a Banana Leg. I confirmed with him that I could save the seeds from these tomatoes and grow them myself in the future. Sure, he replied. I’m looking forward to it.

Frankenstein

            Checking out the options at a nearby truck, I noticed a Frankenstein of a tomato. It was red, which is relatively conventional, but huge and misshapen.

            “What happened here?” I asked the woman at the stand.

            “Looks like two tomatoes just started growing together.”

            I don’t know if that’s really what happened or not, but she was right in that that’s what it looked like. Into the tote bag it went, as did a bin of cherry tomatoes.

            Later that day, while looking at the motley crew of yellow, orange, red, and Siamese-twin assortment of locally produced tomatoes I had acquired, I thought about how much we lose when we automatically think of a tomato as the uniformly-colored red and perfectly shaped object we mechanically throw in the shopping cart when we hit the grocery store. We’re not just losing weird colors and shapes, but we completely miss out on all kinds of new tastes and textures.

            It doesn’t have to be that way. The food we eat doesn’t have to be just the items that are most cost-effective for companies to produce and manufacture in bulk. We don’t have to settle for eating the tomatoes that are engineered to look identical (especially because they don’t taste as good!). Making food identical is what fast-food restaurants do with their products because they know people tend to choose the things that they are used to.

            Well, let’s get used to some weird tomatoes! Let’s get used to some non-conformity in our ingredients. If variety truly is the spice of life, don’t hesitate to throw some Banana Legs into the salad you’re having or put some thick, orange slices of Kellogg’s Breakfast onto that sandwich for lunch.

            Whenever I extol the virtues of these locally produced fruits and vegetables, someone is surely to bring up (or at least think about) how the costs of these items are prohibitively expensive. Well, I’m pleased to note that they’re not at the farmers market that I go to. And, I suspect that if you purchase your food from local farmers instead of from the grocery store (which, in all likelihood, ships in that food from all over the world), you will be pleasantly surprised at the price tag. It’s moot as far as I’m concerned though, I don’t know why the cost should even be a consideration when you’re talking about what you decide to put into your body. If you have an income, then you can afford to buy good food. You can compromise on other things.

            Have you had any luck growing Banana Legs or Kellogg’s Breakfast tomatoes? Tips appreciated.

Fermenting Tomato Pulp to Save the Seeds