Origins

Tomatoes got their start on the foothills of the Andes mountains, in Peru, on the western coast of South America. These early tomatoes were small, like today's cherry tomatoes. They were not red, however. They were green.

Over time, these little green tomatoes spread southwards into Chile and northwards through Central America into Mexico. There, the Aztecs cultivated a new variety, one that was both larger and golden yellow in color. This happened about 2,500 years ago.

The Aztecs mixed their golden-yellow tomatoes with chili peppers to make the world's first salsa. (They also grew corn for the chips.) The name we give tomatoes today goes all the way back to these early Americans. They called this plant (in Aztec) zee-to-ma-tl, which meant "plump thing with a navel."

A mixed reception in Europe

It's believed that Columbus, on his first return from the New World, took some of these large golden-yellow tomatoes back to Europe. There they were met, however, with a very mixed reception.

They were received most warmly in Italy, where the first tomatoes were called pomo d'oro, "apples of gold." (Only later were red tomatoes brought from the Americas, by Catholic priests returning from their missions.) But they were not embraced so quickly in other parts of Europe. The French and the Germans, for example, were both very suspicious of tomatoes.

Many Frenchmen thought you had to be very careful with these strange new plants. They thought tomatoes could make you all lovey-dovey. In France, at least in the beginning, tomatoes were called "love apples."

Germans feared tomatoes might have even more spooky, witch-like powers. They called tomatoes "apples of paradise."