Chew on this: Sickening tomatoes

The tomato, that friendly fruit romantically called (by pedants, mostly) the "love apple", has been almost as poisonous to 228 people in 23 states as the apple her stepmother proferred to Snow White.

How could this be, though? The tomato is a tight package. And if you wash it well, doesn't anything that could cause an upset go down the drain with the water? Read Gourmet's explanation for the closest anyone can come currently to an understanding.

Meanwhile, the farmers who grow tomatoes understand perfectly the implications of this bout of food poisoning. Outbreaks of salmonella associated with eating raw tomatoes have been reported in Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee and Vermont. Exports of tomatoes from Mexico have come to a standstill and could cripple Mexico's tomato industry. It's massive. It supplies 80 percent of tomatoes imported into the U.S. Imagine the number of livelihoods associated with that figure. The crisis is so critical a delegation of Mexican officials flew to Washington to offer help to the FDA in establishing the source of the outbreak. In Florida, tomato producers estimate the scare could cost them more than $500 million in lost sales now and in the future.  And that's thought to be an underestimate.

Be careful eating tomatoes raw whose provenance is unclear. However, they shouldn't present a health risk, if cooked into a sauce that needs time in or on the stove cooking any bacteria well beyond an inch of their measly lives. Cold cooked tomato soups, not fresh raw tomato gazpacho should be the order of the day for the present. But who'd complain too loudly at that delicious prospect?