SIGNIFICATION o How does this object go beyond initial interpretation? o Does it have a cultural legacy whether it is for the mass, the elite? NB Unconscious and conscious interpretation exposes cultural stereotypes

SIGNIFICATION
o How does this object go beyond initial interpretation?
When it comes to dreams, tomatoes have two meaning
-you are tented by a love story
-you have too much passionate love stories
But then there are distinctions that have to be made:
-green tomatoes= your life is too superficial
or because of your impatience, you are going to miss your chance
-if you pick tomatoes: you are going to deal with strong emotions
-if you buy tomatoes: you are going to obtain what you want
-if you grow tomatoes: unexpected and happy changes are coming
A well known expression dealing with tomatoes: 
To be as red as a tomato means to be all red Apparue dès 1690, "être rouge comme une tomate" est une référence à la couleur rouge qui teinte parfois les joues d'une personne lorsque celle-ci est sous le coup d'une émotion forte.

The other names of the tomatoes
-in France, pomme d’amour due to a red color which stands for the passion, as they thought them to have stimulating aphrodisiacal properties. It might also be due to a bad translation of the Italian “pomo d'amore” which comes from “pomme des Maures”
It also embodies summer, spain, south and warmth

o Does it have a cultural legacy whether it is for the mass, the elite?
-was not consummated by the American autochthonous
-was adopted by Mexicans who obtain from it lots of varieties
- 
The Moors who invaded Spain were spellbound by the heart-shaped vegetable that sang the love. They embarked it in their luggage to conquer the entire Mediterranean basin. Attractive, bewitching, tomato alters radically the kitchen and also seduces the French during the revolution.

-was introduced in Spain thanks to the conquest in the 16th. Spanish and Italian were the 1st to adopt it as an aliment. Italian found in the tomatoes the perfect complement for their pasta and they invented the different ways of cultivating it.
-was used in a recipe book in the 18th only. Why? Due to the smell of its stems and leaves (not really engaging) and its resemblance with toxic plants (mandragore). 
-it was cultivated as a strange object only in private and botanic garden 
-the Italians when they immigrated to the US, tried to introduce it. But the US (due to their English legacy) were very suspicious towards tomatoes. English people used to recommend to boil the tomatoes during 3 hours in order to erase their toxic part (John Gerard wrote a memoir in which he explained that the tomato was toxic). Until the end of 20th, the average American thinks that the tomato is poisonous plant. And the puritans thought it was too red and too seducing, hence it was a sin to consume it. Only the Louisianans (under the French influence) will consume it from 1810 and Jefferson, Bennet (New York Times)
-In China, it will only be adopted in the 20th even if it was introduced three centuries ago
-even the witches thought it was associated with evil.
- In 1897, soup mogul Joseph Campbell came out with condensed tomato soup, a move that set the company on the road to wealth as well as further endearing the tomato to the general public.
-now they are cultivated in lots of ways although before it was just a product without any commercial importance. Very popular.
-and now Americans obtain more of their vitamins from tomatoes than from any other vegetable.