Does The World Need A Better Tomato?

In New Jersey, the tomato is king. Almost a century ago, a scientist at Rutgers University developed a variety that became the tomato that lined grocery store shelves for decades. Now, Rutgers scientists are at it again.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  My whole extended family and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina this past spring. And I gotta say, I came away feeling like, number one, this is a great family destination. Number two, this is a great place to come all year round. The mini golf alone is probably worth, it's like the mini golf capital of the country. They have the most incredible elaborate mini golf courses. They also have more than 80 championship, full-size golf courses, plus 60 miles of beautiful coastline, all-season sunshine. Of course, you can relax by the beach or the pool. There's also jet skiing, fishing charters, paddle boarding, and of course, food. Oh, man, did we eat well in Myrtle Beach. From fresh, local seafood, to craft burgers and craft beers, to kebabs on the boardwalk. With more than 2,000 restaurants to choose from, from legendary no-frill seafood shacks

• 0:43Dan Pashman?

  to chef-driven dining, Myrtle Beach has it all. Plus, live entertainment at the beach, there's always something epic going on. So, summer may be winding down, but in Myrtle Beach, you're gonna find the coastal vacation of your dreams all year long. Start planning your ultimate beach vacation at visitmyrtlebeach.com. I grew up on Lando Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lakes American cheese. And now, Lando Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lakes cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lakes has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking.

• 1:23Dan Pashman?

  Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Sirius XM Podcasts.

• 1:41Dan Pashman?

  See, Kenny, look at how beautiful New Jersey is. Rolling hills, farms, that we just passed, a whole bunch of cows huddled together under a tree to stay in the shade, wagging their tails.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  New Jersey cows are smart cows, let it be known.

• 1:53Dan Pashman?

  I'm driving through my home state of New Jersey, just 15 minutes from the Pennsylvania border, with my friend Kenny Malone. Kenny hosts one of my favorite podcasts, Planet Money. And while the cows are very cute, that's not why we're here. So, we're here in the great state of New Jersey to explore tomatoes, which is something New Jersey is famous for. Jersey fresh, New Jersey tomatoes.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  It sounds like a joke when you say it every time.

• 2:16Dan Pashman?

  Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not a joke. In fact, almost a century ago, a scientist at Rutgers University developed a new New Jersey tomato that became the tomato. For decades, if you were eating a tomato, you were most likely eating a descendant of the plump, red, platonic ideal of a tomato that the Rutgers scientists had helped to perfect. And that was a slicer-style tomato, you know, the big old kind that you slice. A century later, Kenny and I are traveling to Rutgers Research Farm to see a new tomato they've created. This time, it's a smaller one, a grape tomato called Scarlet Sunrise. And as I tell Kenny, I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. I have to be honest, as excited as I am to learn more about this new tomato, I am skeptical of it being a grape tomato. Yes, I'm concerned about that.

• 3:02Dan Pashman?

  A grape tomato, to me, is always very hard. Cause it's like, almost all firm, hard stuff, and very little pulp.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:11Dan Pashman?

  To me, the cherry tomato, you bite into it, it pops, you get that rush of sweet tart juiciness in your mouth.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Ideally, in your mouth, and not on your clothes.

• 3:21Dan Pashman?

  Well, I mean, if you're a professional, you put the whole thing in your mouth and close your mouth before you bite. I would take a cherry tomato over a grape tomato.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  So, when we taste-test this thing, are you just gonna, like, crap all over this tomato because you inherently don't like grape tomatoes?

• 3:35Dan Pashman?

  I'm open to my mind being changed. Maybe I just haven't had a good grape tomato.

• 3:41Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. A quick heads up before we start, we are looking for callers for an upcoming call-in show. Do you have a food-related disagreement with a friend or loved one? You got a hot take you wanna share with us? I wanna hear from you. Send me an email or voice memo, tell me your name, location, and what your issue is. You can send that to me at [email protected]. All right, let's get into it. And for this episode, I have a co-host, Planet Money's Kenny Malone, who's from Pennsylvania, but we won't hold that against him. Hey, Kenny.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Hi, Dan. Yeah, I didn't know you had strong feelings about Pennsylvania, like you do about grape tomatoes, apparently.

• 4:21Dan Pashman?

  I do, I do, it's true. And one thing I wanna clarify, cause we're gonna be talking a lot about grape tomatoes in this episode. Grape tomatoes and cherry tomatoes are not the same thing. Grape tomatoes are shaped more like grapes, they're like oblong, they have a thicker skin, a longer shelf life, and, to me, a blander taste. Cherry tomatoes are more round, like cherries, they're more delicate, they've been around for longer, and they've actually been bred for all kinds of characteristics, so there's more variety and flavor in cherry tomatoes. But Kenny, you're here because this isn't just a story about how this new tomato we're gonna talk about came to be, and it's not just about whether a grape tomato can be good.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  No, no, there is a larger economic trend going on here that, Dan, I think you and I have come to call, like, the Honey Crispification of basically the entire produce aisle.

