Picture this: a world without tomatoes. That’s right. No ketchup to smother on your fries, no pasta sauce for your pasta, no spicy meatballs, no curries, no tomato salads, no brown sauce on your sausages or bacon butty, and definitely no ketchup over your fish pie, pretty much a culinary catastrophe and a retrograde step back for managing hangovers.

As absurd as it sounds, the extinction of the tomato would send ripples through our culinary world and beyond, altering not just our diets but our overall quality of life.

The Culinary Catastrophe

Sauces and Condiments

1. Ketchup (or red sauce): This iconic condiment, beloved for its sweet and tangy flavour, would vanish. Imagine eating fries, burgers, or hot dogs without that familiar red squirt of delicious yumminess, just imagine.

2. Tomato Sauce (tinned tomatoes, passata, tomato puree) : Essential for pasta dishes like spaghetti Bolognese, linguine, lasagne, and pizza. Without it, our favourite Italian dishes would lose their classic taste or in fact wouldn’t exist at all, wow, the world of food just became barren.

3. Salsa: A staple in Mexican cuisine, perfect for dipping chips and topping tacos. Its absence would leave a gaping hole in the flavour profile of these dishes.

4. Barbecue Sauce: Many variations use tomatoes as a base, meaning barbecues would never be the same, imagine the extinction of BBQ ribs, I just can’t.

5. HP Sauce (Brown Sauce): Our beloved and sometimes misunderstood condiment, a staple on bacon sandwiches and full English breakfasts, contains tomatoes, lots of them, probably as much as ketchup. We’d be saying goodbye to that familiar tang, not goodbye to the manufacturing plant, that was outsourced to Holland years ago (yeah we don’t make HP sauce in this country anymore).

Dishes and Recipes

1. Pizza: One of the most popular foods worldwide relies heavily on tomato sauce. Without it, pizza as we know it would cease to exist, gone, nada, vamoosed. Imagine not being able to order Dominos at 3am when you get in, just a disaster.

2. Pasta: From spaghetti to lasagne, most pasta dishes depend on tomato-based sauces. A tomato-less world would turn these beloved dishes into bland imitations. My friends may breath a sigh of relief as they wouldn’t be offered m y amazing seafood linguine every time time we have an impromptu dinner party, but their lives would be lesser for it.

3. Chili: This hearty stew often includes tomatoes for depth of flavour and colour. Imagine that, your one pot cooking skills just got a lot more complicated.

4. Bruschetta: This Italian appetizer featuring tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella would lose its star ingredient.

bruschetta. noun [ U ] /bruˈsket.ə/ us. /brəˈsket̬.ə/ a food consisting of a piece of bread that has been toasted (= made warm and brown) with tomato, cheese, cold meat, vegetables, etc. We could still call it bruschetta but maybe we’d have to add ‘Bruschetta but no tomatoes cause they’ve died’.

5. Caprese Salad: A classic Italian salad of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil would be a mere shadow of its former self. In fact it just wouldn’t be itself.

6. Gazpacho: This refreshing cold soup, made primarily from tomatoes, would be off the menu devoiding those restaurants of a great little money spinner.

Products

1. Canned Tomatoes: Used in countless recipes for convenience and flavour, their absence would make cooking more challenging, albeit boring, in fact cooking as we know it would change completely

2. Tomato Paste: A concentrated form of tomatoes used to enrich sauces, soups, and stews.

3. Tomato Juice: Popular as a beverage and as a base for cocktails like Bloody Marys. Its the only time I really eat raw celery, that would be one less thing to get up for in the morning.

4. Tomato Soup: Comfort food for many, especially on cold days, and as a Zagreb waiter once advised the best thing for a hangover, tomato sauce with lots of black pepper.

And probably the worst and most worrying impact is:

The Nutritional Nightmare

Tomatoes are a significant source of vitamins A and C, potassium, and lycopene, an antioxidant linked to reduced risk of heart disease and cancer. Without tomatoes:

1. Vitamin C Deficiency: This could lead to weakened immune systems, slower healing of wounds, and general malaise, as if we need more of that.

2. Reduced Lycopene Intake: Lycopene is crucial for heart health and cancer prevention. Its absence could result in increased cardiovascular problems and higher cancer rates.

3. Potassium Deficiency: This could lead to issues with muscle function, including heart muscle, and increased blood pressure.

And then:

The Psychological Toll

Food is not just fuel; it's a source of joy, comfort, and cultural identity. Losing tomatoes would strip many beloved dishes of their essence, leading to a diminished quality of life.

The psychological impact of such a loss shouldn't be underestimated. Comfort foods provide emotional solace, and their absence could lead to increased stress and dissatisfaction.

Imagine life without the food groups above, the associations we’ve built around them, it would feel like the end of the world, I’m building my funeral song playlist now.

And finally:

The Agricultural and Economic Impact

The tomato industry is a significant agricultural sector, employing millions worldwide. In the UK alone we produce over 100,000 tonnes a year, that’s a lot of tomatoes. Its collapse would devastate local and global economies, especially in regions where tomatoes are a major crop. Farmers, processors, and retailers would face massive losses, and the ripple effect would touch every corner of the economy.

In summary

The death of the tomato would indeed be a culinary and nutritional apocalypse. From altering our favourite recipes to creating health deficiencies and economic turmoil, the absence of this versatile fruit would touch every aspect of our lives.

So next time you bite into a juicy tomato or slather ketchup on your fries, take a moment to appreciate this humble fruit, lift it up and give it a bow, stroke that ketchup bottle and give it a hug, ignore the weirdos looking at you on the next table.

After all, its absence would truly mark the end of a flavourful world.