Talk about a lazy, hazy summer. One writer for the left-leaning online magazine Slate is making the case for a name change for heirloom tomatoes, claiming the classification feeds the egos of those rich, elitist types.
In an article titled “Let’s Stop Calling Them ‘Heirloom’ Tomatoes,” L.V. Anderson discusses Vanity Fair’s new video series, “The Snob’s Dictionary.” One of the subjects featured on the tongue-in-cheek videos is the heirloom tomatoes. But, according to Anderson, the term “heirloom” needs to be phased out as it “perpetuates the idea that these old, non-hybridizd cultivators are just kept around by rich people for their cachet.”
“Heirloom vegetables need a brand makeover,” she writes. “The food movement has enough of a class problem already; it doesn’t need misleading monikers making it look even more elitist.”
While many vegetables today are altered in some way by humans, heirloom tomatoes come from the seeds of non-hybrydized tomato plants and differ in color and shape from typical supermarket tomatoes.
But according to Anderson, these heirloom tomatoes can be much more damaging to those lower-class tomatoes.
Instead of the term “heirloom,” Anderson suggests calling such vegetables — those “pollinated without human meddling” — “traditional.”
“…which gives some sense of the definition of these plants without any caste connotations,” she explains.
And if referring to such foods as “traditional vegetables” doesn’t quite catch on, Anderson suggests abandoning the umbrella term altogether, letting “each individual variety speak for itself.”
Who knew vegetables could be so offensive?