• 5:09Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, with apples, you've got Honey Crisp, as you said, there's Cosmic Crisp, Pink Lady, so many others. And more and more, we're seeing all kinds of fancy versions of different fruits that are sold at higher price points.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  And now, it seems, the old tomato bin is in the midst of a similar explosion. Like, maybe, you, listener, you've noticed tomatoes with brand names like Flavor Bombs, Sugar Bombs, Sprinkles, I saw Sprinkles the other day.

• 5:33Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, so, why is this happening? Well, it's a story of changing laws.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Changing incentives.

• 5:39Dan Pashman?

  And changes in all of us, and what we want as food consumers.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  And what you, Dan, want as a food consumer is not a grape tomato. Is that, is that still correct?

• 5:49Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, they're very hard. And as you and I were driving to the Rutgers Research Farm, I realized, I gotta know how to explain my concerns to the scientists we're gonna meet. I'm pausing our conversation for a sec, Kenny, cause I meant to look up tomato anatomy.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:03Dan Pashman?

  So, cause like, I wanna know, what's the correct name for like, the, there's like the skin?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:07Dan Pashman?

  And then there's.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  That's probably the right name.

• 6:09Dan Pashman?

  And then there's the pulp.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's probably right.

• 6:12Dan Pashman?

  But then, what's the, like, the firm, sort of, cartilage?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Yes. Hopefully not cartilage.

• 6:18Dan Pashman?

  We got a lot to learn. There's the phoniculus.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 6:22Dan Pashman?

  Mesoc, there's.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Are you gonna casually try to drop these with the scientists? You'd be like, no, let me, let me ask you about the Scarlet Sunrise's phoniculus, Professor.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  I've noticed a firm phoniculus, sir.

• 6:37Dan Pashman?

  That's gonna be my goal. You watch, Kenny, I'm gonna drop phoniculus in somewhere here. I'm gonna get it in.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  As, as Dan and I study up on tomato anatomy, we arrive at the Rutgers Experimental Farm, where we meet Peter Nietzsche and Tom Orton.

• 6:53Dan Pashman?

  Tom is a retired Rutgers agriculture professor and researcher. Pete helps run this experimental farm.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  How many acres is it?

• 7:00Speaker 04

  It's a total of 390 acres. We're not all cultivated, there's some.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  We can see a few barns here, a greenhouse over there, and in the distance, there it is, the star of the show, a small field of tomato plants.

• 7:11Dan Pashman?

  This is exciting, Kenny. Can we just stop and?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's behold.

• 7:15Dan Pashman?

  Reflect that we're looking at a bunch of rows of tomato plants. Are these Scarlet Sunrise plants zero? Like, all other Scarlet Sunrise have been birthed from what we see before us?

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Well, they're derived all from the same source, yeah.

• 7:33Dan Pashman?

  But this is the birthplace.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  You're the proud parents overlooking your little nursery.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, that's one way to put it, yeah. We don't usually look at it that way.

• 7:41Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Okay, I mean, this, this is what we're here for.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  We're gonna go take a look at them now.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  We begin a rather muddy trek over to the tomato fields. And one thing I learned about Dan Pashman, you do not waste a second when you have time with two tomato experts.

• 7:55Dan Pashman?

  Especially when there's a tomato-related question that has been gnawing at me for years.

• 8:01Dan Pashman?

  Random question while we walk, are the tomatoes that still have some green vine attached in the supermarket actually better, or is it just great marketing?

• 8:10Speaker 03

  I don't know, why don't you cover that one?

• 8:11Speaker 04

  Well, I think it's, it's more of a marketing thing.

• 8:14Dan Pashman?

  Well, I guess I don't need to spend more for those anymore.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  You're off the hook, Dan. Tom and Pete, they are very much part of this centuries-long tradition at Rutgers of scientists who are really nerdy about fruits and veggies, and really interested in trying to make better fruits and veggies for farmers.

• 8:32Dan Pashman?

  Right, you know, like, a huge part of what public research universities have always done is try to make things better for the agricultural industries in their states. For Tom and Pete, that specifically means doing things to help farmers in the great state of New Jersey.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're trying to give farmers new tools for them to be more profitable, trying to make the farmers happy by giving them a plant that grows vigorously, has resistance to as many diseases and insects as possible, and is easy to manage.

• 9:02Dan Pashman?

  Kenny and I start looking through the tomato plants, moving branches here and there, to see if we can find some perfect Scarlet Sunrise.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  We should look for some ripeys, right? Is that, is that the word you guys use, ripeys?

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Ripe fruit.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Ripe fruit, ripe fruit's good.

• 9:15Dan Pashman?

  Slow down with all the technical mumbo jumbo, Kenny.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Unfortunately for us, Tom and Pete have timed this crop to be ripe at the end of August for a big, public, open house at the facility, clearly thinking about their, you know, New Jersey neighbors, and not us tastemaking journalists, Dan.

• 9:32Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, that hurt a little bit, Kenny, especially, you know, knowing my history with the state. But anyway, we dig around, hoping for a few early ripeys.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:40Dan Pashman?

  Kenny, any luck finding a ripe tomato here?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  I should disclose, I am red-green colorblind.

• 9:48Dan Pashman?

  Why are you in charge of this, then?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Maybe you should do it.

