ABSTRACT
Combining exports and domestic use, 340 billion pounds of tomatoes are grown for fresh consumption and processed tomato products around the world every year, representing over 50% growth in the early part of the twenty-first century. While tomatoes originated in South America, they arrived in the United States rather circuitously by way of Europe after spending decades traveling the globe and becoming an integral part of many regional diets, cultures, and cuisines. Native peoples of South America are likely to have cultivated tomatoes for the first time, but it was centuries later that the tomato finally made it to Mexico where it was formally domesticated. The hundreds of years that it took the tomato to tour the world and finally enter into the colonial United States can be largely attributed to the British belief at the time that tomatoes were poisonous.
