I thought it might be of interest that Oregon State University has produced a purple tomato containing anthocyanins....the pigment that is the so-called 'healthful' substance in red wine.

Great! Can you give us more info like the name for this new tomato? Michelle

Kind of concerns me if this was done through genetic engineering. The Europeans call it "Frankenfoods", but I don't know if I would go that far. Just the idea of taking genes from one thing (most likely grapes in this case) and inserting them into a tomato has too many "ifs". Personally....I have a feeling we would upsetting the natural balance of species which nature has tweaked and weeded out (pardon the gardening pun) over many millenia.
However....If this tomato is simply a hybrid or a mutant strain.....Please ignore the above rant:-)

Here's the article:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-02/osu-rah021904.php

Sounds like they were bred without GMO technology. Cool! I'm always looking for new colours to try out in my garden. It's funny how popular tomatoes are... and to think that when they first showed up in Europe people were afraid they were poisonous!

"... one is nearer God's heart in a garden than any place else on earth."

Whew..is right! I love to try new, strange varieties every year and this one sounds promising. Now...wonder what it tastes like? If only it could have that great heirloom taste AND make my head feel "happy" like a good glass of vino.
I also liked the line:
"Tomatoes are second only to the potato in terms of the top vegetable consumed in the world," Myers said. "Per capita use in the U.S. in 2003 was 89 pounds of tomatoes per person.
Yearly total....phooey! Sounds like a typical August to me:-)

I'm so old,I can't imagine purple pasta sauce or purple pizza or purple BLT .
I guess with heart disease the #1 killer, science is trying to help us. Maybe they don't want us drinking so much wine,although the wineries are happy we're all drinking(for our heart's sake,or is it our heart's content)

I have a son in law, nephew & a good friend who still call them poison apples. They are all male.???

They are Love Apples as in I love them any colour,and in any dish.Where can we get some o'these love apples,I like sayin that love apples love apples.So where are the purple kind and what is there name?
Mavis

It'll probably be abt 10 years before they could go commercial, if they ever do. Test, growout, test, re-cross, growout, test. It's a long process & then they have to propagate sufficient for the first public trials. The last tomatoes that Baggett was working with were trialed through Nichols Garden Nursery customers (I was one of them.) That initial public testing resulted in the selection of the variety known as "Oregon Spring." I haven't seen any of the two or 3 others that we trialed, so assume they were rejects from home gardening. If you want to be involved in the initial home trials, make sure to send for a Nichols catalog every year for the next several years, that way you'll be among the first of the public to know the selections' names.

Mari, in the Willamette Valley, OR, USA, z.8b

There is a good picture of them on the OSU web site(I took the address from the posted article)
The tomatoes have purpletops(stem end) and shoulders,seem to have red bottoms. So, they don't look all purple.