• 9:51Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  All right. Well, in the meantime, allow us to share some context for the tomato we are on our hands and knees trying to find and eat. Because Tom and Pete, they are doing plant research in a very different world than the Rutgers scientists were 100 years ago.

• 10:11Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, some huge things have changed that are at least part of the explanation for why our produce aisle has exploded with more and more of these branded superstar fruits and veggies.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  So, big change number one, Christmas Eve, 1970, President Richard Nixon signs into law the Plant Variety Protection Act.

• 10:30Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, and it didn't exactly make the front page, but it was actually a really big deal because before this, it was a lot harder to monetize a newly developed plant. But now breeders could basically own the rights to all kinds of fruits and veggies that they couldn't before.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Big change number two, 10 years later, another undercover new law.

• 10:50Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, the Byd-Dole Act, named after Senators Birch By and Bob Dole. It gave federally funded researchers the default right to own whatever they create with that federal funding.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  And public universities, you know, lots of federal funding. Now, they could control and monetize their medical breakthroughs, their developments in computers, and the new fruits and vegetables they created.

• 11:12Dan Pashman?

  Which brings us to what I think is probably the most important moment in the produce aisle brand explosion.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Of course, that is the 1991 release of the Honeycrisp apple.

• 11:24Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, the Honeycrisp was kind of the first big breakout produce star that came out of all these changes. It was developed at the University of Minnesota, and when it came out, they started licensing out Honeycrisp trees to growers for a one-time fee of around a dollar a tree. The university made north of 20 million bucks from it, but they could have made much more.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, they got a plant patent, which lasts 20 years, but they were not able to trademark the name Honeycrisp, which would have lasted much longer.

• 11:50Dan Pashman?

  That's because they made the mistake of naming the plant variety itself Honeycrisp. So, once that became the generic name for this type of apple, they couldn't trademark it because you can't trademark a generic term.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Like, you can trademark the brand name Kleenex, but you cannot trademark the word tissue, you know?

• 12:06Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  So, if they had given the plant variety any old name, then used the brand name Honeycrisp, they could have trademarked that.

• 12:14Dan Pashman?

  But they didn't. So, the University of Minnesota lost its protection for this IP, which means they lost the ability to charge royalties to growers sooner than they should have. Now, anyone can grow it. Other schools have learned from that mistake. Washington State University developed the Cosmic Crisp apple. We talked about that whole process on the show a few years back.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the plant variety name for Cosmic Crisp is WA-38.

• 12:38Dan Pashman?

  That's sexy. That's a sexy name for an apple, Kenny.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  It allows the trademarked brand name to be Cosmic Crisp. The school has made more than $30 million from this apple in much less time than the Honeycrisp.

• 12:51Dan Pashman?

  But as I said to Pete and Tom, the larger lesson here was if universities funded the right agricultural breakthrough, that could become a major profit center for the school. Would you say that it's easier now to get support from the university for the kind of research you do because it has a potential to bring a return for the school?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Well, I'm retired, so. Pete can tell you the bad news.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  It certainly helps, you know? If it brings in money to support our work and our program, they're more likely to support it.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, the agricultural research game has dramatically changed as a system. For researchers like Pete and Tom, their incentives have maybe changed a little. They do get to share in the revenue from their inventions, something like 35%. But Pete told us they're not getting rich inventing the Scarlet Sunrise for Rutgers. In a lot of ways, they are still just like those old Rutgers plant nerds from 100 years ago, geeking out, tinkering, and just trying to help New Jersey farmers.

• 13:54Dan Pashman?

  That's right. So, all that, that's the context for Pete and Tom and this fancy new tomato they decided to create at Rutgers.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  And that story? Well, Pete says that starts about 14 years ago.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  We grow tomatoes here for our open house, and I noticed in the field, there was one cherry tomato called Isis Candy.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  A cherry tomato called the Isis Candy, and it had some pretty good traits.

• 14:19Dan Pashman?

  It was sweet, which we know people like, and then it also had this cool color situation.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  They have that, it's like a little red blush on a kind of yellow background. That's why we call it a bi-color.

• 14:29Dan Pashman?

  Bi-color, yeah, like mostly yellow, then with this elegant, like streaky gradient into red. So, it tasted great, it looked beautiful, but it had a problem.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  The Isis Candy also cracks. The cherry was cracked a lot.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, Dan, your beloved cherry tomatoes, cracking up tomatoes.

• 14:48Dan Pashman?

  Well, you know, that's why I never had an Isis Candy, I suppose.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  I guess that's probably true.

• 14:53Dan Pashman?

  Look, that's a big problem for a tomato. No matter how good it tastes or looks, it's got to be transported and it has to be able to stay fresh.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yes, but, you know, for Pete and Tom, the light bulb moment was what if they, you know, they took that bi-color Isis Candy cherry and then crossed it, you know, bred it with a hardier red grape tomato?

• 15:14Speaker 04

  So, in talking to Tom, we got together and we were like, wouldn't it be interesting if we could get some of the sweetness of Isis Candy in there? So, can we get some of the firmness of the red and combine those traits together and get something worthwhile for the market?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Tom says that red-yellow bi-color mix, like that could help their sweet grape tomatoes' chance of success.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  We figured people could identify it in the marketplace and therefore connect the flavor with the appearance and there'd be repeat purchases of specifically this product.

