MARK MY WORD: COUNCILS ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT PRODUCE

Politicians have their spin doctors, mushrooms have marketing and tomatoes have their own touters.

There's even a Garlic Information Center and a nationwide hotline to ward off even the strongest vampire.

When it comes to produce, there are plenty of committees and councils in their corner.

Take the Florida Tomato Committee, for example.

April is Fresh Florida Tomato Month, as opposed to Rotten Tomato Month, which is a legal holiday only in Washington, D.C.

At any rate, the tomato committee has churned out plenty of releases this month to alert the news media to the talents of the tomato.

The committee even knows about the history of the tomato.

The tomato, which is a fruit found in the vegetable aisle, has its roots in South America.

Since then, a lot of those roots have appeared in grandpa's garden.

The Mayans and the Aztecs had tomatoes, which they exported to Europe and trendy Hollywood restaurants.

Actually, Spanish explorers are responsible for plucking the tomato from South America and transporting it to their colonies.

Tomato culture began in the South and spread northward.

By the end of the 18th century, the tomato had conquered America. In the 1830s and 1840s, tomato mania swept across America and splattered its way into political campaigns.

In 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its tomato ruling. Even though it is legally a fruit, the tomato was ruled to be a vegetable and taken off America's fruit bars.

Florida tomato growers hire about 40,000 workers during peak periods each year and adhere to strict laws prohibiting them from requiring workers to dress up in rotund tomato suits.

Florida tomato shipments are regulated by a federal agency that controls grade, size and just how many can be thrown at baseball players at any one time.

Tomatoes aren't the only produce that are getting their dues.

This year has been declared The Year of the Onion by the teary-eyed National Garden Bureau.

Folks in Greeley, Colo., are particularly excited about this honor. That's because Greeley is the home of the National Onion Association. It's motto: We'll cry with you.

According to the association, onion consumption in the United States increased by 51 percent between 1981 and 1994.

Of course, this led to a corresponding increase in sales of breath mints.

Garlic too has its guardians, who point to taste tests with laboratory rats as proof of the produce's popularity and/or medicinal value.

Not to be outdone, a New York public relations firm has taken on a new client -- the Mushroom Council.

The PR firm has its own test kitchens and plenty to eat, such as barley soup with mushrooms, onion soup with mushrooms, and mushrooms with mushrooms.

If all these produce groups held a convention, they'd have a pretty nice salad bar if you could stomach all the rhetoric.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.