attitudes change or a process of freeing

[jasonlulu_2000]

To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians have ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil .So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell .What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father’s house had been the “introduction this wonderful new fruit--or is it a vegetable?” As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an ”evil fruit”.
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820,people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead.” What are you afraid of?” he shouted. ”I’ll show you fools these things are good to eat!” Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.

What is the main purpose of the passage ?
A. To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato
B. To show the process of freeing the tomato from religious influence

I think this is a long process of accepting tomato as an edible food. So I choose B.
Am I right?

Thanks

Jason

[JMurray]

What is the main purpose of the passage?
A. To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato
B. To show the process of freeing the tomato from religious influence

It could be said that both A and B are correct. The passage shows (A) how people's attitudes are changed by (B) the freeing of the tomato from its religious associations.
My guess is that B is the required answer, because the religious factor is presented as the main element in the rejection of the tomato.

not a teacher

[5jj]

This is the sort of 'comprehension' exercise that I dislike. Neither choice is a particularly accurate summary of the text; the poor student is expected to select the lesser of two evils. Many native speakers would probably make the 'wrong' choice; I see no point in expecting learners to deal with this type of thing.

[jasonlulu_2000]

Thanks!

Since "Neither choice is a particularly accurate summary of the text", could any native give an accurate short summary for my reference?

Jason