• 15:48Dan Pashman?

  So, in a sense, you made a very early branding decision.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  More or less, yeah, because we wanted it to be unique.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Right. You know, Pete explained to us that the market has become flooded with red grape tomatoes. You know, some of those are good, some are not. Some get packaged up and refrigerated for veggie trays, and that makes them taste bad.

• 16:05Dan Pashman?

  Don't refrigerate tomatoes, Kenny.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Yes, this is your public service announcement from Dan. You end up with a situation, though, where a consumer, Dan, might taste bad red grape tomatoes and decide that they hate all red grape tomatoes.

• 16:19Dan Pashman?

  Hate is a strong word, Kenny, but yeah, like maybe this is my issue. Maybe I've just never tried a good one, and it makes sense to me that if Tom and Pete are going to create a good grape tomato for New Jersey farmers to grow and sell, it would be helpful for it to look different from all those other ones to avoid confusion.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  So, Tom and Pete, they get to work. Step one, you might remember this from your old Punnet Squares days in biology class. You cross-pollinate the two tomato plants, and then you have to wait like six months, and you see what kinds of tomatoes grow.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  And they all kind of look the same because they're all half Isis Candy and half Seminis.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Seminis, he's talking about the specific red grape tomato they chose to use.

• 16:59Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, and when you're going through a process like this, it takes a long time. You don't fix the problem on the first generation of hybrid plant.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  It's the next generations after that. The traits start to sort out, so you have some that'll have like the red color and the good flavor.

• 17:16Dan Pashman?

  So, they select the plants that are closer to what they want, breed again, repeat.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  This is a slow process. To grow a new generation of plants, you need a whole growing season. Now, Tom and Pete had access to a greenhouse, so they could squeeze two growing seasons in per year, but still, slow.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  So, you get this big menagerie of different plants that you go through and look for what you want, which is this color with the, you know, with the flavor and plant architecture and resistance to, you know, insects and diseases and things. That's also taken into consideration as you're going.

• 17:49Dan Pashman?

  Now, do you taste them also along the way?

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And if you taste one, it's like the greatest tomato you've ever eaten, are you like, oh, spit the seeds out, spit, we need to save these seeds? Like, how, what are you?

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Well, you don't really take it that seriously because, you know, the chances that you picked one fruit that, you know, that, oh, this is the one that's got all the crown jewels in it are pretty low.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  After 12 generations of growing, so six years of breeding and selecting, they felt like they had nailed it. A tomato that was sweet and colorful, like the Isis Candy, but sized like the very popular and hardier grape tomato. It was time for the agricultural industrial complex to step in.

• 18:29Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, universities have teams built to handle staff inventions, new medicines, semiconductors. Like those, tomatoes need trademarking and other intellectual property protections. They also need marketing plans.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  In 2019, Tom and Pete reached out to Rutgers Office for Research to say they were ready to hand off their baby.

• 18:48Dan Pashman?

  How did you feel making that call?

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Well, just thank God we got somewhere. Well, I think that's really one of the most gratifying parts of being an inventor and including a plant breeder is to have an idea that, you know, it seems kind of harebrained because we're looking at this Isis Candy back in 2011 and thinking, well, that's unique, but it, boy, it has an awful lot of problems. So, yeah, it's a great feeling to see that the principles that you learned in plant breeding and apply the skills, that they actually do work.

• 19:23Dan Pashman?

  Ultimately, it was the Rutgers business folks who named Pete and Tom's tomato, the Scarlet Sunrise. Color of sunrise and scarlet like Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  So, Pete and Tom, they have a new tomato that's ready for the world, complete with its own brand's name, but what I wanted to know was how big really is the opportunity for this type of tomato? Just in terms of the market, so if I go into the, I'm trying to picture the tomato aisle, so I see big old giant tomatoes. Those are probably what we would call beef steaks.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Is that a huge part of the tomato market? 50%, 60%, 20%?

• 20:00Speaker 03

  I would say the really large, multi-locular is...

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Sorry, multi-locular?

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, when tomatoes have little cells in them, if you open them up, you see that there's, they have little areas where there's gel, and then there's, tomatoes get bigger by adding locules.

• 20:16Dan Pashman?

  Is that like where the funicular is? Funicular? Folicule?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  The follicle.

• 20:26Dan Pashman?

  What's the name of that part of the inside of me?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  A funicular is like...

• 20:30Dan Pashman?

  It's not a funicular, no.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  A funicular is like a gondola, I think.

• 20:32Dan Pashman?

  I don't know, I was, no?

• 20:34Speaker 02

  A funicular is like a... Like a

• 20:37Speaker 03

  I don't recall a funicular.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  It's like an incline. A funicular is like an incline.

• 20:40Dan Pashman?

  It takes, no, isn't there a part of the inside of tomato with a word that sounds like that?

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Not that I can think of.

• 20:47Dan Pashman?

  Oh, man.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  You might be right, but I.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Dan did some Googling in the car on the way here.

• 20:51Dan Pashman?

