The History of Tomatoes

Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) once grew wild in the Andes of western South America. Indigenous Peoples in the area began to cultivate them and eventually brought tomatoes northward through Central America and eventually into Mexico. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, they discovered that the Aztecs had a local crop called tomatl. They brought the seeds back to Spain and began cultivating them. By the mid-1500s, tomatoes had spread to Italy, where they were slowly integrated into the local cuisine and eventually became an integral part of it. (The delay occurred because many people were originally concerned that the bright red crops were poisonous.) Tomatoes were soon being grown throughout Europe, although their main purpose at the time was ornamental. In the early 1700s, the tomato traveled to North America with European colonists and its popularity continued to increase. They were even cultivated and eaten by Thomas Jefferson. However, it wasn’t until the early 1900s that tomatoes became widely popular throughout the United States. Interestingly, they were classified as a vegetable for tariff reasons in the late 1800s, but they are technically a type of berry. Due to years of cultivation and hybridization, modern tomatoes are quite different from those that originally grew wild in the Andes. In fact, there are over 10,000 varieties of tomatoes today and they are a staple food in many parts of the world, particularly in the United States, Italy, and much of Western Europe.