TOMATOES
May 10th, 2012 → 1:15 am @ Shanti
“Vitamins and minerals in fresh food”
TOMATOES
What would we do without tomatoes, hey? We surely eat them in one form or the other almost every day. As the saying goes: “An apple a day, keeps he doctor away,” but a tomato a day does a lot more. The tomato belongs to the nightshade family, like potatoes, chillies and eggplant. It originated from Central America and the Aztecs cultivated them as well as the potatoes. A massive amount of cultivars are on the market and even the colours vary from red to orange and yellow. There are small ones, medium and large types available.
The tomato has a good source of anti-oxidants which are found to be protective against many cancers, throughout the body.
Eat tomatoes when ripened properly on the bush. They must be firm and really coloured. Do not store them in the fridge, unless they are over- ripe and then they should be eaten quickly.
I don’t believe that tomato sauce, pickles and any other cooked tomato mixture is very valuable, as they usually have been boiled a lot and all the nutrition has been destroyed. So eat them raw in salads, by themselves as a fruit directly from the bush and don’t spoil their delicate flavour with salt or sugar, like some people do. Learn to appreciate the flavour of individual fruits and vegetables, without adding flavour enhancers of which salt is one.
Vitamins: A, C, K, B6, B3, B9, E, and B1.
Minerals: Manganese, Potassium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorous, Zinc and calcium.
The phyto-nutrients like: β carotene, Lycopene, and more are also available.
Tomatoes are therefore a good dietary food, so keep on eating them, but raw please!
I put a photo above of tomatoes growing in a pot, because we can so easily do this ourselves, to have fresh produce.