  I was Googling tomato anatomy before we got here. I could swear there's something with it.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  Uh, it could be, but I, we don't.

• 20:57Dan Pashman?

  It was a good effort.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  10 out of 10, Dan.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  Let's put it this way. It's been a long time since either one of us went to school.

• 21:02Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Dan too, apparently.

• 21:07Dan Pashman?

  All right, Kenny, I think we can agree that I completely overwhelmed Pete and Tom with my depth of tomato anatomy knowledge.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, and your knowledge of, uh, public transportation on hillsides. And I think you named follicles in there too, which is just a different kind of anatomy. Well done.

• 21:23Dan Pashman?

  But tomatoes have a lot of parts. Even Pete and Tom don't know all of them.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, that's right. Sure.

• 21:29Dan Pashman?

  All right. So coming up after the break, we're going to look into the tomato market with an economist. How many new kinds of fancy tomatoes is too many? Then later I finally get my first taste of the Scarlet Sunrise. Will it change how I think about grape tomatoes? Or will it be the first thing in the history of New Jersey that isn't perfect? Stick around.

• 21:52Speaker 05

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• 23:30Dan Pashman?

  Last year, right around this time, I got a new jacket from Quince, a lightweight fall jacket. And it has turned into my favorite jacket. And this is why you need a lightweight jacket and probably a new one, cause it's time to freshen up your look. You need a lightweight jacket from Quince because the beauty of a lightweight jacket is you can wear in the early fall. You can wear it in the early spring, but also it goes over a sweater, over a sweatshirt. And then suddenly your lightweight jacket is a great accessory for pretty much the whole winter. Bottom line, when the temperatures start to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on those everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable all season long. They make elevated everyday essentials using premium materials and designs that are timeless, thoughtfully crafted and made to be worn again and again.

• 24:12Dan Pashman?

  So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the Sporkful. It's the best way to support the show.

• 24:36Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to the Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. Last week in the show, we were in the salad spinner. Of course, that's our rapid fire round table discussion of the biggest and strangest food stories of the moment. I was joined by Zach Stafford, co-host of the podcast Vibe Check, and Tanya Sichinsky from the New York Times. We covered a new delivery app where you scroll through the menu and place an order, but the food never comes. So what's the deal with that? And also we get into the rise of candy marketed as healthy and functional.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  In this kind of culture where we're optimizing everything and trying to make everything about being like our best version of ourselves. Even dessert has become kind of this weird, uh, site of health protein maxing or fiber maxing. And I will say it is delicious. It does. I get why people are obsessed.

• 25:18Dan Pashman?

  But like, have you quit ice cream, Zach? Or like other like traditional desserts?

• 25:24Speaker 06

  Quit is a strong word.

• 25:25Dan Pashman?

  Would these replace traditional desserts for either of you?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  No, I mean.

• 25:29Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Hold on.

• 25:32Dan Pashman?

  Plus we debate whether tomatoes belong in sandwiches. This episode was so much fun. I always love our salad spinners. That one's up now. Check it out. All right, back to the show and I'm joined once again by Kenny Malone from Planet Money. Hey Kenny.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Hi, Dan.

• 25:45Dan Pashman?

  So since the success of Honeycrisp, we've seen this explosion of all different branded fruits and veggies. And we've talked about how the incentives that universities have to create new products have changed over the years.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  But it is more than just that. And to understand what else has changed, we called up Miguel Gomez of Cornell University.

• 26:03Speaker 07

  I am an economist, especially I seen on specialty crops, supply chains from genetics to consumers in fresh produce in particular.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Do you have a favorite vegetable or fruit?

• 26:14Speaker 07

  Artichokes.

• 26:15Dan Pashman?

  Hey. Oh, that's a curve ball. Like, are you buying fresh artichokes and then like peeling them and taking them apart by hand?

• 26:22Speaker 07

  Absolutely. And putting them to steam and then, uh, doing them with butter and then eat them.

• 26:28Dan Pashman?

  I don't know. Artichokes are an awful lot of work for me. But anyway, first order of business, a gut check with the professor. We aren't imagining that our grocery store has exploded with all this superstar branded produce, right?

• 26:40Speaker 07

  You are absolutely right. Uh, if you look at any fresh produce category, there is a race for differentiation in, in the fresh product category. The market is going toward this crazy amount of new options in each product category.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yes, our instinct was right, Dan. We were correct. So, okay, great. Why is this happening? Well, part of the story has to do with growers trying to escape this classic economic pitfall known as the commodity trap.

• 27:15Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. So if you grow soybeans, for example, you're growing a commodity crop. To an everyday consumer, a soybean is a soybean is a soybean. And so the only way for you to compete with the other soybean growers is by selling your soybeans at a lower price. That sets up this race to the bottom and it's a really tough way to make a living.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  But to escape that trap, you need to find a way to differentiate your product, make your thing special somehow. And then ideally you can charge more for it.

• 27:43Dan Pashman?

  And Miguel told us there are a number of ways to differentiate. At one end of the spectrum, take a boring old commodity vegetable and be really clever about how you package it.

• 27:51Speaker 07

  Here is my favorite one, Love Beets.

• 27:54Dan Pashman?

