o week (19-25 May 2014) started yesterday and in response, market researchers 'The Missing Graph' have decided to publish a related research and infographic. In this report, they examine history, nutrition, imports, production and waste of tomatoes in the UK.First things first; many people perhaps associate tomatoes with the Mediterranean diet, Italy, Spain or Greece but the fact is that tomatoes were not known in Europe until the 16th century. They originate from the Andes (South America). In the UK they were first commercially cultivated in the 19th century (Kent and Essex).
Tomatoes consist mainly of water (that’s why it takes so much water to grow them): a 100g standard/classic tomato has 94.6g of water. It also consists of carbohydrates (3g), protein (0.5g) and fat 0.1g. Cherry tomatoes have less water (91.4g) and more carbohydrates (3.6g; that’s why they taste sweeter), protein (1.1g) and fat (0.5g).
Production wise (2012 data), China is the leader with about one third (1/3) of the world’s production being grown there; that’s about 50,000 thousand tonnes. India follows with 17,500 thousand and USA comes third (13,207 thousand). Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Mexico complete the top 10. UK ranks 79th with 84 thousand tonnes. This is not enough to cover the demand (it’s actually less than 20% of the total supply) so the UK imports more than 400 thousand tonnes of tomatoes per year.
Top origin country of the imported tomatoes is the Netherlands (more than a third of the total imports), followed by Spain (about a third) and Morocco. During our field research at supermarkets/grocers in London (February – May 2014) we also found tomatoes produced in Senegal (baby plum tomatoes), Italy, Portugal, Poland and Israel.
A report by Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) published in November 2013 estimated the amount of tomato waste in the UK to 49 thousand tonnes a year (for 2012). That’s more than 10% of the total supply (more than 1 out of 10 tomatoes ended up in the bin). Though significantly reduced from 2007 equivalent waste, the 2012 tomato waste was greater than half the amount of the UK production in the same year.
