ANN/THE STAR – Following an increasing number of reports of vomiting and stomach pain after consuming cherry tomatoes, local health and agriculture authorities pointed to a substance in tomatoes called tomatine as the main cause of the gastric distress.
Naturally produced as the tomato plants grow, tomatine normally decomposes when tomatoes begin to ripen. The substance is a chemical that allows the plants to resist negative changes in the environment, such as attacks by insects or temperature variations.
The South Chungcheong Province Agricultural Research and Extension Services announced that a certain variety of cherry tomatoes called HS2106 is likely to contain an unusually high level of tomatine as the average temperature of late January – which reached -7.2 degrees Celsius on January 25 – was three degrees lower than the average year.
Exposure to colder weather conditions led to the overproduction of tomatine in HS2106 cherry tomatoes, and children and families who consumed tomato products with the tomatine remnants have ended up developing gastrointestinal symptoms, the agency said.
It added that other varieties of cherry tomatoes did not have any food safety issues.
Recently, some online parenting forums and communities have been bombarded with posts reporting that their children vomited and had stomach aches after eating cherry tomatoes.