  Love Beets is like a brand of the vegetable beets.

• 27:59Speaker 07

  Something that is as a commodity as you can find that are beets. Love Beets.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. The Love Beets company sells beets. Uh, they are packaged, they're well branded. They're often pickled or splashed with balsamic. So, you know, slightly more than just like raw commodity beets, but also they are still just beets, to be clear.

• 28:20Speaker 07

  They are excellent quality. They are nicely packaged. The size is uniform. They are not huge.

• 28:26Dan Pashman?

  Are, are those beets proprietary?

• 28:28Speaker 07

  No, the genetics are not proprietary.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  No, right. Like Miguel says, there are no special patented genetics here. Love Beets is just carefully selecting beets, often dressing them up, branding them really well. And then as a result, they've, they've taken a commodity vegetable and can charge more.

• 28:46Dan Pashman?

  So that's one way you differentiate a commodity crop. Miguel says the other way is intellectual property. You create a vegetable or fruit that's actually genetically different and better, then get legal protection for that plant. That's what Rutgers is doing with Scarlet Sunrise. Another perfect example, the cotton candy grape.

• 29:02Speaker 07

  It is a super sweet grape that tastes like cotton candy.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  So they're not, they're not spraying it with cotton candy flavor, which was my assumption.

• 29:12Speaker 07

  Not at all. It's plant breeding and identifying the type of variety that produces that type of very profile of flavor.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Do you think someone was like, oh my God, we just made the worst grape. It's cloying. It's terrible. And someone in the back was like, I got it. Let's sell it to kids.

• 29:30Dan Pashman?

  I would like to see a double blind study, professor, because I, yes, the cotton candy grapes are very sweet.

• 29:37Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 29:37Dan Pashman?

  Do they truly taste like cotton candy? Or do, is that a trick our brains play on us because they are called cotton candy grapes?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I think you're right.

• 29:45Speaker 07

  I think you are right. And we, you know.

• 29:47Dan Pashman?

  We need to study that. I call this the La Croix phenomenon.

• 29:50Speaker 07

  You are giving me a lot of ideas about research, you know?

• 29:56Dan Pashman?

  I think we should launch cotton candy grapefruit.

• 29:59Speaker 07

  I think so. Oh, my God. I am.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  And don't change anything. Just leave it regular ass grapefruit. See what happens.

• 30:07Dan Pashman?

  So we talked about how influential the Honeycrisp was, and there's so many kinds of apples now. How close are we to market saturation with all these varieties of apples?

• 30:18Speaker 07

  That's that's a difficult. We don't have hard data to show that. But in in my humble opinion, I think we are past that threshold.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, Miguel says people don't seem to be eating like more apples in total. So if you were to invent a new apple, you're just gonna be jockeying for space in that already crowded apple display. And, you know, if you are a new inventor and you try to jump in there, it's just gonna be harder to get a consumer to try your new fancy apple.

• 30:51Speaker 07

  You know, there is what we call the cost of searching for consumers. You know, when you have too many options, it becomes a burden to consumers to choose.

• 31:01Dan Pashman?

  I tried to buy almond butter a few weeks ago, and I almost had a panic attack in the aisle.

• 31:05Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 31:08Dan Pashman?

  However, this is not the landscape for Scarlet Sunrise. Miguel thinks there's still plenty of room for new tomato varieties.

• 31:15Speaker 07

  Definitely, we are not in the moment of saturation. There is a lot of appetite. In fact, the category is increasing. You know, if you look at the shelf space of tomatoes in many supermarkets, it's increasing, not dramatically, but it's increasing. Maybe two, three years, we may come to a more steady state in which say, hey, this is enough product variety, and we have found all the uses for tomatoes, you know, as a snack or, you know, as a midnight snack, morning snack.

• 31:47Dan Pashman?

  Right. Throw it throwing at people on stages who are performing poorly.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  We're not doing that enough, I'd say. Now, I will say, I bet I bet that goes down as as we get more of these specialized varieties. That's a real commodity. That's a commodity move.

• 32:02Dan Pashman?

  I can't even afford to throw tomatoes at bad comedians anymore.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Fuzzy Bear, poor Fuzzy Bear. He's just clean up there now.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  So, yeah, good news for Fuzzy Bear, actually, I think. But also, let's say, good news for the folks at Rutgers here. And the reason why there's still room for growth for new tomatoes and and other kinds of produce, it's in part, as we said, growers want to get out of that commodity trap. But Miguel says there's more to it than that.

• 32:29Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, producers can push their fancy things all they want. He's more interested in the demand side of this.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  I am convinced that at the end of the day, the foods that you see in restaurants in the store are in response to what consumers want. And I think the consumer is the bigger driver of this of this change at the end.

• 32:49Dan Pashman?

  But the thing that that showed everybody that big time was the Honeycrisp. Because it was when it came on the scene, it was so much more expensive.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:58Dan Pashman?

  And that was the lesson that people were like, oh, people will pay more if they think it really think it's better. And to this day, I mean, if I come home with Honeycrisp, my wife is like, let me see that receipt. You know, those better have been on sale. We don't make Honeycrisp money in this house.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  So I think when we think of the commodities trap, we think of this as a producer push. But you're you feel like with a lot of these pieces of produce.

