The Right Chemistry: Tomatoes were once considered deadly

Salem, N.J., a Saturday in August. Dressed in period costume, a man strides up the stairs in front of the courthouse, faces the crowd that has gathered, reaches into a basket, picks up a tomato and proceeds to take a bite. The onlookers cheer and burst into applause. They are watching a re-enactment of a historic event that took place in 1820 when Robert Gibbon Johnson ate a tomato in full view of an audience that expected him to foam at the mouth, twitch and then expire. That didn’t happen. Johnson had proved the “poison apple,” as the tomato was known at the time, was not poisonous after all. And so, as the story goes, the tomato growing industry in the United States was born. Read More