Take away the ripe red tomato chunks and a green salad would seem incomplete. And that's just the beginning.
Tomatoes are the third most popular vegetable, after potatoes and lettuce.
For most Americans, buying tomatoes is part of the shopping routine every week, all year long. That adds up to per-capita consumption of about 19 pounds annually. The tomato has circled the globe like no other vegetable or fruit. The native populations of South America were the first to encounter tomatoes. Then, in the sixteenth century, the conquistadors took fresh tomatoes to Europe, where they were admired for qualities other than taste for quite some time.