• 33:27Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  This is coming from some fancification of our of our palates, our demands, because we're all learning how to eat and we're learning how to differentiate.

• 33:36Speaker 07

  Absolutely. Yes.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Of course, there is also a feedback loop between supply and demand here. Growers can only escape the commodity trap if we are willing to buy into whatever they're selling, a fancier thing at a higher price. And if we are willing to buy in, then more growers can try and escape the commodity trap, and on and on and on.

• 33:58Dan Pashman?

  What's the produce category that you feel like is ripe, no pun intended, for some new innovation and branding?

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Dan's been sitting on that pun for three days, by the way.

• 34:09Dan Pashman?

  What's your pick?

• 34:10Speaker 07

  I would say avocados.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 34:14Speaker 07

  If you look at the genetic richness of avocado, different sizes, different flavors, different texture, level of grease.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:25Speaker 07

  And if you look at the per capita consumption of avocado, it's just increasing. It's the most successful category in the past 15 years in fresh produce.

• 34:36Dan Pashman?

  So your your pick is avocado, professor. Here's my pick. I pick mangoes.

• 34:42Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 34:43Dan Pashman?

  I got my money on mangoes, and I'll tell you why. First of all, there's a lot of varieties of mangoes out there already.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:49Dan Pashman?

  But but only a tiny handful that are widely available in US stores. I think that for people who didn't grow up in a mango centric food culture, cutting up, getting the the inside of a mango out is annoying. The pit is gigantic. If you could breed it to have a smaller pit and be easier to navigate, I think that that would make more people want to buy them. And I think if you could solve that problem, you would be well in your way to selling more mangoes.

• 35:18Speaker 07

  I think you convinced me. I think. No, that is true. That is true. I remember I grew up in Colombia, and in the farm, we had like nine different types of mangoes. Delicious. Problem, you know, they are not easy to eat, and they are not easy to transport. They are not easy to, we don't know how to preserve them better, how to. But the mango, man, is so, and they have fiber, they have, oh, they're delicious.

• 35:49Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, we return to the Rutgers Research Farm and finally get to taste the Scarlet Sunrise. Then, a twist. We discover that it may only be the beginning of something much bigger for tomatoes. Stick around.

• 36:05Speaker 05

  Hope you're hungry, because it's time for some ads.

• 36:12Speaker 01

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• 36:53Speaker 01

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• 37:24Dan Pashman?

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• 37:37Speaker 06

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• 37:55Dan Pashman?

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• 38:10Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Are these guys? Guys, I really, it's true. I can't tell if they're green.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  I'm not seeing much, you know, again, we we plant them late so that we.

• 38:19Dan Pashman?

  Back at the Rutgers Experimental Farm, we've been searching for a solid 30 minutes and still haven't found an actual proper ripe in the field. Luckily, Tom has a backup plan.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you guys can have these. They came out of my home garden.

• 38:33Dan Pashman?

  Oh, wow. All right.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  And I planted them a little bit earlier, but.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Tom is holding one of those little pint baskets full of these gorgeous little yellow tomatoes with that telltale blush of red.

• 38:46Dan Pashman?

  Actually, these are the Scarlet Sunrise.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  These are actually a breeding line. They were they were from Scarlet Sunrise. It's a derivative.

• 38:55Dan Pashman?

  Cousin of Scarlet. Like what we're tasting out there.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the flavor and the fruit type came from Scarlet Sunrise. But it's.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right. Fine, fine. Technically, these are descendants of the Scarlet Sunrise. And I guess once there's a trademark and legal plant protection, distinctions like cousin of, breeding line, may matter technically. But for our purposes, Tom is presenting us with actually ripe Scarlet Sunrise tomatoes.

• 39:18Dan Pashman?

  Now, before we try this tomato, we asked Tom and Pete to each pop one. It was like, we wanted to see what people who taste and evaluate hundreds of tomatoes each year are looking for.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  All right.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  Well, it was a little bit low in acidity, but high in sugar, good texture. You know, I would give that a favorable score, maybe four out of five, something like that.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's got a good pop in the mouth, and it's got a good combination of sugar and acid. So, you know, if it doesn't have any acid, it's bland.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  It's just sickly sweet, as opposed, you know.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  I love them. They are so scientific tasting tomatoes.

• 40:03Dan Pashman?

  They are earning their designation as plant nerds.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 40:07Dan Pashman?

  But it was so interesting to watch this because, like, this is the process of developing a new tomato. Like, in some ways, it's super scientific. In some ways, it's just like two guys in a field eating tomatoes.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  You like this bud? Yeah, I like this.

• 40:18Dan Pashman?

  Right, right, this one's good. Do it like this, you know? And it's like that over and over. A crossbreed, taste the results, discuss, repeat, repeat, repeat.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  But, you know, okay, great. They are tasting dispassionately, objectively. By this point, the only taste test that matters to me is whether or not this Scarlet Sunrise tomato could convert notorious grape tomato hater Dan Pashman.

• 40:39Dan Pashman?

