Perhaps it's time for the Florida Tomato Committee - the trade group that
controls the sales and shipping of Florida tomatoes - to take a new name.
It could call itself the Florida Round Red Tomato Committee. Or perhaps the
Tasteless Winter Supermarket Tomato Committee. Then it would be perfectly
justified in preventing, as it has, the shipment of the UglyRipe tomato
variety - so called because its flesh is deeply ridged. Consumers have come
to believe that vine-ripened UglyRipes, which were shipped under a special
exemption, are tastier than round Florida tomatoes. The committee is even
challenging the parentage of UglyRipes. If they are heirloom tomatoes, as
their growers claim, they will be exempt from regulation.
There is a world of nonsense here. Ideally, consumers would accept the fact
that a tomato is the most perfectly seasonal of garden fruits, and that a
tomato shipped long distances - from Florida or anywhere else - will be a
tomato developed mainly to look acceptable and taste acceptable at the end
of its journey. But when it comes to tomatoes, acceptable is not good
enough, not even in the dead of a Northeastern winter. They must taste
wonderful. Better to do without, if they don't.
And when it comes to tomatoes, being round and red isn't good enough.
Hundreds of traditional varieties exist in colors ranging from near-black
to near-white. They come in an astonishing variety of shapes: long and
cylindrical, pointed, lobed, and ridged. Some are striped, and some have
fuzzy skins, like peaches'. Some are meant for canning, some for slicing,
and some to be eaten while you're standing in the garden looking for tomato
worms.
Yet Americans still believe that a veritable tomato is round and red. We
have committees - honest, official committees backed by the rule of law -
to enforce that belief. It is time for some heterodoxy in the official
tomato world. The Florida Tomato Committee should reconsider its stand on
UglyRipes. And American shoppers should begin planning their summer tomato
patches now.