THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 12, 1995 TAG: 9512120263
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
To those of us addicted to tomatoes - and our passion for them can be described only in those terms - news that scientists believe that consumption of tomatoes may reduce the risk of getting cancer is not news.
The question is why did they have to wait on a study to draw that conclusion on the beneficence of tomatoes.
Our mothers told us to trust tomatoes from the time we were able to comprehend that Mother knew more than all the scientists put together.
Indeed, scientists would do well to look back to what their mothers told them long ago, before they set out upon an often bootless study of what is and isn't conducive to good health.
Anyway, you know while you are eating a tomato, particularly if it is in a sandwich of two slices of light bread smeared with mayonnaise, that every mouthful is doing you good.
You can feel the very corpuscles jumping up and down and shouting, ``Hooray, hooray, tomatoes are on the way!''
The only time that a tomato sandwich failed to stimulate the consumer's appetite was when he sat upon it in his back overalls pocket from the time school began until lunch.
That unremitting pressure while one squirmed about at one's desk in fear of being called to the blackboard to work out an algebra problem laminated the tomato sandwich.
And if one's mother, in the hubbub of getting one off to school, had wrapped the tomato sandwich in a piece of that morning's newspaper, then the print from the newspaper was transcribed upon the tomato sandwich as if the seat of one's pants had been a part of the press run.
Portentous commentators speak today of digesting the news, and, truly, one could in one's childhood read the paper and eat it, paragraph upon paragraph even as one was reading it.
Now tell me if anybody today could eat a TV set while watching it. I doubt that seriously.
The newspaper is the only edible member of the media.
Just remember that, you people who squall about the mainstream press.
The only commodity less desirable than a sat-upon-all-morning soggy tomato sandwich was a sandwich that had been assembled with mayonnaise and a heap of scrambled eggs left over from breakfast.
I only wish that the scientific community had issued its finding back in August when ripening tomatoes freighted the vines, glowing ruby-red suns peeping from beneath green leaves, promising full tummies and healthy lives. by CNB