  I prefer the term grape tomato skeptic. But anyway, there was only one way to find out. We just grab a Scarlet Sunrise and pop them in.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  All right, all right.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:50Dan Pashman?

  That's really good.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  That is a full coarse tomato meal right there. The pop.

• 40:58Dan Pashman?

  There's a lot in a little package.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:01Dan Pashman?

  And, you know, I told you, Kenny, that I was skeptical of grape tomatoes.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:04Dan Pashman?

  And the reason why I have often not liked grape tomatoes is I feel like they're too hard.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:09Dan Pashman?

  You want to balance between the sort of the firmness and the soft juiciness of the pulp. You don't want it to be mushy, but you also don't want it to be hard as a rock. This, I think, solves that. This is not too hard. It's got a bit of a meatiness that's very pleasant, which a good tomato should have. It's a little bit meaty, but it still sort of yields to the bite. It's soft and tender, and it's got that sweetness and acidity.

• 41:31Dan Pashman?

  So where can you try Scarlet Sunrise? Currently, it's more of a specialty tomato being sold by a small seed company. As it exists now, it may never have big mass commercial distribution because the current iteration is pretty expensive to grow.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  But honestly, Tom and Pete's goal of helping New Jersey farmers here, this ended up going well beyond just inventing another tasty tomato for them to sell.

• 41:53Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, that's right, Kenny, because during this whole development process, they made a different discovery that could really change things for tomato growers far beyond New Jersey.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, as they worked on the Scarlet Sunrise, they noticed that one of their experimental tomato plants was really small, like half the size of a normal tomato plant, but was still yielding a roughly similar quality and maybe quantity of tomato fruit.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  As soon as we saw that, Pete saw the one that you see out in the field now. As soon as you see that, you get excited because, you know, you know that that plant is just going to be much cheaper to grow.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  And what surprised us was that, as excited as we were to find and eat and talk about the Scarlet Sunrise, Tom and Pete were clearly way more excited about this.

• 42:41Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, because the cost of growing grape tomatoes is one of the biggest deterrents. It requires a lot of picking by hand, a lot of labor. The standard tall plants have tomatoes from top to bottom that ripen at different rates. So you're going to send pickers through your field several times over weeks.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  The more compact plants have a shorter ripening window, so fewer trips through the fields. Plus, more compact plants means like you just save money on ties and stakes and stuff.

• 43:05Dan Pashman?

  Tom actually estimates this could save growers somewhere between 25 and 50%.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're excited because this is the kind of innovation that doesn't just help farmers a little. Like, it could completely change the economics of tomato growing for those farmers.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  I think this is something that, you know, can have a much bigger impact, you know, worldwide. It could, like I said, I want to overstate it right now, but we're, we don't, we haven't seen anything like this on the market.

• 43:32Dan Pashman?

  What I hear you saying is that this tomato could change the world.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  Like I said, I don't want to overstate it.

• 43:43Dan Pashman?

  Kenny Malone from Planet Money. The two of us have been trying to find a story to collab on for many years. I'm so glad it finally happened.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  It was a delight to eat tomatoes in the field with you, to pick you up from the weird New Jersey train station I picked you up from. It was the best. Can I tell you about something I'm really excited about? And tell your audience?

• 44:01Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, please. Tell us what's going on at Planet Money.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  So we know that your listeners understand the great importance of a podcast product. Cascatale will never be topped. However, may I say that we just released our first ever board game as part of an ongoing series where we endeavored to make an economics-based board game. It is called Sell Me a Sasquatch. The board game got into all the Targets and Walmarts in the country.

• 44:29Dan Pashman?

  What?

• 44:30Speaker 02

  All of them, yep. You can hear our ongoing journey where we, you know, decide to make a game and then pick a name and do all of that stuff.

• 44:37Dan Pashman?

  So Kenny, this is amazing, and it is called, once again?

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Sell Me a Sasquatch. Yep, and you can, you know, Google Planet Money Board Game. You'll find the series, you'll find the game, and we're so excited about it.

• 44:51Dan Pashman?

  Quick reminder before we wrap up that we are looking for callers for an upcoming call-in show. Do you have a food-related dispute or disagreement with a friend or loved one? You got a hot take you want to share? Send me an email or a voice memo to [email protected]. And if hot takes are your thing, make sure you check out last week's episode. It's a salad spinner. There are some very strong and controversial opinions shared, including a heated debate over whether tomatoes belong in sandwiches. That one's up now, check it out. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app

• 45:36Dan Pashman?

  all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. All right, well, Kenny, it was a blast. Thanks again.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Oh, this is, this is the best working with you, Dan. Let me just say the Planet Money version of this episode was produced by James Snead, edited by Keith Romer, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Sina LaFredo and Jimmy Keely.

• 45:58Dan Pashman?

  On the Sporkful side of things, this episode was produced by me along with managing producer.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 46:03Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer. Andres O'Hara. It was edited by.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Camille Stanley.

• 46:06Dan Pashman?

  Our technical director is.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Jared O'Connell.

• 46:09Dan Pashman?

  Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. And this is Grace Walsh from Chattanooga, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 46:38Speaker 03

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• 47:03Speaker 05

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• 47:08Speaker 06

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• 47:26Speaker 07

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