Tomato myth
A really loooooooooooooose chain of thought, reaching an interesting question....

1. Been having tooth/gum trouble this week. Before I added tomatoes to my diet three years ago, gum trouble was nearly constant. After tomatoes, it's rare. This little infection lasted only a couple of days, but it was still no fun.

2. Why did it take so long for humans to figure out that tomatoes are both yummy and necessary? The conventional story is that Euros believed tomatoes were poison, and didn't start eating them until about 300 years ago when explorers brought them back from South America.

3. Much earlier I'd wondered about this from the standpoint of neural templates. I had a STRONG HUNGER for tomatoes even though I hadn't been eating them. This makes sense. We didn't rely on culture and books to teach us about correct diet until quite recently, and no other animal relies on culture or teaching. Every living thing, INCLUDING HUMANS, innately knows what's good, and tries to find what's good.

4. Well then, was the tomato really a recent arrival to the Eastern Hemisphere?

5. HELL NO. The fucking Babylonians used tomatoes extensively. Mediterranean people never stopped eating tomatoes.

6. Large parts of Babylonian knowledge and culture passed down to Northern Euros through various channels, and Northern traders and travelers certainly would have encountered tomatoes in Greece or Mesopotamia. Tomato plants grow easily in every climate; not exclusively tropical like bananas or coffee.

7. So what the fuck happened? How did Euros forget the tomato? Or did they? Was the 'poison' myth nothing more than propaganda inculcated by a conqueror to weaken the Northerners? Or inculcated by a king to insure that his own soldiers were stronger than the people? Or was there never a 'poison' myth at all? Was the STORY ABOUT the 'poison' myth propaganda for some unknown purpose?

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 6:37 AM