At the end of October I bought three tomatoes for sandwiches while we had company. Over the course of the weekend, we ate two - but I forgot about the third.
About three weeks later, I realized that it was still on the counter, and it still looked like a perfectly acceptable tomato.
Now, this struck me as very strange. When I grow a tomato, I've got a short time frame - only a few days - to use said tomato before it turns into a rotten, buggy mass of mush.
This tomato still looked great, though. One of the kids even mistook it for a for an apple from a distance. So I had to leave it there to find out how long it would last.
Finally, about a week ago, the tomato began to look a bit dented.
Now it looks like this - a full SIX WEEKS after I purchased this tomato! I'm not sure what they're putting in tomatoes these days, but something is keeping this tomato in shape - literally. Somehow it's not even drawing bugs!
For me, the Great American Tomato Experiment is over, and this tomato is headed back out to the garden, but it does make me wonder. I don't always buy fancy organic foods or find everything on a farm somewhere, but I do buy lots of foods in their natural state. I expect those vegetables to act like vegetables.
If whatever is inside that tomato causes it to act so strangely, what is it doing to our insides?
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