Fukushima Mutant Vegetables!

[Bonobo]

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/07/20/scaremongers-strike-again-mutant-vegetables-attributed-to-fukushima/

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Actually, despite the attention they’re receiving and hits they’re no doubt generating online, the following photos don’t seem to originate from Fukushima at all…


The following scary veggie pics have popped up again on the internet, and this time they went viral. This is the kind of story that keeps showing up again in different incarnations. It’s just too good a story—I mean, who doesn’t want to see freakish vegetables? People love freakish vegetable pics. And people love stories about mutation. If I had a dollar for every superhero and super baddie who mutated due to radiation exposure, growing to unusual sizes and shapes and gaining strange powers, I would be on the beach in Okinawa right now. From X-men to the Incredible Hulk to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to that famous three-eyed fish in the Simpsons, it’s a huge troupe.

So, where and when were these photos taken? I tracked down this tomato to find out.

For starters, tomato experts tell me that scary-looking tomato is probably a “reisetomate”, a rare breed of tomato which looks like a lot of tomatoes fused together in a distorted, weird way. Big tomatoes are also prone to a disorder called “catfacing”, caused by cool or cloudy weather at blooming time which makes the blossoms stick together. Freakish tomatoes happen all the time—but because most of us get our tomatoes from the supermarket rather than growing them ourselves, we tend to see only the shapely ones.

This tomato image first appeared on Japanese website TV Asahi, featured along with other funny photos of babies and cats submitted by viewers as a “Deluxe Tomato”. If that was a tomato from Fukushima, I highly doubt that any Fukushima residents would be sending it in as a joke, chuckling as they effectively tell the entire nation, “Look everyone, our produce is totally not safe!”

[blkmusclmachine]

1. Fracked water, too. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Our tomatoes sometimes grow with a finger like protusion

and I have, on occasion, told the neighbor kids that meant the tomatoes were male.
even gave them one to take to their parents.
Their dad is a fundy minister.

[xfundy]

3. I had one last year that had what looked like a horn.

I gave it to the preacher-man and told him it was the work of the ol' debbil. And to enjoy it.