Where Do Tomatoes Come From?

I saw an article posted by a friend on facebook this morning about two startling and disturbing facts. Fact 1: Starbucks was using beetles in your pink Frappuccinos for the last four months (actually, shouldn't be all that disturbing since Cochineal extract is used in a lot more of what you eat than you probably have noticed or care to notice). Fact 2: Upon backlash from the vegan community regarding their bug juice beverages (which, seriously, was it only the vegans who were disturbed by the use of bugs in their fraps? that does seem silly...), Starbucks announced it will use Tomato extract to color its pink beverages and food items. (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2012-04-19/starbucks-no-red-dye-drinks/54414032/1)

Most of you will probably say, "But Andrew - isn't Tomato good for you? Doesn't Lycopene, an antioxidant property of Tomato, fight Cancer? Isn't eating Tomato extract way better for us than eating bugs?"

To you, I say "Yea, Kinda and Nay!"

Here's the thing:

Lycopene, an antioxidant-rich carotenoid that gives tomatoes (and various other red/pink fruits and veggies) their color, does have Cancer-fighting properties (Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study). However, the beneficial effects are most helpful to an eater if said eater-of-tomatoes is either eating whole tomatoes or a whole-tomato-based tomato sauce (Greta Macaire - Nutritionist at USF). For example, a glass of straight-up Tomato Juice is going to contain enough Lycopene (if consumed daily) to constitute a useful serving whereas one would need to eat somewhere in the ballpark of 14 tomatoes to get the same quantity of Lycopene from whole fruit. Or you could eat some nasty processed fake-o tomato dye crap that Starbucks puts in your drink instead of beetles.

Okay, that's Thing 1. Thing 2:

The Tomato Industry is gaining ground in the world market at a pace that sets it in the league of the Corn Industry. Not only does this create the opportunity for mass-marketing Monopolizing Tomato Corporations (yes, Dave Barry, that would make a good name for a rock band, or at least a demo album), but this also creates the opportunity for those Monopolizing Tomato Corporations to destroy local growers and distributers across the globe. Starbucks, like Dominos Pizza, is not simply an American chain. You can find Starbucks across the globe. And the challenge with that is simply this: how do local tomato growers in, say, Ghana, compete with an American Tomato Monopoly (3rd album in a series, like Bat Out Of Hell 3) when the Primary Tomato Users (a "Monopolizing Tomato Corporation" cover band) are buying all their tomatoes and tomato products from narsty, pesticide-filled, factory farms halfway around the globe? (http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/dominos-effect/page/2)? They don't. They go out of business, default on their loans, lose their farms and their livelihood and they do all this at the expense of a few slices of Pepperoni with extra cheese and a Vente Frap (which, incidentally, each cost about the same as a gallon of gas these days - but that's another rant).

Should Starbucks be destroyed? Of course not. Starbucks has created millions of jobs, given hundreds of thousands of people across the planet access to income, health care and peace of mind. They also lend an aesthetic of recognition to any city on Earth these days since any person can get the same Vente Frap anywhere they go. Starbucks is a good company and, as the USA Today article says, the fact that such a large corporation is willing to make and is capable of making such a drastic ingredient change within 6 months of a first major shift in ingredients is not only admirable, but also impressive.

I ask, however, that we as consumers do our research and know what we're ingesting and supporting.

After all, as LelaLight so eloquently put it on Starbucks Corporate Blog: "Maybe I'm a little naive but last I check strawberries are red. So if you are using 'REAL' strawberries in your drinks and food, there'd be no need for dyes/food coloring!" (http://blogs.starbucks.com/blogs/customer/archive/2012/04/19/cochineal-extract-update.aspx)