Saturday, January 16, 1999
Attack of the killer tomato-haters
They've taken their battle against the loathsome
fruit to the Internet
Dan Bortolotti
National
Post
Jamie Bennett
| G----- F------ can't recall
exactly when he started hating tomatoes, but his early memories are
filled with their pungent smell. "My parents used to have a very big
garden," says the 26-year-old from Windsor, Ont. "They would tell me
two days in advance when they were going to boil the hell out of the
tomatoes and jar them. I'd find refuge at a friend's house."
A former cook who now works as a quality systems analyst at BASF
Corporation, F------ remembers his nostrils burning as he diced
tomatoes for chowder. And although he studied chemical engineering
and has come into contact with many noxious substances, tomato
liquid, he says, burns his skin: "Maybe I'm like the witch with the
holy water."
F------ is the proprietor of the Anti-Tomato Web Site
(www.antitomato.com), which he launched this past June. It includes
a manifesto declaring Lycopersicon esculentum unfit for human
consumption, as well as messages from fellow tomato-haters. "People
look at me like I am crazy when I explain that I do not want tomato
on anything," writes one. "Thanks for letting me know that I am not
alone." There's even a link to an anti-tomato chat room, but that
hasn't quite caught on. "I went in once on a Saturday afternoon,"
F------ confesses. "No one was in there."
Though he doesn't identify himself on the site, he does include a
picture of his girlfriend, Joe, who shares his hatred of the fruit.
Their tomatophobic genes, however, have not been passed on to their
seven-year-old son, Dalton. "He eats ketchup on everything," F------
says.
Tomatophobia is actually not new; the fruit has a long history of
persecution. Tomatoes were cultivated by the Aztecs and Incas as far
back as AD 700, and have been known to Europeans since the 16th
century. However, it took three centuries before they were widely
eaten in Britain and the United States; rumour had it that tomatoes
were lethal.
Why bash tomatoes online? "When somebody hates tomatoes, they
don't just not like them, they have something personal against
them," F------ says. "And you can't explain that to people who love
them." He hopes to add sections to his site devoted to celebrity
tomato haters, along with an e-mail newsletter -- and maybe, he
says, he'll even sell "Tomatoes Suck" T-shirts. F------ is also
considering asking restaurateurs to pass out his business card to
patrons who request tomato-free meals.
F------ spends a couple of hours every week posting new letters
on the site. It receives about 25 visitors a day -- a modest number
of hits, although the site has attracted attention from as far away
as Estonia. His supporters include Tucker Smith, an Arizona zealot
whose Anti-Tomato Movement (www.primenet.com/~slicedt/) is more
hardline than F------'s; Smith refers to the fruit as "an agent of
war," and suggests that its cultivation constitutes a conspiracy to
spread moral decay.
So, does F------ avoid tomato products completely? "I'll eat
pizza," he admits. "If there's a high beef count in the tomato
sauce, it'll usually taste great. I've been known to dip and shake
off salsa, but that's very rare. I only use ketchup with scrambled
eggs." At restaurants, he doesn't like to make a scene, so he rarely
returns a meal that's been contaminated by tomatoes: "I'll just take
out the seeds."
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Related Sites
The
anti-tomato Web site.
Botanical
warfare on the Anti-Tomato Movement's Web site.
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