If you’ve ever been in my kitchen or hear me talk about food then you know I love experimenting with it. The latest “tests” being true brine sauerkraut and homemade yogurt (both of which turned out amazing). I enjoy learning about how food functions in and out of the body as I believe it’s a huge missing piece to our current health crisis.
Well, I have another experiment or test of a different kind than I’m used to running. Most are centered around fermenting and/or cooking, this one was merely waiting…. and waiting.
It started when my wife brought home some tomatoes from a colleague at work. She was leaving on business and didn’t want the fruits to go to waste. Knowing the foodie that I am my wife gladly accepted. When I first saw them they were extremely red with little, very green, stems still attached. This was March so my intuition signaled to something being off as most aren’t naturally ready until later summer.
At first glance due to their reddness these couldn’t have been picked and purchased long ago but by my estimates they were at least a week from the store when we got them (most likely months from being picked).
Knowing some of the chemicals used in tomato harvesting (read hexane and ethylene gas) I thought I would do a test to see how long these badboys would last on my kitchen counter. Here is the before pic, about a day after we got them.
Well, after 4 anxious weeks the results are here in this after pic.
Virtually no change. Do you think this is an attribute of a REAL tomato?
A real tomato would last roughly 5-7 days on your counter before shriveling or attracting mold.
We all know this kind. They look utterly amazing and mouth watering, at least until you bite them. These conventional tomatoes were “bred” this way, undergoing a host of processes to get you to buy them. They were actually picked green months ago and treated with ethylene gas, the tomatoes natural reddening agent. Barry Estabrook, author of ‘Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit’ calls it food porn, and I agree. Unfortunately it’s become increasingly more difficult to actually find a good one. I’ve resorted to trying to grow my own.
So what’s the point of me doing this post? Well, just to show that our food isn’t always what it seems (and to experiment of course!) We’ve been told to keep it real, eat closer to the source and focus on a rainbow of natural colors yet the lack of transparency within our food system is making us worse. Educate yourself on where your food comes from and I promise your health will be greatly enhanced.
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Brian
Great post, Brian! Wow … you can hardly believe it when you first see a virtually unchanged year-old McDonald’s hamburger – but this is even more unbelievable to me! So terrible …
Thanks Elisa! Is it not disgusting? I was shocked myself.